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

[Teksonik]

Same comment for Sytrus. Great sounding synth, good looking GUI that's just way too small. I think that's a reason you don't see more presets for Sytrus available. It's just too much of a pain to program. I almost have to put nose to screen to work with Sytrus.

[tony tony chopper]

set to a native resolution of 1680 x 1050

for the size it should be around mine in DPI's, so I guess I do have bionic eyes or you need glasses.

Considering my UI's are as 'tiny' as those plugins or apps that everyone was using 10 years ago, and that OS recommended GUI DPI's hardly changed (for compatibility reasons), if you don't see them properly that only means that:
-you couldn't see those UI's 10 years ago either?
-your eyesight decreased?
-your monitor have too high DPI's (but normally it's more a problem of today's laptops, not desktop monitors)

[Teksonik]

Ok I'll leave you two developers to slug it out for the night. I'm just a lowly end user who thinks ImageLine makes guis that are just way too small, the D-16 GUI's are works of art that are a pleasure to use and that Britney Spears is a skank.

EDIT: Ok one more for the road. So you're programming stuff to look like it would 10 years ago? And yes my eyesight has decreased but why then can I work with every synth I own from Absynth to Zero Vector with no problem (PolyAna being the exception)?

[tony tony chopper]

I think that's a reason you don't see more presets for Sytrus available.

In FL there are simple & complex synths all behind small UI's. I can tell you that the # of presets is directly related to the complexity (& also price - free ones are more used) of the plugin. We got truckloads of TS404 & 3xOsc presets. They don't look any bigger.

[Teksonik]

See EDIT above. I wouldn't know about the 3 Osc or TS404. Don't use them. G'night.

[tony tony chopper]

I think you could increase the size by a considerable percentage and still have it fit even on the smallest of monitors/resolution.

I want a plugin's UI to be fully visible along with FL's toolbars at 1024x768 (& when FL started I wanted the same at 800x600).
First because if it's 1 standard res under the one I use (1280x1024), it's surely still used a lot, second because I also think of tablet PC's or rotating monitors that can be used in portrait mode, thus I consider it should work for a square of the minimum size (1024x1024).


Now if you own Vista, you can tell it to post-stretch apps. FL8 still has some knob handling-related problems when the window is rescaled, but that'll be fixed in FL9 (third-party plugins will probably won't like rescaling, though. But that can't be enabled per-window).
You can even set FL to look twice bigger in Vista.

[tony tony chopper]

This is for those who complain about UI sizes & own one of those laptops with way too high pixel density (that they probably thought to be better). Don't complain to programmers, complain to marketing for not caring about existing apps/backwards compatibility.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... S.85).aspx

[InfiNeat]

Voxengo are also doing some interesting things with their new UIs. The free Overtone GEQ is a good example. I don't know how they do it. Some parts of the UI scale better than others, but it's not bad at all.

I have good eyes and that's why I don't like small UIs. I have two 22" monitors at 1680x1050. If I come closer than about 2ft from them I can see the individual pixels very clearly which is annoying (and tiring). Some VSTs are hard to work with from 2ft away when the fonts are only 5x8 pixels or so...

[herodotus]

In almost every case, I prefer my hosts default gui for plugins.

You gui aficionados are a strange breed.

[zerocrossing]

Just use this:

[foosnark]

I personally think the D-16 Drumazon screenshot there is overblown.

A screen real estate comparison:



The blue background represents a 1680x1050 workspace.

The purple background you can barely see, because it's covered up, represents 1024x768.

The yellowish bordered grey rectangle is TERA's size. It's too large to use well in almost any host at 1024x768, in its full form like this, and I used to have trouble with it back when I ran on a 15" CRT at that res.

The light blue bordered rectangle is Alchemy's size. (Has anyone heard complaints about Alchemy being too big? It may be slightly awkward at 1024x768 in some hosts, though I suspect it was designed to just barely fit.)

The white bordered rectangle is FM8's size, with the optional keyboard turned on. Trim its height about 25% with that disabled.

The orange bordered rectangle is Morphine's size.

The grey bordered rectangle is Ogun's size, with the optional keyboard turned off. With its keyboard turned on, it's a bit taller than Alchemy.

The green bordered rectangle is Synplant's size.


Now for control size comparisons:



(Pardon the JPG artifacts, I thought I'd had the quality cranked up higher on export.)

TERA is very dense throughout as well as being too big -- it really cries out for some tabs IMHO. Of course, some people hate tabs. Modulation is hidden in popup windows in some cases, but not others.

Alchemy is not overly dense. It's clear and concise; it does hide modulation but excellently indicates its presence and operating range.

FM8 I took several mini-shots of because it varies. Overall the spacing is pretty loose and generous, and the only place it starts to get dense is the "expert" routing screen.

Ogun is pretty dense everywhere. TINY fonts that I cannot really read without squinting 3 feet from my 22" monitor, and yes, I'm wearing glasses and the prescription is current. Very fine markings near most of the sliders that don't convey information but add to visual clutter, and a monochrome but not flat look. (Generally I don't have a problem with the FL Studio color scheme, but some variation could help lend a sense of openness maybe?) In about the same space where FM8 put four knobs (with unabbreviated names and value labels), Ogun fits 6 sliders, two numeric fields and two switches.

Morphine combines very dense but obvious/simple additive bargraph/sliders, with generous knobs, clean fonts, and plenty of space.

Synplant is of course, a little different -- under the hood it's the simplest of these synths and has a unique interface. The one part of its interface its fans don't like is the "DNA" panel, which is also the densest. This is why I included it as an example.

I think one can generally say that GUIs that look and feel dense tend to be a turnoff. (Poly-Ana, my vote for Worst GUI Ever, looks CRAZY dense as well as having a big window and squinty fonts.)

[SuperFly76]

...
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.

[SuperFly76]

...I'm still overjoyed at...how many more plugins I can have up...

While I would be one to ask, what's the point of having all those plugins up at one time anyway? How many of them do you work on at one time? In Cubase every plug-in is at most two clicks away. At most I'll have 3 up at one time: a BEFORE spectrum, an EQ, and a AFTER spectrum. Once you've finished editing, close the freaking things. Even with a big screen, what's the point of cluttering up the workspace with junk you're not actively tweaking?

Unless your'e doing live work, I don't see the point of having all that stuff open.

I can post one example of when I have multiple guis open. When I record Drums I usually have 8 to 12 discrete tracks, 2 mics on snare (top and bottom), 2 on Kick, one on each tom (3), 2 overheads, maybe a stereo room mic, and I also might drop a mic on the hat if needed. When it comes to eqing and mixing the drums I'll have most every plugin visible so I can quickly tweak the sound. Each mic directly affects the others so if I tweak a setting on the snare compressor, I might need to quicly adjust the eq on the kick to mix it in well.

Like you, I close windows when they are not in use. My point is that just because you don't need to have 8 to 10 plugin windows open, doesn't mean that others don't too.

[Kyran]

The overall quality of a gui depends on both the usability and the prettiness. So introducing small artefacts in your gui is ok if it really increases the usability.

A rescalable gui is a definite plus for usability because people on a 24" monitor have different needs than people using the same synth on their netbook for a live performance in a band. I think you'll find that 99% of the users won't mind a small bit of artefacts on the background bitmap if it allows them to rescale it, like in zebra 2.

Good design is always about tradeoffs. It's very rare that you can go for perfection in one area without making great sacrifices in a lot of other, equally important areas.

[Teksonik]

I want a plugin's UI to be fully visible along with FL's toolbars at 1024x768 .
First because if it's 1 standard res under the one I use (1280x1024), it's surely still used a lot, second because I also think of tablet PC's or rotating monitors that can be used in portrait mode, thus I consider it should work for a square of the minimum size (1024x1024).

G'Morning..........Seriously you can read all the labels and readouts at 1280 x 1024?

Sytrus is only 590 x 424 certainly you could make it 800 x 600 and still fill all requirements? I wonder how many people use Rotating Monitors as opposed to people who run at a higher resolution than 1280 x 1024?

Sytrus is a powerful synth with a great range of sound. I wonder why you don't hear much about it outside the IL Forums? Too complex.?..............perhaps, hard to read Gui?.............

EDIT: Ogun is 479 x 646 (I'm not counting the wrapper frame in either case). 800 x 600 wouldn't work?