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Movable Editing Panel
clickjoyPostMay 18, 2013, 16:34
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April 29, 2013, 20:42
Normal topicMovable Editing Panel

I'd like to be able to move the edit panel underneath the main track display.
(example... http://i.imgur.com/fEyiXX3.png )

This would be nice for when I'm working with large selections of tracks and need to see as much information as possible (horizontally). This would also be more space-efficient on small monitors. My server has a tiny monitor and I'm not able to view much information with the edit panel open.

Obviously the info fields would need to be repositioned if the panel was on the bottom of the window. Perhaps the fields could shift around dynamically (which I'll bet is way more difficult than it sounds). Otherwise scrolling through the fields if the panel is too small to fit all of them is ok.

It would also be nice if the Edit Panel could be detached.

This ties in to some ideas I had about UI additions... Especially adding "drawers" to display information such as artwork, editing details, actions, etc. So a user could set up a drawer on the left to show artwork, something on the right to show their actions, and something on the bottom to show the details.

Side and lower detail panels / drawers (Wave Editor):

Image

Here is an example of artwork in a drawer (Max)...

Image
2MR2PostMay 18, 2013, 18:40
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August 23, 2012, 19:27
Normal topicRe: Movable Editing Panel

This is quite a bit to think about, not to mention to implement. I remember that supporting the flipping of the edit panel from right to left was a pain. Moving it vertically is even more of a pain due to the relayout required of the controls.....there are hundreds of controls. Dynamically relaying out the controls from a horizontal to vertical aspect is possible but scary. Splitting the edit panel off completely may be somewhat easier but I'd really have to look into it. It may be possible to double up on the control layout when vertical so that scrolling was not necessary.

As far as drawers, I've used them in some of our other apps even though Apple seems to be down on them these days. I have nothing against drawers except that they require screen real estate when open so they don't always help much when you're short on screen space.

All of this stuff is somewhat easier in the later Lion and Mountain Lion SDKs but we still have users on Snow Leopard...which is why we still support 32 bit as well as 64 bit.

As I said it's quite a bit to think about. Perhaps some others would like to voice their opinion as to how the overall UI layout could or should be changed.

At this point I'm trying to get v2.2 out the door. The release has blossomed into an enormous, (for me), amount of feature implementations. Post v2.2, I have one somewhat large feature request promised after which I'll try to come back and look at this stuff. I'll keep you up to date on what I'm think of implementing.

Time and cloning will solve all 🙂
clickjoyPostMay 19, 2013, 14:21
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April 29, 2013, 20:42
Normal topicRe: Movable Editing Panel

Yeap... I understand. Anywho it's just a casual feature request. ^_^

Speaking of which: I actually have a less-casual-but-still-kinda-trivial-but-also-potentially-very-useful feature request that i'll mention in a new post.

clickjoyPostMay 19, 2013, 14:50
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April 29, 2013, 20:42
Normal topicRe: Movable Editing Panel

Oh... If you want to see a really nice modular interface, check out Triumph by AudioFile Engineering.
http://www.audiofile-engineering.com/triumph/

Reaper is a good example as well, but Triumph is a bit cleaner.

Speaking of Reaper, they implement dynamically-resizing text windows by partitioning the text fields in to sub-groups (boxes) and shifting those around as the window is resized. So even though there may be 50 objects - fields, checkboxes, etc... only a handful containers are being shifted around.

here's a... comparison (collage?) that shows what happens with 3 window sizes.
Image

and here is a shot of the modularity in Reaper with the main track display, bottom dock, and side dock.
Image

Not critical features or anything, but something fun to think about.

2MR2PostMay 19, 2013, 15:40
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August 23, 2012, 19:27
Normal topicRe: Movable Editing Panel

Everything is doable 🙂
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