Placement of GUI elements

[slowtiger]

This is not a request for new features since I didn't come up with useful suggestions yet, but maybe my observations will inspire others.

I have some trouble with the GUI elements in TVP, not because they're not working, but because the way how they are to be used collide with their screen placement. I'll give you just two examples.

1. Popping palettes versus project window view controls: After the last upgrade I had the right column of palettes in the mode that they only appeared when the cursor reached the right screen border, then vanished again when I left it. Now this might be comfortable and allows for a bigger project window, but I found that changing the view options is more difficult now. I have to place the cursor exactly over the little "F" or "1" field and not a pixel further to the right, otherwise the palettes open and I click one of their buttons accidentially.

2. Numerical sliders: once I got the idea to click-and-drag into the numbers field, I noticed that the standard placement of palettes at the left or right borders of the screen causes the following problem: when I drag to the center of the screen, the numbers follow up to infinity, if I want. But when I drag to the border, I can only change the numbers a certain range, and have to repeat that drag movement several times.

I was irritated when Adobe introduced sliders for opacity etc, but at least the whole range of a slider is always within the borders of the screen, so it's easy to set max and min values and anything in between. Now TVP has a different concept, especially because in many places there's no real max or min value.

[Fabrice]

ok, it's already taken into account for future versions.

[ematecki]

1. Popping palettes versus project window view controls: After the last upgrade I had the right column of palettes in the mode that they only appeared when the cursor reached the right screen border, then vanished again when I left it. Now this might be comfortable and allows for a bigger project window, but I found that changing the view options is more difficult now. I have to place the cursor exactly over the little "F" or "1" field and not a pixel further to the right, otherwise the palettes open and I click one of their buttons accidentially.

You know you can 'pin' it in it's open position, don't you ?
It's the small triangle at the top of the big slider.

[Sewie]

Something else I'd like to mention. Not terribly important but I hope something the TVP-team will keep in the back of their minds.

The new project tab has a way of renaming the scene/clip thumbnails by double clicking on the name of the scene/clip. (To me that is very logical and intuitive.) While the option for renaming a layer is under the right mouse pull-out menu. It would be consistent to have this option be the same throughout the whole interface.

So that throughout the whole TVP interface the renaming option would be under a right mouse pull-out/pop-up or by double clicking on the name itself. Small consistencies like these will keep the interface overall a lot more intuitive, I believe...

[Peter Wassink]

Something else I'd like to mention. Not terribly important but I hope something the TVP-team will keep in the back of their minds.

The new project tab has a way of renaming the scene/clip thumbnails by double clicking on the name of the scene/clip. (To me that is very logical and intuitive.) While the option for renaming a layer is under the right mouse pull-out menu. It would be consistent to have this option be the same throughout the whole interface.

So that throughout the whole TVP interface the renaming option would be under a right mouse pull-out/pop-up or by double clicking on the name itself. Small consistencies like these will keep the interface overall a lot more intuitive, I believe...

good point Michael.
also having that little rename panel pop-up under the cursor would be a great improvement.
i have two monitors and now it often pops up on the other monitor and because its so small i have to go looking for it!

[Paul Fierlinger]

i have two monitors and now it often pops up on the other monitor and because its so small i have to go looking for it!

Peter, have you fooled around with your video card options? Usually you can find a setting to have pop-ups appear wherever your cursor happens to be -- but of course that creates problems with other pop-ups you prefer to stay where they are. Hmm... maybe programmers have the same problems.