UI Improvements

[Lotus9]

I see you have made some nice updates to the UI. The Argon theme looks great, but you have elements that don't adhere to the theme or that you cannot customize to match the theme, and it makes it look like the UI was Frankensteined together.

For example, in this EQ plugin you can see how badly the band controls stick out, like an eye sore. They are from an older UI design and should be updated or customizable so you can match them to the theme you are using.

For these in particular, not that much would be required. I would recommend adding the ability to change the color and line thickness of each band's controls, the color and thickness or ability to remove the border around the band number, the color, size, or ability to remove the band number.

Just those three changes would allow you to make the controls blend in with the rest of the theme.

Other elements like the HP/LP and the red/green squares in the Auto EQ should also be integrated into the theme, as should the all cap lettering in the Auto EQ be integrated into the uppercase setting in the style section. You can see I have uppercase turned off, but they are still in all caps.

All these small things will make the UI look much more polished and less distracting when you are trying to work.

Another small example of inconsistent UI are the rainbow-colored presets on some plugins, like MSpectralDynamics, i.e. Flattening, De-esser, Compressor etc. Just make those texts all white or one of the theme colors.

You've made a lot of improvements, but you still have obvious relics of the older UI design that need to be fixed so the UI looks more consistent and less tacky.

UI.png

[mevla]

And one of these days there will be a little place reserved in the plugins so that when a user does not want to see by default the dancing boxes of frequencies shown all over the graph, the plugin will remember the darn choice.

[Lotus9]

Here are more examples of bad UI, and it's in the documentation section, which is very important. Look at how badly the text is formatted. Look at the spacing below Overview compared to the spacing between the other titles and texts. This type of stuff makes your plugins look like trash. And it should be rather simple to just format the text properly. Just use a white background with black text on all Help text and have everything properly formatted with a nice font.

And look at the close button. On every close button in your plugins the "close" is not even close to being vertically aligned with the X. A professional doesn't want to see something like this because it looks like they are using junk made by someone in their bedroom. You don't see this on professional plugins made by legitimate developers.

[Hexspa]

And one of these days there will be a little place reserved in the plugins so that when a user does not want to see by default the dancing boxes of frequencies shown all over the graph, the plugin will remember the darn choice.

You can do that. Just disable the dancing boxes in graph settings then set default settings in Settings.

[martin-meldaproduction]

Hey guys,

There are a few UI elements that can certainly be improved. I'll remove the empty lines in that section. If you're aware of other areas needing attention, please let us know in this thread.

The vertical alignment of the close button text is incorrect only in certain styles, for instance, in Metro, while all Neons are okay. However, this will also be fixed. Though these are minor issues, rest assured, we'll address them. I understand they can be annoying and we're committed to fixing them.

[mevla]

And one of these days there will be a little place reserved in the plugins so that when a user does not want to see by default the dancing boxes of frequencies shown all over the graph, the plugin will remember the darn choice.

You can do that. Just disable the dancing boxes in graph settings then set default settings in Settings.

Just to be certain about the actual option to set, here's a screenshot :

graphSettings.jpg

That option is clicked after disabling the 'dancing peaks' in MFreeformEqualizer, along with choosing custom colours. Then the plugin is removed from the track in the session. When the plugin is put back on a track the 'dancing peaks' are still there, as well as the default colours.

Since I use Bitwig I do not need to rely on Melda options to have customized defaults for plugins. That's not where it'd be useful if it worked. It's rather inside MSoundFactory. Any plugin that has an EQ display in MSF will be showing up with the 'dancing peaks' and the Melda default colours.

[Held]

Just to be certain about the actual option to set

The button you need is in the right column of that window.

[mevla]

Just to be certain about the actual option to set

The button you need is in the right column of that window.

Surely not the 'Default Style' option isn't it.

[Held]

The settings window where you took that screenshot has two columns. Your screenshot is on the left, the Set default settings button is on the right.

[mevla]

The settings window where you took that screenshot has two columns. Your screenshot is on the left, the Set default settings button is on the right.

OK, it 'works'. For any Future pondering about this here it is :

graphSettings2.jpg

Although there are seemingly no common resources shared for the graphs. Eg, it has to be done on a per-plugin basis and it will save everything as default. So this is the same as using Bitwig's default settings for a plugin.

The settings set as default graph preferences in one plugin will be ignored in another using the same graph interface. Moreover, since it is about saving defaults for a complete plugin, this is also true when it comes to MSF and MXXX (and very likely MDrummer, MGuitarArchitect, ...) the whole state of the plugin will become default including for MSF, the current patch. And again, setting graph default in MSF will have no repercussion whatsoever on MXXX and very likely other plugins using the same modular 'matrix' interface.

In other words, unless one is up to redo a custom graph config several times for each plugin (and taking care to have sensible other default parameters when doing it for plugins using the 'matrix' interface), better forget about it isn't it.

[Hexspa]

Yeah, sorry for my lazy reply. I could've been more specific and saved ya'll the hassle. For sure you can disable those peaks by default because I have them turned off. The only ones you can't disable by default are those that load within M-hosts like MXXX, MSF, MDrummer and now MGuitarArchitect afaik.

Oh, I see mevla already wrote something. Forget about what I said my head is not in the game right now

[Hexspa]

[delete]

[mevla]

Yeah, sorry for my lazy reply. I could've been more specific and saved ya'll the hassle. For sure you can disable those peaks by default because I have them turned off. The only ones you can't disable by default are those that load within M-hosts like MXXX, MSF, MDrummer and now MGuitarArchitect afaik.

Well, they can be disabled although one has to save the complete state of the plugin at the same time. Multiple times eg.each time such a graph is being firstly used. While taking care that the whole plugin state will also be saved as default, and not only the graph's, which can be quite a few things when it comes to MSF, MXXX, MDrummer and MGuitarArchitect.

This is why I initially looked at the GUI side of things. Because of Melda's framework and use of common resources. The MVC (Model View Controller) paradigm in software was born so many decades ago. A set of data can be presented in many ways because the way it is presented is distinct from the data itself. Graphs can be presented in many custom ways and that presentation - or those chosen decorations by a user - can be saved for the graph only. And since so many Melda plugins are using the same graph functionality, they could share one common, customized,presentation resource.

But no, that's not the case, despite an initial impression that Melda plugins were constructed in a modular way throughout - not the graphs as they seemingly share no common presentation resources.

[jan-sandahl]

On UI improvements... A small one is if we could keep the random preset / random settings buttons from jumping around in any of the top bars they live in. It's quite annoying while "random preset browsing", which at least I tend to do a lot.