j/k about the SAW, Teksonik

You also have a point with the depth thing, I don't think Cubase mixer looks like hardware at all, but the thumbs sure look almost perfect with little shadow (that said my mockup above there has a little bit more than real Cubase has), without it jumping at you or anything like that. The hue/saturation/brightness balance in SX is superb and I will definitely blatantly rip the values, with warmest thanks to their well paid professional design team.

Martyn, this "Contrast" skin is quite close to my idea of a flat, non-hardware skin, I also enjoy simplicity and clean feel a lot and have tried to keep the amount of detail as low as possible. If you have some more thoughts on flat UIs in general please let me know. With me you can always do more than choose, all you need to do is write yor wishes, absolutely everything is considered.

pHz what's up? Seen any new skins to review lately

Your Contrast skin is really getting close to what I'm after, except I'd go for quite desaturated colours.

I did a skin for Ableton Live using Sonic Transfer's gui editor that gets close to what I'd like to see.





I called it 'Slate' and it's available for download from; http://sonictransfer.com/ableton-live-skins/uploads/Slate.as k You can't get at all of Live6's colours as the editor was made for Live5, so I'm waiting until the dev updates it before finishing it properly.

I work as a designer for a newspaper company, so I'm staring at a monitor all day, eye strain is a big issue and I like skins that are clear and functional while not being too gareish.

Cheers

M

Nice one Martyn, I've been using the Live slate skin since I found it a couple of weeks ago

Glad you like it, I just wish I could get at all of the clip colours and tone down the bright orange bits.

Cheers

Nice one indeed!

Yes, thanks for posting that, looks very easy on the eyes. I guess I'm trying to find a balance, saturated colours have positive psychological effects. Will do a desaturated version!

I simply can't understand why some people insist that their software look like a 25 year old Atari app, all flat and lifeless. Yes being able to choose is a good thing.

i just want to chime in and say i the sxt skin by branis

In a lot of ways those 25 year old Atari apps got it just about right, the midi features were streets ahead of most sequencers we have today, because all of the power had to be dedicated to function insead of looks. This web page doesnt have little pictures of 3d looking knobs all over it but it definately doesn't resemble an Atari ST.

I think it's interesting how musicians seem to want to cling to the past in a lot of ways, when you look at how advanced a lot of graphics software is compared to Audio software it sometimes seems to me that us musos are stuck in a kind of hardware lust/denial. Like we taught ourselves to want lots of shiney hardware for so many years that we now need our software to satisfy that old gear lust.

Interface design is a really interesting subject, in a way I think psychology plays a bigger role than functionality. IMHO one of the best examples of a forward thinking interface is the one used by the 3D modelling app Blender http://www.blender.org/ (which has a superb new version out this week) If you're into graphics and don't mind a STEEP learning curve I highly recommend giving this amazing (free) open source app a try, if only to sample its interface design, man I wish they'd make an audio app.

Here's a link to a tutorial just on the interface; http://www.blender.org/tutorials-help/tutorials/tutorial-fol der/blender-user-interface-tutorial/

http://download.blender.org/demo/movies/ChairDivXT.avi This is a good example of a short movie done with Blender.

I still own 2 Ataris and trust me the sequencers were not "streets ahead" of what we have today. What function would 3d knobs serve on this website? A poor comparison to music creation software.
It's not clinging to the past it's wanting to keep using what works. I think it's interesting how some musicians think that "Hardware" equals the past or Old Fashioned. The tools you are using right now are just as much hardware as any time in the past. Mouse, Qwerty board, Midi board, Microphone etc are all hardware. Just how does your flat gui provide any functional, tactile advatages over a gui where the knobs and sliders or whatever control surface stands out so it is easy to "grab"? It may be software but it functions no differently than hardware....knobs and sliders to change values etc. You are still moving the controls by "hand" even if that hand has a mouse in it. Until they invent an interface that responds to eye movement,voice (in a musical app) or brain waves I fear you are stuck with the hardware style interface. Graphics software isn't a very good comparison because no "hardware" versions exist except perhaps paintbrush and canvas, chisel and stone, etc which are all 3d objects in a 3d world. Even in a painting on a supposed 2d canvas the artist strives to create depth. The brain is accustomed to using depth perception to calculate motion, I see no reason to eliminate that perceived dimension from the world of software interfaces.

It's the attitude that 3D = Hardware = Obsolete that I disagree with and that flat 2d skins are somehow more "modern" and "forward thinking".

Take heart however since most of the skins for XT2 so far have been flat so it looks like you'll have a lot from which to choose.

You do understand that both knobs and sliders have 0 depth in their movement, and their dimensions are only related to the physical dimensions of our hands. Their actual movement is totally 2-dimensional. Knobs are meant to be turned with fingers, and I disagree that a mouse pointer is similar to fingers.

And neither knobs or sliders weren't "what worked best", knobs were simply the cheapest type of potentiometers available. Parametric EQs and multipoint envelopes are a good examples of functions that gain huge advantages from computerised, flat GUIs.

Graphics programs are a bad example of good GUI design, at least Adobe hasn't done many things right.



I agree with you on that, at the moment they are just different and only subjectively "better", but I also disagree with the statement that "what we are used to will always be the best". Mouse and qwerty keyboard are the real human interface, the computer program should be designed best to interact with them, and not create a second layer of interface under the screen surface. Or then overcome the problem by using other human interfaces, which is what we most probably do. I use physical knobs 90% of the time when working with synths.

Naturally as a skinner, not interface designer, I can do only a little... and definitely will explore the possibilities of using 3D to make better skins. I'm not too fond of hard rules or design principles, I simply want to make the best possible skin, by any means necessary.



There are only a few true flat skins for eXT, most skins have some sort of 3d elements in them.



Cool, can you show me a painter who succeeded?

Since eXT uses mainly 16x16 bitmaps, once you start adding shadows and bevels and whatnot, there aren't many pixels left. Because of that, elements can look bigger and easier to "grab" if they're flat. Any 3D stuff has to fit within about 2 pixels before it starts interfering with text, for example.

Well, maybe "streets ahead" was a bit of mild exaggeration, I certainly wouldn't want to go back to one a lot of the midi functions that were present are sadly missing from a lot of modern sequencers though, things like match and iterative quantise, proper groove templates, range editing etc, in the caseof cubase and creator. There were a few really interesting algorithmic programs too. The overall paradigm that was created by those sequencers is still more or less the same as what we still use, sequencing itself has not really evolved far from those original ideas. Maybe Ableton has broken the mould a little bit, but Logic, Cubase, Sonar, reason's sequencer (in essence), still would look pretty familliar to anyone coming straight from an Atari in 1989.

As you say, it really is good that we have the choice, especially the option to even create our own preferred interface. I'm really looking froward to seeing what new skins people come up with on XT2, I'm definately going to make a few.

Cheers

M

On the other hand, the interface of Blender is quite a controversial topic amongst Blenderheads with arguments raging at some points on how crap/superior the interface actually is.

I tend to agree with you at least that the Blender interface is very fast and functional when you take the time to learn hot-keys etc... The whole one hand on the keyboard, the other on the mouse works very well in that application.

I think part of the problem with music software is that we use so many applications. Consistency between them actually makes a difference (to me anyway). I find that if the layout of one VSTi is significantly different to another I use more regularly, then I can start coming up against difficulties because my eyes want to find certain controls in certain places/configurations. This is one of the reasons I like Xhip but don't use Xhip. Silly I know - but there it is.

So I tend to start shrinking the number of tools I use so that I can become more proficient with each of them.

This kind of concept with interface design means more to me that 2D vs 3D. Additionally, things like colour choices tend to be more important to me. Anything that makes me NOT want to look at the screen loses regardless of how many perceived dimensions are involved.

Another one is clarity/distinction between elements. Absolutely crucial. If it's not there, then as far as I'm concerned the interface is broken.

At the moment, I'm using one of .jon's skins. It's the XT2-alike 2D skin that has an almost KVR-like grey-blue accent and the very simple square icons in the main window.

I like this skin, but I'd just as easily switch to another as there's quite a few skins out there that I find aesthetically pleasing while suiting my needs on colour, layout and clarity including the current eXT1.x default.

Regards
Caleb

That is not really my skin. I just modified insertpizhere's work, which was based on jorgen's original XT2 gui. My favourite as well, it's just a bit dark which was the main reason to make a new skin... besides the idea of round buttons and playmobil feel, and fixing some pixel-level stuff that affects sharpness. My only hope is that coming up with reasons gets more difficult with each new skin



Good point, even though there are bigger elements as well 16x16 is not exactly a lot of space to work with. I personally think it's enough for buttons etc, and the fader thumbs for example can be bigger and there's no text. Also it could be argued that eXT elements are not smaller than those in other programs.