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-   -   User Interface (http://www.notation.com/vb-forum/showthread.php?t=34188)

martin 10-31-2017 08:03 PM

User Interface
 
I think the popup window for the first item in the chord dialog is meant to say
"show or hide chord names" when hovering over it with the mouse. (Click Text then the G7 icon to get to the dialog).

Whilst on the subject of the user interface I think it would be helpful to have a SAVE button on the interface as well as CTRL_S and the usual file menu SAVE.
Perhaps also an OPEN file button. There seems to be plenty of spare room for useful icons on the menus without taking up valuable space for the music. :)

The splash screen on first startup has a menu bar with three icons on the right hand side. If one should press the middle one the splash screen disappears and is difficult to recover. I don't think the splash screen needs any maximise or minimise buttons really.

Sherry C 11-01-2017 01:10 PM

Re: User Interface
 
Hi Martin,

Thanks for your feedback here. I'll address each item below...

Quote:

Originally Posted by martin (Post 68640)
I think the popup window for the first item in the chord dialog is meant to say
"show or hide chord names" when hovering over it with the mouse. (Click Text then the G7 icon to get to the dialog).

Thanks for catching that - I've added it as task 2978 (don't worry - we don't have that many things to do, it's just a tracking number :) )

Quote:

Whilst on the subject of the user interface I think it would be helpful to have a SAVE button on the interface as well as CTRL_S and the usual file menu SAVE.
Perhaps also an OPEN file button. There seems to be plenty of spare room for useful icons on the menus without taking up valuable space for the music. :)
We've had lots of folks over the years suggest lots of commands and buttons that they would find useful to have on the menu bar, because "there's so much space." We leave a lot of space for a couple of reasons.

One is to keep the interface as uncluttered as possible, so that only the tools that are needed for the current selections/tasks are visible and thus not overwhelming. We don't want folks to feel like they need a fighter pilot license to use our software, and the "clean" interface makes the software seem much more user-friendly.

Two, with the advent of smaller-size devices, that "menu bar real estate" is actually not as large as it may look. I have a range of devices myself, from a large 2-monitor system that I do my main work on at home, down to a small 10" Nextbook that I use for travel. Lots of space on the workstation at home when I've got it set to fill the monitor window, but the Nextbook is almost "crowded" already.

The Open and Save commands are both available on the File menu command list, as are their keyboard shortcuts Ctrl O and Ctrl S respectively (standard Windows shortcuts). So for now we'll be keeping the main user interface as it is.

Quote:

The splash screen on first startup has a menu bar with three icons on the right hand side. If one should press the middle one the splash screen disappears and is difficult to recover. I don't think the splash screen needs any maximise or minimise buttons really.
Thanks for your observation here. I guess I've never bothered with the max/min button because I've always just used the task buttons on the splash screen :)

I'm only seeing this behavior when I first start up Composer (you can easily recover the window by using Window/Maximise from the toolbar). If I've had any songs open, I see the following.

If I click that "minimize" button after the first startup and have had any songs open, the buttons simply disappear. From a pragmatic point of view this behavior is fine.

If I have a song open, click the Options tab (which is the splash screen), and then click the minimize button, the same thing happens. Again, this is acceptable behavior. The only problem that I see is that when I switch back to the open song tab, that song no longer fills the window. That is quickly fixed by clicking the maximize button for that window.

I'll write this up as task 2979 for the first-opened scenario.

Thanks!
Sherry


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