Your opinion about new GUI

[snooky]

as said, some antialiasing on the lines and the text...

I like the new colours, but the old "flat" layout is nicer..combine the two, and/or try the human type colour as suggested...

[aciddose]

i assume you must be using line drawing in vstgui's function which
uses GDI line(). you could add a aalinef() function to the vstgui
code, and i could supply the required source for free. however,
it would require GDI setpixel() which is extremely slow.

basically, the line function would take fractional pixel inputs
(for start and end of line) and draw an absolutely perfect
fractional and antialiased line (with virtual thickness of one
pixel). it looks much nicer, here, i'll post examples.

what you use now:


what you could use:


the numbers at the top left can be taken representing a ratio
of 54 / 261 = 0.2068 speed.

this is best case, and with GDI setpixel() the overhead would
be great enough to be probably 10% speed of normal fast line.
(this assumes GDI line() is as fast as mine is, which i doubt)

it might not be so bad, tell me if you're interested.

[ouroboros]

BlueCat, this is going to look good when you are finished. For my 2 cents, I would love to see the colorscheme of your latest creation applied to the design Frippertronix submitted.
The "raised" panels look awkward" as opposed to a slight relief. I saw on page 4 of the original thread that there was something like this done. I also like the new fonts, which are esier to read; more distinct. Overall, it's really progressing and looks to be much easier to use now.

[Blue Cat Audio]

here is a new one!



I do agree that it is still not compact... But I don't want to spend hours trying to rearrange it too much, loosing the clearness. It seems to me the role of each control is clearer this way.
BTW I do not agree with making the sliders smallers, it's just a nightmare when controls are too small for your mouse... And we should not forget people using very high res displays.

About Antialisaing: I presume you were talking about the graph. You are right it is not antialiased yet. But since it is not native on pre-Windows Me & XP systems, I am not sure it is worth bothering handling it.

[johnmix]

would a split screen spectro-scope be out of the question? and when can registered users get the new GUI??

[aciddose]

native? gdi isnt native either. its a library.
infact, the "native" GDI getpixel and setpixel functions would be used with generic (os / platform independant) get/set vstgui functions used by my code. so really it could recompile on any os or platform supported by vstgui or whatever you use with zero changes.
the only thing you need be concerned about is the possible cpu use, how often is the graph redrawn? does the redraw rate matter?

who uses 98 anymore? that is the most unstable @$^@.... :O
my "antialiasing" is infact a fractional drawing method, and is not related in any way to oversampling. i feel "antialiased" (actually, "oversampled") fonts are horrible crap. its actually faster to draw fractional nurbs in realtime than mess with oversampling, unless you use massive caches, and blah blah.

anyway i agree, the color changes look good, but i think the graph really is in need of being drawn correctly, since it will not only look nicer, but give a better impression of its real shape.

fractional drawing, remember, not "antialiasing", really.

infact i think you should do the code yourself, since its so damn simple, :P

[haydxn]

yes we should not forget people with high res displays, but then we should also remember that people have low res displays also. that screenshot barely fits in my monitor as it is. plenty of plugins exist with sliders that are narrower than those that are perfectly useable. what is the use in having a slider head that it that wide, if it is as vertically thin as it is? there's still an element of precision required there. does a dot become any easier to click if it's a horizontal line? not a whole lot.

[ouroboros]

that does indeed look much better! For size, I might move the R/L fader to the top right portion or into the black space of the display (?), perhaps enabling you to make the whole plug shorter, w/o sacrificing width or clarity.

[Frippertronix]

Thanks. Any negative aspect? If not it might be re-released soon!

Better than the last. All that red and green is a little hard on the eyes.

I'd personally introduce a little more contrast into the background on the new one. Maybe make it grey-green, but that's just me.

Your problem on the last one wasn't the concept of color contrast, you just had two "complimentary" (opposite on the color wheel) colors and both were covering large areas, which makes for a color clash.

I'm going to be a pest and say you went too far in the other direction with the new one. Not quite enough contrast.

[Blue Cat Audio]

when can registered users get the new GUI??

Hopefully next week!

I'm going to be a pest and say you went too far in the other direction with the new one. Not quite enough contrast.

Pest!
After working a few hours with the new one, I finally appreciate a lot the low contrasted background for my eyes!!

native? gdi isnt native either. its a library.

Just meant GDI+ allows you natively to draw antialiased curves. Anyway, this is off-topic, I think users don't care about such development issues, if you agree we may discuss this in the development forum. Why don't you post your way of doing there so that all developpers share it?

but then we should also remember that people have low res displays also.

You are right. But this might be in a next step...

[PaulSC]

I think the latest GUI looks really good.

I have one suggestion for making it more compact. Currently each group of sliders has a label at the top and and a toggle directly below the label. Why not make the labels themselves into buttons and close up the space from the redundant rows of buttons.

[G-Spot]

I find text quite low contrast: use bolder fonts.
Slider size is ok, it looks big because there is a lot of slack and spacing. For example, slider distance could be 4 pixels or less, not about 50% of a slider. Vertical spacing is so large that it disassociates sliders and their captions. The L/R panning slider is wasting the full width of the GUI. Everything has excessive margins and padding (in the CSS sense of the terms).
What about replacing some sliders with knobs?

[ouroboros]

I think the latest GUI looks really good.

I have one suggestion for making it more compact. Currently each group of sliders has a label at the top and and a toggle directly below the label. Why not make the labels themselves into buttons and close up the space from the redundant rows of buttons.

's a good idea!

[M'Snah]

[...]But I don't want to spend hours trying to rearrange it too much, loosing the clearness. It seems to me the role of each control is clearer this way.

I can't help responding to this: The user interface is the most important part of your software that impacts usability. A couple of hours or your time will impact a) the number of customers, b) the user experience for lots of hours of your customers.

One way to get it tighter: Right now both the sliders and the small horizontal bars show the level of the slider. This is double, and the bars could be placed under the slider, and then the total set of sliders would use online half the space it takes now...

[Blue Cat Audio]

Here is another one more compact... It's now even usable on a 800x600 Display... Is it better?