Yoshimi - Buttons!

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Yoshimi - Buttons!

Post by Folderol »

Currently I'm working through the GUI sorting out some anomalies, along with a
new {undisclosed} feature :P

At the same time I'm looking at the way we identify various button actions.
These fall into two groups:
Actions, that change a switch, setting, etc.
Links, that open a different window.
An outlier is the grey 'Close' button which sometimes just closes a window, but
other times can re-open a previous one with a RH mouse click.

Unfortunately most of these have the same pale blue, while some are pale green -
the same colour as the section panels. Also a few link buttons are grey (such as
those in the kit window).

While we try to avoid major changes to the UI I think it would be an idea to
rationalise these. We can do this partly by colour, but also possibly with the
button style.

I would suggest that nothing except actual section panels should be that pale
green, beyond that I'd very much like a consensus, so please take a look and
give your opinions.

If you don't have Yoshimi, a quick look through the user guide will make this clear.
http://yoshimi.github.io/docs/user-guide/
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Re: Yoshimi - Buttons!

Post by Drew Stephenson »

Good UX design says you should never rely on just colour to differentiate actions. Ideally you'd have different style as well as shape of buttons for different actions. Or at the very least supporting icons.
For example, on the screen shot on that link, the Undo button looks the same as the Mixer Panel button, but I'm guessing that the nature of the functions they perform are very different?
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Re: Yoshimi - Buttons!

Post by BJG145 »

Drew Stephenson wrote: Thu Mar 16, 2023 2:46 pmGood UX design says you should never rely on just colour to differentiate actions. Ideally you'd have different style as well as shape of buttons for different actions. Or at the very least supporting icons.

Here's a comparison with Omnisphere.

Image

Image

Omnisphere has at least four different styles of buttons in different groups - "ORB"/"MAIN" etc., "SOLO/GLIDE", "LPF/HPF", "Normal"/"Shared". I guess you're right; mostly differentiated by type, though the ones on the left are a bit of a mixed bag.

I don't know whether alterations to the button design in Yoshimi would come under "major UI change", but it might be useful to consider the different styles there (embossed top and bottom, embossed surround, flat, different sizes and colours) to see if they fall into similar logical groups...
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Re: Yoshimi - Buttons!

Post by Martin Walker »

I agree with Drew and Ben that different carefully stylised button designs for different functions makes an interface far easier to understand than relying on colour.

It might take a bit longer to rationalise this global button design by function (and perhaps move some of the buttons slightly on some screens as a result, to line everything up neatly again), but I'm sure it would be worth it in the long run.
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Re: Yoshimi - Buttons!

Post by Drew Stephenson »

Just to iterate that there's nothing wrong with using colour, and it could be a useful step in the interim, but as up to 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women are colour-blind it's good to have a second factor as well.
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Re: Yoshimi - Buttons!

Post by Folderol »

Thanks a lot for your comments. To a great extent they confirm what I've been thinking, although I'd completely forgotten that my brother was blue-green colour blind, so considering much of Yoshimi is pale blue or pale green that would have been an instant fail for him!

I've got to be careful how I go though. One of Yoshimi's selling points is that we don't do a 'microsoft' on every release! I might try changing the button profiles - as well as the round edged buttons FLTK supports sharply rectangular ones, and they can all be either raised or troughs.
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Re: Yoshimi - Buttons!

Post by Folderol »

A bit of a reveal :tongue:
This is an image link to Yoshimi as you've never seen her before :bouncy:

http://www.musically.me.uk/Photos/Yoshimi-themed.png

I didn't embed it as it's quite big.
This theme is not available yet, and the code for using it is close, but not complete. However, anyone feeling adventurous is welcome to download and build it.
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Re: Yoshimi - Buttons!

Post by Eddy Deegan »

Gosh.. I'm liking the look of this Will :thumbup:
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Re: Yoshimi - Buttons!

Post by Folderol »

It's all working out much better than I expected. Also one of 'Yoshimi's little band of helpers' has offered to have a go at making a theme editor :)
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Re: Yoshimi - Buttons!

Post by Martin Walker »

That does look nice Will, although I'd personally be inclined to tone down the brightness of the highlight on the purple buttons - the contrast was fine in all grey, but on my monitor anyway every highlight is now visually screaming at me ;)

Excellent news on the theme editor as well 8-)
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Re: Yoshimi - Buttons!

Post by Folderol »

Well it *is* intended to grab your attention. Unsurprisingly I call it Dark Psycho :lol:
There's still more to do, and as a matter of interest out of a colour map of 256 entries we are currently using 70.
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Re: Yoshimi - Buttons!

Post by Folderol »

Here's a look at the latest version of the 'classic' theme:
http://www.musically.me.uk/Photos/Yoshimi-native.png

If you look closely at the sliders, you'll see they now have coloured centres to the 'pegs', and in the Mixer window some are red while all the rest are green. Red indicates being off the default value and I'm currently working though the knobs doing the same for their pointers.

I've had a complaint (from just one person) that the link buttons no longer look like buttons. Does anyone else have an opinion on that? Nothing is (yet) fixed so I really want to get this 'comfortable' to as many people as possible.
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Re: Yoshimi - Buttons!

Post by Drew Stephenson »

Folderol wrote: Thu Apr 06, 2023 10:56 am I've had a complaint (from just one person) that the link buttons no longer look like buttons. Does anyone else have an opinion on that? Nothing is (yet) fixed so I really want to get this 'comfortable' to as many people as possible.

I can sort of see what they mean on some of them, for example the Aftertouch button (and the others of that format). The shadowing on the border doesn't imply a raised surface to press. Unlike, say, the Reset or Close buttons beneath it.
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Re: Yoshimi - Buttons!

Post by BJG145 »

...agreed, they don't tempt the finger. (Looking good generally!)
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Re: Yoshimi - Buttons!

Post by Folderol »

Hmmm.
OK, here are a couple of alternatives in the main window, (which has the greatest combination of action and link buttons).
http://www.musically.me.uk/Photos/Main_alt1.png
http://www.musically.me.uk/Photos/Main_alt2.png

alt1 is more distinctive, but alt2 might keep people happy and still (just about) seems to work without colour, or with 'weak' theme colours.
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Re: Yoshimi - Buttons!

Post by Drew Stephenson »

Option 2 is more consistent and I would suggest more obviously a button.
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Re: Yoshimi - Buttons!

Post by BJG145 »

Definitely 2.

Image

I'm wondering why I think that, and it may be partly because the top ones are all grouped and similar except for being a mix of raised and flat designs. At a glance it looks like the first three are ready to be pressed, and the last two, and maybe the ones in the middle have been pressed.

I think maybe the flat design could work in a separate group, but I find the mix distracting in this instance. I don't mind the two separate ones at the bottom so much; in fact I think I prefer that.

Referring back to the Omnisphere design on the previous page, some buttons are in a flatter style, but they're grouped separately. The variation helps makes the overall impression easier on the eye perhaps.
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Re: Yoshimi - Buttons!

Post by Folderol »

Well, that does seem to be the general consensus so we'll go with that.
Incidentally, I know that top panel looks a bit odd , but there is no way of arranging 4 icons on a 3x3 grid and with 3 of them needing a long button to fit the text :(
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Re: Yoshimi - Buttons!

Post by Folderol »

... and we move on :bouncy:
In the latest build, all theme colours (that are practical) have been exposed, and the theme lists have 102 entries with a brief description of each. They are plain text files so it's quite practical to edit them by hand. If there are any errors the exact file line of the first offending entry is reported.

There is also a proper theme management tab in the 'Settings' window. Theme changes take place immediately without the need to shut anything down - you don't even need to stop a running project :) This has an added benefit in that you can edit a theme and test changes simply by re-selecting the same entry in the them window.

The deep dive for all of this turned up a few other oddities, one of which is that there are a number of places where control is via floating point numbers but when saving files the accuracy is effectively thrown away and turned into integers. This has always been the case, but now we have a way of storing these with full resolution but at the same time maintaining compatibility with older Yoshimi versions. Currently this has only been applied to Envelopes - we're a very small team so it'll take a while to get through the rest :(
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Re: Yoshimi - Buttons!

Post by BJG145 »

Good work! :thumbup:
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Re: Yoshimi - Buttons!

Post by Folderol »

... and there's more :)
Theme entries have been expanded and put into rational groups (along with a few 'spares').

Also, all knobs and sliders (apart from effects knobs) now identify their default position by changing their pointer/'peg' colour to red if moved off.

The 'classic' example file and the demo one have both been updated.
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Re: Yoshimi - Buttons!

Post by Martin Walker »

:thumbup:
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Re: Yoshimi - Buttons!

Post by Folderol »

The latest 'master' build is now designated Yoshimi 2.3.0 rc7
The User Guide has been updated, and the Advanced Reference Manual is in the process of being finalised.
A few more instrument patches have been added to Banks.
We are looking for alternative themes to be distributed with the final release.
Release date is penciled in for Monday 29th :)
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