Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[slikvik]

Can I say that it's worth sometimes taking a leaf out of Microsofts book. I know they can be lacking, but they do have the most widely used gui's and entire departments dedicated to design and function.

I think you need a toolbar similar to IE and Windows explorer. Not necarssarily large and at the top (where yours is now is fine.) BUT When you click on Search, or History in IE the Window pop's out and can be left there or quickly put away by clicking again.

THIS IS HOW THE ACTION WINDOW SHOULD WORK.

Look here: http://www.fmdplus.com/mc9edit.jpg

If I click on the Playing Now button in the toolbar, up pops the action window for playing now. Then when I click on the properties button in the toolbar it replaces the playing now window. Click on properties button again and the action window completely dissapears.

Back and Forward buttons in the toolbar, do just that.

Each Action Windows has buttons for common actions and of course right click functions are still there.

Cheers

Vic

[nila]

Button relative to display - agree
Manually resizeable - agree
close action window button - agree (I REALLY miss buttons)
Button for each 'action' set that is always visible = agree (dont want them to replace my current bottom toolbar buttons though)

[Stilton]

Those changes would definately clear things up, especially the 'close' button.

[jleerigby]

So simple and so obvious yet brilliant.  I really like that idea SlikVik.  There have been loads of good suggestions but this is by far the best.  Then again the simplest ones always are aren't they.  I hope they're not too far down the road to implement this idea.  Do you think they'd be worried about getting done for ripping off MS?

[slikvik]

I'm pleaseed you like it. Thanks. If anyone else likes this, please add a yay or nay and we might be able to sway them.

Cheers

[Jaguu]

Do you think they'd be worried about getting done for ripping off MS?

Well, this was obviously the intention of Microsoft, which became its own great success and the success of many companies that follow Windows Styleguides. Those are really proven best practices on how to use the screen as a human interface.

One can immediately feel if an application follows Windows styleguides or not. There is a certain ease and uniformity on how to use the software that is very pleasing to the way we use keyboard and mouse.

Although there is always room to find and improve the user interface (and the panes introduced in MC9.1 is certainly an excellent example), I get the impression that J River spends a lot of time experimenting with interface features that nobody asks and nobody really wants. The last really bad example was moving control buttons to the center of the screen. Nobody asked for them and in my opinion there was absolutely no necessity for that move.

The same with the new Action Window. Although I welcome the new Action window it seems to me so futile to introduce those new icons (just another set of controls), when the whole thing could have been controlled by toolbar buttons on top of the Action Window in conformity with all other toolbars. They could have simply introduced a 4th customizable toolbar.

It seems that every single window gets its special user interface -  a potpourri of controls all over the place.

I am less and less inclined to make my contributions and prefer to stay on the sideboards until something workable and pleasing turns out. There is simply too much zig-zagging lately.

[jleerigby]

I am less and less inclined to make my contributions and prefer to stay on the sideboards until something workable and pleasing turns out.

Since you've just made this very worthwhile contribution I guess that means that you view SlikVik's suggestion as 'workable and pleasing'.  I certainly do.  I'd love to hear Matt's view.

[JimH]

We're still working on this.  Thanks for your ideas.  It should get buttoned up next week.