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JQuery knobs

anthonyterrien.com

61–70 of 101 posts

Re: JQuery knobs

#61
post #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 to…

Protip: If you want to make small incremental changes, mousedown on the knob and drag way out, making the radius of your turning motion much larger.

I actually thought that part was kinda nice in allowing me to make either quick large changes or small incremental changes. But then again, I'm not your average interwebs user, so I probably would be aware of the same issue if actually implementing it.

Re: JQuery knobs

#62
post #54
post #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 to…

This is the crucial annoyance with knobs in a lot of synthesisers (real and virtual). Another problem with them is that it's not obvious how you change the value. Do you drag to the angle you want? Do you drag vertically? Horizontally Which then gets me thinking about direct vs indirect manipulation. Which then distracts me from eating my breakfast.

I think it might be interesting to have a knob-like control that responds to the scrolling action of the mouse/touchpad. At least with that, you'd have (somewhat) clearly defined up and down actions. Touchscreens could support this with a two-finger-up/down gesture, and then we'd be very well on our way to Trek-like UIs ;-)

Re: JQuery knobs

#64

Extremely awesome. My only (nitpicky) objection: I wasn't able to do a simple $('#myProgressKnob').attr('value', _new_value_); and have the graph around the edges update. The number in the center changes, but the circular part doesn't get updated (at least, for me). I really wanted to use this in my latest project (shameless plug: http://wwikt-peterldowns.dotcloud.com ) but couldn't make it happen so I'm switching ba…

Use this instead:

  $('#myProgressKnob').val(_new_value_);

Re: JQuery knobs

#65
I really like the interaction on my iPad with a couple small issues: don't jump with I first touch and don't allow wrapping from max to min.

Alternatively, I don't think I would want to use a mouse with these.

Re: JQuery knobs

#66
post #62
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the crucial annoyance with knobs in a lot of synthesisers (real and virtual). Another problem with them is that it's not obvious how you change the value. Do you drag to the angle you want? Do you drag vertically? Horizontally Which then gets me thinking about direct vs indirect manipulation. Which then distracts me from eating my breakfast.

I think it might be interesting to have a knob-like control that responds to the scrolling action of the mouse/touchpad. At least with that, you'd have (somewhat) clearly defined up and down actions. Touchscreens could support this with a two-finger-up/down gesture, and then we'd be very well on our way to Trek-like UIs ;-)

Some iOS apps already do (can't remember right now).

Re: JQuery knobs

#67
post #57
post #18

Beautiful, but I don't want to see this in the wild. Knobs are bad for the same reason that pie charts are bad. Perceiving one-dimensional differences is easier than rotational/angular ones.

For quantities, yes, but for ratios, I'd prefer pie charts and knobs. "75%/25% odds" would be nicer on a knob display, for instance.

Not really for ratios. If there's a min and a max, sliders make sense.

You can make a better argument for a knob if you have an unbounded range, or an effectively unbounded one (making small adjustments on a large scale). Think old iPods.

Re: JQuery knobs

#69
post #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 to…

this could be solved by requiring a minimum cursor movement before the value changes. If you want only a small change, you need to move it beyond the trigger limit, then back again

the same idea would help with getting exactly 100 or 0 values - if moving back set the "zero" zone between 0 and about -10, or going the other way once you hit 100 you need to progress significantly past it, say to about 10, before it wraps value

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