51–60 of 127 posts
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I’ve always been curious why Google didn’t spin out Skia. Maybe because it lacks the UI primitives you really need to make it useful?
What do you mean with "spin out"? (sorry English is not my first language)
Funny how there are a few domains where the same problem is solved over and over again. Probably an indication that a good solution is truly missing. A long time ago I wrote a tiny audio synth. And yep, I wrote my own minimal GUI which had stuff like sliders, and most importantly knobs which general GUIs typically don't provide. Now I'm working on a non-audio webapp, and I have a problem where a knob would be the ide…
I don't think so. It's a pretty standard exercise to try to create an ui framework so of course we're bound to see tons of them.
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Is it better to write one own's GUI in this case? I believe most toolkits have a way to add new controls, so it should be less work to add a knob to GtK, Qt or any other toolkit.
True, you could write a new Qt control. Then you hit the second requirement: complete bitmap theming, many times of a skeuomorphic kind. This is extremely difficult to do in something like Gtk/Qt.
Was confused for a moment because the Photon UI for QNX is also called a "Micro GUI". http://www.qnx.com/developers/docs/6.5.0/index.jsp?topic=%2F...
Name collision--QNX's gui was/is also named "Photon MicroGUI" and that is what I thought this post was going to be about: http://www.qnx.com/developers/docs/6.5.0/index.jsp?topic=%2F...
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> minimal GUI which had stuff like sliders, and most importantly knobs which general GUIs typically don't provide. They don't provide knobs because they're a bad idea for input. Holding mousedown while drawing an invisible arc with the cursor is an awkward way to change a value. Sliders are generally better but still not great on interfaces with cursors (they're better on touchscreens). Skeuomorphism can be a useful…
In a good knob it’s not an arc but just clicking and dragging straight up or down that makes it move. A lot of VST audio plugins work like this and they get a lot of controls into a small area like this.
Too many skeuomorphic elements. He needs to take the controls people know and understand and replace them with cryptic methods that require new learning, and are hidden from view by default. Otherwise no one will take it seriously as a modern UI.
The mobile and web people are probably triggered at this ui lol
Name collision--QNX's gui was/is also named "Photon MicroGUI" and that is what I thought this post was going to be about: http://www.qnx.com/developers/docs/6.5.0/index.jsp?topic=%2F...
Can confirm. Came in expecting the other Photon MicroGUI ("now there's a name I've not heard in a long time"), was surprised/disappointed. Man QNX+Photon made for a nice GUI operating environment. Rivaled only by BeOS on my "GUI environments/systems I wish had made a bigger splash" scale.
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> minimal GUI which had stuff like sliders, and most importantly knobs which general GUIs typically don't provide. They don't provide knobs because they're a bad idea for input. Holding mousedown while drawing an invisible arc with the cursor is an awkward way to change a value. Sliders are generally better but still not great on interfaces with cursors (they're better on touchscreens). Skeuomorphism can be a useful…
That's why you don't use circular dragging for a knob, you use vertical/horizontal drags (or a combination of both, JUCE supports those for reference, I forget what it defaults to). I've only seen rotary dragging in a handful of products and it always sucks. Arrow buttons are pointless when you're trying to dial in a value - which is the whole point of using knobs in audio software. They don't give you adjustable gra…
The knob behavior you're describing is essentially an invisible slider. An invisible line is better than an invisible arc but it's still not good. Why not make it visible? A visible slider could appear on mousedown so there's something that corresponds to the gesture.
Funny how there are a few domains where the same problem is solved over and over again. Probably an indication that a good solution is truly missing. A long time ago I wrote a tiny audio synth. And yep, I wrote my own minimal GUI which had stuff like sliders, and most importantly knobs which general GUIs typically don't provide. Now I'm working on a non-audio webapp, and I have a problem where a knob would be the ide…
In the early days of the iOS App Store I worked on a music iPad app. Through many hours of user testing and researching prior art, the best solution we came up with was detecting the trajectory of the user input and supporting both vertical dragging and dial-like rotation. It took a shitload of trial and error fine tuning, but it eventually turned out pretty well. I think many music apps these days give you the optio…
That’s what I did. Made it slide by default (because I hate trying to twist a virtual knob). I briefly had a translucent rectangle popup when the control was in slider mode but it turned out not to be helpful as linear dragging seemed to make sense to everyone and I only had like eight options in total.
The one nice innovation I had was automatically detecting horizontal or vertical drags - useful for things like pan controls where a horizontal motion makes more sense.