Rothchild

This is looking great. Have we enough room to return phase and interleave to the fray?

Thanks. I'll see what I can do later. The thing is the icons don't exist in X1 so it will need a bit of extra work.

Shame Brandon's vanished again, but I understand that, if he were to acknowledge how good this is, it would perhaps build an expectation that we may see some of these changes.

Indeed. I certainly don't expect anything from this. I'm just providing this as some food for though. (And I've enjoyed doing it simply for the sake of learning GIMP and some graphics chops).

I think it is important to note that all the elements are from X1. There are some colour changes. Some size changes. A little bit of editing here and there but in the end it is all based on Cakewalk's original designs. Well... except for the glow on the record button.

UnderTow

The thing is the icons don't exist in X1 so it will need a bit of extra work.

I'd understood they were on the strip inspector?

Anyway, no biggie. I think you've done a great job of showing how much has been needlessly lost in the gaining of just a few additional necessary functions.


Thanks again,
Child

Rothchild

The thing is the icons don't exist in X1 so it will need a bit of extra work.

I'd understood they were on the strip inspector?

Ah that's possible. I'll have to get myself some screen-shots of the Inspector then next time I'm using X1.

Anyway, no biggie. I think you've done a great job of showing how much has been needlessly lost in the gaining of just a few additional necessary functions.

My intention is to show what can be added rather than to show what is missing.

I believe the current design is quite nice and has some good points but IMO, it can be improved. I hope I have demonstrated that that is the case and in doing so given Cakewalk some ideas and food for thought. I hope I have clarified what to me is good GUI design. Clarity. Instantly recognisable states. Like grouped with like. The GUI should point the user to the relevant information.

An example of where I think this fails in X1 is the I/O labels looking too similar to the Edit Filter. Combine that with the dynamic behaviour that can put widgets at any place in the track header and it means you have too look for the right element before you can tweak it. It is made even worse by the fact that two tracts that are one above each other could have their widgets at different locations. (Try having two audio tracks. One with a send and one without. Then drag the track header / pane divider and see how the widgets behave on the two tracks). I think my design where the widgets change based on the track width gives a clearer more consistent behaviour. (But it is obviously not the only solution).

The behaviour is more consistent in previous versions of Sonar and uses less space but that really doesn't matter. That ship has sailed. The only thing that counts is the future.

UnderTow

UnderTow

As a user I can really see the improvements you've shown in this "potential" GUI.  Everything from the choice of UI elements, the colours, the groupings -- it all seems so much clearer to me.

As a software engineer (for the past two decades) I know from experience that these things aren't always easy to design or implement as they might seem.  But I also realize that there's always someone out there that can help re-think your position, and if I had a say I would certainly be ready to take on board a lot of your ideas.

I respect the effort and appreciate the effect.  Nice work

Thanks for the reminder to stay on the positive side of the street UT.

And bump for a great piece of work. ;-)

Child

Hello everybody!  

UnderTow, you're doing well on improving of track appearance. Absolutely agreed with you about bloated controls in X1... it's a real pain to look at them especially on 18,5'' monitor. I can understand Brandon's arguments like "we wanted some space to be empty, because we care about claustrophobics", but who's more in numbers - claustrophobists or people that still have 19'' monitors? And what about people that run Sonar on 1024*768 laptops (as I do on live performances)?  And even on larger screens some more workspace would be not undesirable.   

Personally I hate new pan rotaries instead of sliders in track inspector and console. They occupy nearly 6 times much space than old pan control, the space that I could use to display something else. Also they have no coloring when turned right or left so it's harder to keep an eye on pan settings.  

My next point:
aybe without buttons GUI looks less cluttered (for button-haters) but the fact is: having personally customized buttons in 8.5, it was a matter of 1 mouse click to activate option I need; now in X1 each time I have to:   
1) choose proper menu  
2) find needed option from dropdown list (for me, reading takes more time than memorizing a symbol - there's even a special discipline called mnemonics, that talks clearly about that) 
3) click on this option.
So, 3 steps instead of 1 mouse click. Some say, the workflow is streamlined, heh?

The same applies to widget tabs in the track view. In 8.5 I could switch to the one I needed at once with simple mouse click, because they all were visible at the bottom of the track view. Now there's a useless empty space instead. 
So, why not add an option in the view menu to show widget tabs under the track view? If someone fears it can 'clutter' something he can always switch it off. 
When turned on, it should look like that:    



Now there's no need for menu button in the upper right corner (it shows "mix" on picture), we can leave this space empty or use it to display some other information. 

I agree about the Widget tabs. I liked the way that works in previous version of Sonar. I think Widget menu in X1 could be used to show/hide types of tracks. All Audio Tracks, All MIDI Tracks, Synth Tracks, Buses etc... (Yes we should be allowed to put buses anywhere between normal tracks. Not just in the bus pane which IMO should go).

EDIT: Come to think of it, it shouldn't be a menu. Just 5 buttons to show/hide with one click:

Audio Tracks
MIDI Tracks
Synth Tracks
Buses
Time Rulers

Alternatively it could be an Add Track button. Something obvious like that...

Btw, what would the Patch and Scale tabs do?

UnderTow

  Widget tabs are taken from my standard 8.5 setup... On Patch tab I have Channel/Bank/Preset fields for instrument/MIDI tracks. On Scale tab I have key offset, scale and root note options. 
Since now all this functionality is transported to event inspenctor, there's no need for these tabs I guess... but personally I dislike it, because full-sized 2-strip event inspector occupies very much place, which could be saved if arpeggiator, snap to scale and other functions were left available as widgets so I could tune their visibility to my taste

Well, the next proposal is just a thought experiment, though I hope somebody may like it.
What if we make more use of this empty area above the tracks? 
Let's place there a thing that can be called mini track inspector. It will allow us to keep tracks minimized and "big" track inspector closed most of the time.
In essence mini-inspector is a separate widget tab, that is constantly visible on top of all tracks, that shows information only for the active track (its widget content may be customized via widget tab manager)
You can switch between time display (which is more appropriate when you are working in the clips pane) and mini-inspector (which is useful when you are working with tracks' parameters in the track pane) with dedicated button.



Useful or not?

The mini-inspector is a great idea!  Sheer brilliance!

UnderTow