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JQuery knobs

anthonyterrien.com

21–30 of 101 posts

Re: JQuery knobs

#21
post #10
post #7

Beautiful, but, when is this ever the best UX for a control (outside of sound mixers and sequencers)? (I'm expecting/hoping to get schooled on this.)

Knobs are the primary interface in many live music controllers. Check out Ableton live, or the evolution uc-33 to see how they are commonly used. Would be very neat for a web based controller. EDIT: Oops, I guess I can't read

Knobs are the primary interface in many DAWs because their developers copy hardware interfaces without too much thought. They translate to computer interfaces very poorly.

The main advantage of a hardware knob (over slider) is that you have very good control over it's rate of change. The main disadvantage is that it's hard to turn multiple knobs at once.

None of this applies to software knobs. I can't think of why would anyone want to use this over Tangle's sliders aside from prettiness.

The only sensible simulation of a "knob" in HTML I can think of would be a text field with a value that goes up or down based on how much you scroll mouse scroll-wheel. Thinking about it, I don't see why it should be different from a slider. You can have a tangle slider that is also scrollable with a wheel (if that is possible to capty with JS). Which is kind of the way normal UI sliders work.

Re: JQuery knobs

#23
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knobs are the primary interface in many live music controllers. Check out Ableton live, or the evolution uc-33 to see how they are commonly used. Would be very neat for a web based controller. EDIT: Oops, I guess I can't read

It could also be used as a percentage indicator for instance a round a persons picture in the middle.

That wouldn't be a knob though. That'd be a circular progress bar.

Re: JQuery knobs

#24
post #10
post #7

Beautiful, but, when is this ever the best UX for a control (outside of sound mixers and sequencers)? (I'm expecting/hoping to get schooled on this.)

Knobs are the primary interface in many live music controllers. Check out Ableton live, or the evolution uc-33 to see how they are commonly used. Would be very neat for a web based controller. EDIT: Oops, I guess I can't read

[deleted]

Re: JQuery knobs

#25

It's pretty, but I think it would be more usable if it didn't wrap between 100 and 0.

A fair point, and I imagine it would be trivial to add a min and max to the configuration options. Without looking at the source, my hope is that it's utilizing , which has min and max built right in.

[Edit] I had to look. Apparently it's just adjusting the value of a text field, which is probably better for backwards compatibility but does make me a little bit sad.

Re: JQuery knobs

#27
I'd really like to see some limits put in -- if you approach 100 from the 90s, have it stick at 100 instead of wrapping around immediately. Same if you try to go below 0. Right now it's really hard to get the know to fix at the limits of its range, something easy to do with traditional sliding controls.

Re: JQuery knobs

#28
Nit: it's jarring that when I first mousedown on the control, the value changes. This makes small, incremental changes difficult.

Now, if I click on an area of the circle that is far from the pointer, perhaps it should snap. But if I'm close (or on top of the pointer), snapping is undesirable.

(compare to a physical knob, which is the thing being emulated here: touching the knob does not change the input, you must touch and then move)

Re: JQuery knobs

#29
post #7

Beautiful, but, when is this ever the best UX for a control (outside of sound mixers and sequencers)? (I'm expecting/hoping to get schooled on this.)

It's not good UX for audio production software either. The good ones (in my opinion) work by clicking and dragging up and down (or left and right) and merely render the knob as if it's spinning.
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