XXHighEnd

Hi Peter,
Sometimes when I switch the tooltips off in 09z-5-2 I still see the tooltips without text (black rectangle) !

Cosmetic issue: Another point that confuses me frequently is the colour of a activated button. I have often the feeling that a green button should be a activated button (green) and a dark colour a passive button. A light colour indicates activation? e.g. Traffic lights
p.s. see the normvol button active light RED and passive dark RED

Regards Johan

Nice one Johan.

But what I read from your idea about it *I* won't come far ... :)

... which doesn't say it can't get better. Maybe you have a good proposition ? This is what we have now :

- No colour (black) : Can't be used at this time.
- Blue : Available to use, but not active.
- Red : Active.
- Yellow : Busy.

When you come up with a new scheme, keep in mind that currently active things must jump out. Not the other way around.

Regards,
Peter

I have no issue with the colours used for the indicator lights, but I do think an improvement in readability would be achieved by making those indicator lights a little bigger.

In the example below I have increased the indicator section height of the Clear, Load, Search and Library Results(100) buttons to the full extent allowable. The Show Data button had one more pixel added above and below. There is a noticeable improvement in readability I think.

Even more beneficial is when the illuminated section is doubled. See the Stop and Pause buttons for that example.

As it stands currently, determining the indicator status easily only becomes a concern when the desktop size is above about 900 or so pixels wide, which I suppose is the major of cases for users. With a desktop at 1920 x 1020 it is very difficult to see which button is switched on, unless you have your nose pressed up against the screen ;)

The attachments below are the same size, so if you save to your PC and use your favourite viewer you can easily flip back and forth to see the effect a larger indicator light brings.

There may be constraints within the program that Peter uses to build those buttons, but hopefully something along the lines I suggest can be achieved.

Cheers,

Russ

I still wish we had a choice for font size and control size instead of the dual options of miniscule or nothing at all. So now to actually be able to see what I'm listening to, I have to ruin my beautiful monitor with 1024 x 768 resolution and put up with Windows complaints about why I'm not using the optimal resolution. But I'm not complaining 'cause I get great sounds (when I can find them).

Chris

I see what you mean. But I also never thought of something, btw all caused by JohanZ here ... :yes: :)

Side note : I know how all this works, but it is not easy to see through the effects of it. For others it may be a good thing to get what this is all about, because I know from my other world of (ERP) users how often it's not understood ...
But again, for me too it's not easy to see through the effects, so I am to be blamed really.

What happened is that XXHighEnd was made for 640 x 480. This was actually for Johan, him probably being the only user actually using a 640x480 screen. Not an old one with the same size of our current 1280x1024 monitors, but a small "in PC one". Unworkable to begin with IMO, but no (further) complaints from Johan on that department. In the mean time we can bet that Johan has more problems with e.g. seeing those little lights than you on a 1920x1280 screen ...

Of course I made all resizeable, but, this is at the "form" level. You can let grow the form, but the buttons won't grow with it. This is because the programming language doesn't provide a good means to transparently do that. Stupidly enough to some extend this *is* all in it. Just look at the possibility to tell the monitor it should show everything at 125% (or 150%) and you'll see that everything really can grow in a (for me) transparent fashion.

What I'm saying is, that with huge effort I could have created something like that myself (everything grows with it), but it's a fairly undoable task to do that right. Think of the rendering of the pictures which could be optimal for the resolution used, which wouldn't be done without explicit attention, similar to the 125% or 150% setting. So, pictures would show bad, and with enough pixels available they won't be used, and you'd see jaggies instead.
The pictures are just one example, because for text the same accounts. It would work like blowing up a photograph from a 10x15cm print to a 1 x 1.50m print. That would look bad. This, while the original photo would allow for the resolution of 1x1.50m easily ...
Doing it the other way around (start out with 1x1.50m) wouldn't work either without explicit attention, and texts would be totally unreadable (plus photos would be bad again).
In the mean time the Coverart in XXHighEnd *does* render properly, but this is because it's a separate setting for them (those little sliders for the Library Area as well as the Coverart Area at the right).

Looking at it from a more normal angle - when all would have been made for 1280x1024, nobody would have had a problem on their 1920x1280 screens. Oh, it would have been smaller again, but sure not unworkable.

But now think ...

I am using XXHighEnd on a 1280x1024 screen, and I sure have no problems with it whatsoever. Why ? well, because it's still big enough. What you guys do though, is using your beautiful 1920x1280 screen which is 22 or whatever inch only. This is crazy because it's way too small. It is way too small for everything, BUT, you possibly won't notice that. You won't notice that because you use word processors and anything on it which allow you to increase the font size. But look at it ... not the buttons and everything. That is, not if you use a normal Windows version. HTML is another thing, because *that* is made to let everything grow.

IMO the problem comes down to the combination of this :

1. XXHighEnd was made for 640x480;
2. You use it on monitors with a too high resolution for their physical size.

So, both create the problem, and leaving out either will solve it.

Although I don't see how to really do it, I can imagine to have one general multiplying factor in there, which is let loose on everything which implies a size and position. Quite a job, because many things can't be found in specific sections in the program, nor can they be searched for. But, they will easily show as anomalies when forgotten, so, doable in the end.
What I have been thinking about merely, is to tweak all with the same Windows does when you set the screen to 125%/150%. I'm not sure this can be done though, and doing it for your whole screen (which seems very feasable to me) won't be the solution.

Lastly for now ... a normal 1280x1024 screen is 17". This means that when you use 1920x1280 your screen should be 25.5" at least.
Is it ?

Peter