To All Devs: please cater to BIG SCREENS!!!

[Teksonik]

You gui aficionados are a strange breed.

You people who would want to look at the same interface for all their plugins hour after hour are a strange breed.

[Teksonik]

Just use this:

ImageLine should issue one of those with every Sytrus.

[tony tony chopper]

Ogun is pretty dense everywhere.

As you can see I had to fit 8 controls in an area others place 3 or 4.

I should have used tabs, afterall there are at least 2 clear sections: the synth engine & the effects. However our users say they hate tabs, prefer 1-screen synths. So the last solution is a dumbed-down version of it without all of the controls (afterall, some other synths would have offered you a couple of named reverb presets instead of all of the controls).

(you will also see that NI's labels are more or less in 5 pixels high like mine. Lowercase vs uppercase, but it's still mostly in 5 pixels. If my labels can't be read, then NI's lowercase letters shouldn't be either?)

[Teksonik]

I just called up FM8, Absynth 3 and Pro 53 and all are easily readable here. I'm beginning to think contrast is an important factor. Just as in FL's Mixer Strip Names the labels on Sytrus and Ogun don't have enough contrast to stand out from the background making them hard to read.

For an example of a great GUI in my opinion look no further than Sawer.

[Teksonik]

The letters above the Unison section of Sytrus are only 3 pixels wide. The ones I measured in FM8 are 5 pixels wide.

[tony tony chopper]

The ones I measured in FM8 are 5 pixels wide

I count 2 to 3 for mine vs 2 to 4 for theirs. I'm talking about the lowercase since most of their labels are in lowercase.

I'm beginning to think contrast is an important factor.

This is the problem you know, people can't use the right terms.

For years I've heard "it's too dark, I can't read it" about my UI's. I then just assumed that most people's screen gamma was too low (but it's weird as I made my UI's for CRT's and LCD's raised the average gamma a lot).

I then tried to make them brighter. And I couldn't understand that I was still getting "it's too dark" remarks, especially from people who were loving UI's out there that were mostly *black*.
Yes, those people were talking about contrast, not darkness. If you're not specific enough, don't expect things to change.

I have no idea what kind of eyesight problem is linked to contrast, though. I would rather suspect a lot of people have bright windows behind their monitors, reflecting on them?

[tony tony chopper]

Just as in FL's Mixer Strip

you're aware that the mixer's default labels ARE not contrasted on purpose, in order to make user-named, brighter ones stand out, right?

I've also heard such 'not enough contrasted' remarks about things that were basically not contrasted on purpose, because unimportant (like, a plugin's title/logo, it's really the last thing that should stand out on a UI)

[foosnark]

Well, one obvious difference in font sizes is that with yours, we're counting maximum size of a capital letter (5x3) but with FM8, you're comparing it to lowercase letters without descenders.

I'm not sure it's just contrast at stake, either. If you take that little snippet of screenshot in my post and push the contrast so it's all pure black and white, FM8 would still be clear (but boring) and Ogun would still be busy and relatively hard to read.

[foosnark]

Oh, and I appreciate the kind of focus that happens through intentionally not contrasting some things; I think that aspect works well.

Overall I do like the look of FLStudio (much more than 95% of the alternate skins that people have posted in various places), and compactness is often a virtue if not taken to extremes. I think Ogun takes it to extremes though. It could use about 50% more horizontal space, with bigger text labels and spacing between sliders, and still be a fairly compact UI. Moving the FX to a separate page would only reduce the vertical height.

The tiny text, gradation lines next to sliders that are so small that they obscure rather than clarify, and packing everything so closely, along with being narrower than most plugins of its complexity level, just make it feel cramped.

[tony tony chopper]

Well, one obvious difference in font sizes is that with yours, we're counting maximum size of a capital letter (5x3) but with FM8, you're comparing it to lowercase letters without descenders.

what I'm saying is, if you can read their 'a', you should be able to read my letters. Otherwise you can't read their 'a' and you're guessing the labels by their first capital letter only?

you take that little snippet of screenshot in my post

but your jpg also makes most labels unreadable

Moving the FX to a separate page would only reduce the vertical height.

it would have given more room for effects of course

[emdot_ambient]

that's because they're mostly 2 or 3 letters, not because they're small. The reasons I don't write full names are
-that there are too many controls & an oversized UI is worse

Worse to some people, as you later admit.

-that tabs are a solution but people apparently hate tabbed plugins

Some people do. I happen to like them as they make the synth no harder to program and give more room for bigger controls.

...I'm well aware it's often seen as too small, there's no news here. But we have complaints about oversized UI's too.

Which brings us back to the main theme...give users a choice.

Soft synths are so cheap anyway that the extra cost of more GUI choices would hardly be an inconvenience. There are obviously two camps out there: small, cluttered, fiddly GUI lovers and big screen hogging GUI lovers. Just because you get complaints from both camps doen't mean your design is just right. It means you're not designing them for maximum compatability.

That's fine if you're designing them strictly for your own use. If so, design them the way you like and just tell the rest of us to sod off. But if you're thinking of this from a business perspective, the more people you make happy the better off you are.

My suggestion is that GUIs be designed to be used at 800 X 600 resolution. Now, figure out what % of the screen that takes up on a 15" monitor and make another version that would take up the same % on, say, a 19" monitor at something like 1280 X 1024. Offer both versions. Something like that.

[Teksonik]

Just as in FL's Mixer Strip

you're aware that the mixer's default labels ARE not contrasted on purpose, in order to make user-named, brighter ones stand out, right?

I've also heard such 'not enough contrasted' remarks about things that were basically not contrasted on purpose, because unimportant (like, a plugin's title/logo, it's really the last thing that should stand out on a UI)

Trouble is the user named mixer labels don't stand out either and get completely washed out when using certain colors in selected and/or non-selected mode. Would it be possible to allow the user to select the Font color along with the Background color?

[Teksonik]

Oh and for the record my studio is completely dark. Windows blacked out. Like I said my setup looks excellent for most everything including gaming. My eyes aren't perfect by any means but I'm not the only one complaining or commenting on your GUI's so draw your own conclusions.

[Teksonik]

what I'm saying is, if you can read their 'a', you should be able to read my letters. Otherwise you can't read their 'a' and you're guessing the labels by their first capital letter only?

What I'm saying is I CAN read their letters and I CAN'T read yours regardless of size. In my opinion it has a lot to do with contrast. The difference in brightness between the background and the letteres themselves. Black on light grey I can see. Grey on a slightly darker Grey I cannot.

I'm sorry, desaturated blue.

[emdot_ambient]

...
So having a huge synth GUI, even if it eats up most of my screen, would make preset creation much easier. It's not like I'm going to be doing a lot of live knob twiddling directly from the GUI.

The flip side to that is that there are a lot of people who do live knob twiddling and record the automation.

With a mouse. One knob at a time. And if you want any kind of precision, that means one synth at a time. How many of you really record live knob tweaks from multiple synths at one time? I'm sure some people do that, but some people also like Coldplay. There's no accounting for some people.

Playing in a live setting, now that's completely different. But in the studio, I think most people would tend to do all edits one synth at a time. I could be wrong.