Melda GUI improvements

[wilx]

^^^^
Well, it's certainly a limitation of me using the Style Editor

Anyway, I got closer but it required several hacks and moves away from the Neon ethos. And it messes up the appearance in the Display sections (see Enhancer below). Also in the screenshot, you can see
-- the three different knob styles,
-- the appearance of the central position for EQ/Treble - no arc but the line shows the position,
-- the appearance of the Reverb / Widening - its "origin" (0%) is at about 10 o'clock, so the arc starts there.



PS
1 There can be 3 different "Big" knobs too. So you could have 6 in all.
2 Getting all the parameter to be the same colour may well be possible if starting a style form scratch.

This looks great - only thing I'd change would be to distinguish module titles from control titles by slightly colouring the module titles, or by making either module or controller labels more grey. But this looks much more pleasing for long, complicated mix sessions than the original neon (in my opinion, of course!).

[DarkStar]

That's not possible. All text has to be the same colour or can be forced to black/white. That's why I changed them to italics. Maybe the separator line could be made more obvious.

[DarkStar]

Hah keep on tryin'



Colours more consistent, caption separator is thick and more distinct.

[jmg8]

Looking good mate!
I am guessing the 3 knobs types are for the following group modes:
Panel
Control
Display
?

[jmg8]

I think now you should think about which knobs appear in which panel type.
Here are my thoughts:

PANEL
This is the default mode and is the only one of the 3 that can have the actual panel itself coloured. Default means it will be the most used panel type, so it should contain the best looking knobs, everyone seems to like the non colourd ones best. Plus to have coloured knobs on a coloured background is probably too much. So here I would go for the non coloured knobs.

CONTROL
this panel type can not be coloured so the colours knobs would stand out nice against this background.

DISPLAY
this is the same as control but with a light background. So in my opinion it should contain the same knobs as in the control. Again it can not be coloured so the coloured so the coloured knobs would look good against the plain background. The 3rd type of knobs you have are just too different and confuse the style, I dont think they fit with the others well.

As for big knobs I think they should be visually the same as small only different in size.

What do you think?

[GNXT]

I think now you should think about which knobs appear in which panel type.
Here are my thoughts:

PANEL
This is the default mode and is the only one of the 3 that can have the actual panel itself coloured. Default means it will be the most used panel type, so it should contain the best looking knobs, everyone seems to like the non colourd ones best. Plus to have coloured knobs on a coloured background is probably too much. So here I would go for the non coloured knobs.

CONTROL
this panel type can not be coloured so the colours knobs would stand out nice against this background.

DISPLAY
this is the same as control but with a light background. So in my opinion it should contain the same knobs as in the control. Again it can not be coloured so the coloured so the coloured knobs would look good against the plain background. The 3rd type of knobs you have are just too different and confuse the style, I dont think they fit with the others well.

As for big knobs I think they should be visually the same as small only different in size.

What do you think?

I agree to all of the above!! I think this might be the nicest ever melda gui...

[DarkStar]

You are right about the group modes - the panel type selected in the Multiparameter Editor determines which knob type is used. But all panel types can be tinted - and they are in my example; here there are in another style:


In Neon, "Panel" and "Control" do have some element of colourization, but their other properties act to reduce the effect.


Here are the two alternatives in a "Display":

[wilx]

Hah keep on tryin'



Colours more consistent, caption separator is thick and more distinct.

Fantastic! Maybe we can have more text control in future, but I would be very, very happy with that as the standard GUI. I'm sure lots of potential new customers would find that a lot more intuitive & pleasing than the existing one.

[scott_free]

Hah keep on tryin'



Colours more consistent, caption separator is thick and more distinct.

Very nice!

[mevla]

Isn't there already a colour coding in place according to the purpose or relevance or importance of a parameter ? Would that new scheme of colours remove that approach ?

[nonstatic]

Anyway, I got closer but it required several hacks and moves away from the Neon ethos. And it messes up the appearance in the Display sections (see Enhancer below). Also in the screenshot, you can see
-- the three different knob styles,
-- the appearance of the central position for EQ/Treble - no arc but the line shows the position,
-- the appearance of the Reverb / Widening - its "origin" (0%) is at about 10 o'clock, so the arc starts there.

This is the best the sliders have ever looked! Generally not a fan of horizontal sliders (also in Ableton) but I realize they are necessary for Melda due to the generous amount of parameters + space restrictions.

[Chandlerhimself]

I like it. Darkstar’s version looks very good.

One thing I’d like to propose for the GUI is a new type of knob. Currently there are 2 types, Big and normal. I think a new type, small, would be useful. It would work in the same way as the current ones, but it wouldn’t show the values and the text would be under or above the knob. This would make the onob smaller and save space, so more of them could be used per row. Of course sometimes you need to show the value, so these wouldn’t replace the current knobs, but they would be a nice alternative when you need to save space.

[DarkStar]

I would like to see that too, but the big problem is that it destroys the matrix approach to automatically laying out the parameters. At the moment each parameter occupies a rectangular area, generally much longer than it is tall. A stacked knob layout (name with knob below and value below that) is also a rectangle, but generally, much taller than it is wide. And some parameters have very long values so could push out the spacing between knobs.

It might be easier to use such an approach only for Easy screens with each parameter freely positioned (with snap to grid or row / column alignment etc.). But it could need a lot of development work. Having said that:



(It s mock-up, NOT CURRENTLY POSSIBLE !)

[DarkStar]

Guys,
In the light-coloured Display areas, which looks preferable?

[wilx]

My vote is for the right-hand version. Too much contrast is fatiguing and should be used sparingly, but knobs are the perfect place to use higher contrast - the darker knobs in that option work better for me. There's also a bonus of consistent design language - the teal shows parameter amounts for both knobs and sliders, whereas the first example mixes up teal (slider amount) with grey (knob amount) which is much less effective visual design.