the look of max5

+1

Ok, But… i have *never* understood this fascination with *details* of display! Gosh, in my first DECADE *plus* of making electronic music, I never created a single interface with anything but text.
That the *details* of appearance of your interfaces keep you from a superior work flow and dev environment… ?!?
I guess I am mostly an old audio person, and have not gotten behind use of Max for images, :-). Still, such attitudes seem to be …uh…petty and besides any main point. To me, it seems your produced art should not be dependent on exact shading algorithms or corner rounding or lack thereof…
how do these effect the affect of your art, except in the most trivial ways?

Please explain.
Dr. B.

the main issue with the max5 look is that it simply takes up more screen space.

and if i open my max4 patches in max5, the text is hardly readable.

I also can’t bear to go back to 4, there are a lot of other things besides the UI which are not anywhere near the ease and power of 5. I also don’t like the old look… of course that’s somewhat subjective, but the fact remains that there are a lot more options in 5, and you can make 5 look like 4 (except square corners). So it’s more of a "superset" UI that allows for both (and many more) designs. Having transparency alone makes the switch worth it for me, although it does slow things down… until computers catch up… what, about a year?

@pelang: some of your requests are already possible in 5, others aren’t:

Patchords:
-Roundness
-Cord Size
-Pattern
-Shadow
-Transparency
-Gradient color

—These have been improving, particularly with the new handles at the ends, but I imagine the other extras aren’t worth programming in, and would take up yet more GUI updating power—things really slow down with a lot of cords on the screen and you try to move a bunch of objects. Also with cord thickness, the ability to precisely select could get messed up… and you’d probably be selecting them more often than the objects behind.

Objects:
-Roundness
-Border Size
-in/outs color
-Transparency

—Looks like the roundness and border size is built-in and can’t be changed, probably a function of the new way they’re displayed (zoomable unlike Max 4). The in/outs color can be changed and can be different if the patch is locked or not. Transparency is supported.

Messages:
-Roundness
-Transparency

—Again, no control over roundness, but transparency yes. For square-cornered messages you can use [textbutton], also new in 5 and a great alternative to buttons in general: no square area around the button that is also clickable. Also a nice alternative to LED.

The new Inspector is magnitudes better than the old ones. Again, that’s more than enough for me to want to switch, especially as the attributes are so well-explained just by being there…

My two cents. I love 5 and I also think that design (in *some* applications) can be important, for the end user or for myself, for ease of use or for inspiration. But it’s also nice to just hack something together that works, regardless of appearance, then put what you want to see into Presentation Mode and be done with it!

In the time between Max 4 and 5, common computer screen sizes and resolutions have increased so much that I highly doubt that you can put less objects on screen today than before.

And I tend to agree with Charles Baker: if your screen is full with UI objects and there’s no room to add more, it’s time to rethink the interface.

That said, I would welcome a way to be able to modify the appearance of some objects, such as the very blob-like dial with its thick and imprecise needle. Specifying which .svg file to use in the object itself would allow me to create my own vector graphic in illustrator, which would be awesome.

The main max5 feature I’d like to see customizable is the object pallete. Not being able to turn it off is the only aspect of max 5 that bugs me – i hate it when that thing pops up by accident. Since you can create objects via key commands and so on far more easily, it seems like it should be optional. Sharp corners would be nice but it seems kind of irrelevant now, after 3 years.

"In the time between Max 4 and 5, common computer screen sizes and resolutions
have increased so much that I highly doubt that you can put less objects on screen
today than before."

i had 2x1600x1200 in 1997 and i have 3x1920x1200 today, and i will definetly not buy
30" monitors only because someone thinks i need to have rounded corners for my
objects.

when i buy new monitors i want then to display more than before.

"if your screen is full with UI objects and there\’s no room to add more, it\’s time to rethink the interface."

which is what i do.

i am rethinking the interface of max 5´s object boxes and i want them to be as small as they were in max4.

or do you mean by interface that i should create more subpatches to save screen space? wouldnt it
be easier to save screenspace by using max v4 in that case?

-110

If ui is the issue, it would be possible to only us m4l objects. And of course there's a zooming function in max5, so that even standard ui objects can look tiny. Not that I need to prove you wrong, it's just to show the options.

_
johan

[attachment=146305,1396] [attachment=146305,1397]

Id like a search feature, search for particular modules and all the modules are highlight on the screen and also see them in a list , double click them and max will zoom into that module for you.

making module appearance smaller in size lower than "8" would be great too.

james rizzis pictures are probably the closest to max (it already has objects, just no connections.)

Can’t…stop…fingers…

I see max as a development tool. I don’t think it’s too much to ask to have a tool that is attractive, neat in appearance and inspires you to create. I personally prefer the anti-aliased nature of max5 over previous versions and find it inspires me to make things because it’s smooth and fluid and calm in color scheme. For me, this helps. It doesn’t make my art worth any less than someone who would rather program theirs via the command line in emacs, does it? Of course not.

I agree that the tool (and it’s UI) is NOT so important as long as you also understand that the tool (and it’s UI) IS so important. :-)

i hope c74 just focuses on improving whatever functionalities are already in like a faster js engine, getting 64-bit audio, improving on the things people ‘use’ not just ‘look’ at.
There are so many UI options already, you can create so much more than any other environment available UI-wise, and meanwhile other environments ALREADY have 64-bit audio. I don’t think the pressing need for better functionality should be trumped by high-maintenance UI-needs born of a lack of creativity and resourcefulness.

With a good enough UI, you don’t need any writing nor do the users need to read anything, hence the use of graphics, otherwise every UI in the world would consist of words but we all have seen that is less and less the case(size of object is a moot point, you can use pics in pictslider and pictctrl or jsui and everything will look much more original anyways allowing you to also work the clarity of any size of writing you DO decide on by knowing photoshop and graphic design tools better; Max should not have to also serve as a graphic-design tool like photoshop, it should focus on what it does best: wholistic manipulation of new media in whatever concise way it does best and only according to the constraints of its developers). With a good enough UI, the user will be so engrossed with the tool and its functionality that they won’t care whether the damn corners are ’rounded’ or ‘squared’(again, you can make your own graphics, too, which don’t require ’rounded’ corners).
If you can’t figure out a good UI with the extensive options already available in Max5, the rest of your app is likely to be just as uninventive.

Last but not least, I mean these words as no personal insult to the people who have posted here, i’m simply expressing my distaste at yet another thread/idea to change the look of Max5(the fact that this has been discussed before and went nowhere is what makes me feel that this kind of discussion is annoying). But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have the discussion, it just means that I will definitely chime in with my distaste and dissent over your eccentricity because that is my eccentricity.

(who here isn’t eccentric? no one. i don’t kid myself: all of us maxers are.)

________________________________
*Never fear, Noob4Life was never here!*

thought i would chime in my £2 on this subject, been away from the forums for a few days and had 500 new posts in my rss, woo.

i do agree with having the ability to customise max to your liking, i think that would be a really nice feature[s] to have.
but to go back to max 4, would be, well, a step back. though i am not waving out the fact that sometimes having square boxes is a bad thing, sometimes they are great for placing things close to each other and there being no gaps, lovely.
using max for live objects is a good idea, but is limited in some aspects, more with the [live.numbox] has a limit to what it can go to [in the int type], which is odd since it is in a max environment, but does make sense because you expect to use these with live. either way.

when all else fails for the look and more so the space in which you want to work in, i sometimes go for making completely blank and see through number boxes, floats or integers. and using a [panel] and making a new backing for it, either square or something else which i feels suit the look of my patch. that way i can get the look of my boxes.
its either that or go the way of making your own externals which are suited to the look that you want, whether it does look like max 4, but is actually max 5. dont know if anyone has made objects like that for max 5, but might be something to look into.
but as workflow goes, i set my new patches as 5. 10. on the grid and arial bold set at 8. yes small, but fits very well with my setup. but do feel myself running out of space soon after though, and that is because of the thick, curvy features of max 5.

all in all though, i would like to add my vote for more customisation in max and to the objects surrounding it, not just to fend off the people asking, but to expand max further, even if its something like making the rounded corners square, or less round. it would just be nice features.
this just adds more features too it that would make it last longer, so instead of having a max 6 in a few years, just have more customisation options. though i would hate to move a max 6, im only getting started with max 5 and i have been using it since it came out :D

but one thing i would ask for more than anything, is just more work with max to help with the workflow and speed at which it can work at. sure its much better than when it first popped its curvy head round the digital corner, but it can always be better with how it handles as a program in whole. correct me if im wrong please.

either way im bobbing to do some maxing…

lewis edwards
——
smokingbunny.co.uk

basically the int type of [live.numbox] is limited to 0-255 range.
i may be wrong and there is something around that. but this is what i have noticed. though it has not been a problem, since most of my patches dont go too high with numbers, unless it was something based on frequencies, then i would use a [number].

i think the look is ‘retro’(perhaps even outdated) for both versions of Max(even Plogue Bidule ‘looks’ better to me). thing is, you need to make your own UI graphics to get the most out of any UI development and Max lets you do this(Max5 more so than Max4). so it doesn’t matter to me what it looks like out of the box. (imho, supercollider looks coolest: code, minimalism and all.) Max does the best with what it has and what it is(a graphical environment can’t be the most efficient/superior workflow/environment anyways; convenience and prototyping is where Max excels, the rest is up to your customization ability: i.e. custom graphics, custom scripting, api usage, etc.).

(and personally, i appreciate the look of M4L within the functionality of regular Max so much i use M4L objects more in regular patches than in Live; M4L got me into Live but only long enough to realize I’m too accustomed to working out my own custom performance methods in Max and SuperCollider to see Live as anything but mundane(or a brilliant tool for non-live contexts and source material)… so just saying i’m very grateful that the M4L objects still extend the UI capabilities of Max sans Live)

proof that UI prefs are always just subjective. there is no absolute. (let’s be honest, Max5, Max4, and Bidule ALL look pretty archane out-of-the-box, who cares)

this proposal about rounded corners by Alexandre sounds so high-maintenance, not simple at all. i’m glad cycling74 isn’t so anal retentive over something so frivolous.

________________________________
*Never fear, Noob4Life was never here!*

True. Not in a hundred years is anybody ever going to be able to give a satisfactory reason for why rounded corners exist.

_
johan

Hello Chris Muir,

Are you Big-endian or Little-endian ? Gros-boutiste ou Petit-boutiste ? ;-)

colors, fonts, size… all are options already, no? and have been…

anyway, +1 to move on from rounded corners. for me there are plenty of workarounds for this, you can use textbutton or umenu, the live numboxes, etc… and in a finished patch usually one doesn’t need to show the objects themselves, as they’re not generally UI objects, except the ones you can double-click on to get a popup menu like send and receive, or the MIDI port ones.

regardless, Max 5 is IMHO a gigantic leap forward in so many important ways, let’s keep making it better.

when arranged border to border, one thing i like about rectangular corners is you can line them up without bezier-diamond-holes in between everything(and to round a corner takes a little extra graphics calculation).

but overall, it doesn’t matter. objects are rounded and UI is extendable. when you worry about the look, it should be mostly in presentation mode. you can extend the UI enough to create pretty much anything. in patching mode, it’s a moot point for me. A good development environment is transparent in functionality but i would think that a good developer can transcend any lack of transparency.

For example, if I code anything in C, i don’t complain that it is using an alphabet as ugly as the English one.

Max4 was great. Max5 is brilliant. I hope they don’t change anything about either beyond the already planned development trajectory for functionalities within Max5(I complain alot, but overall i trust Cycling74).

________________________________
*Never fear, Noob4Life was never here!*

conjugation are not existing you knowing this but mentioning word

After watching this comic about DVORAK, you’ll never feel the same about QWERTY: http://www.dvzine.org/zine/index.html
"Qwerty is DESIGNED to be INEFFICIENT!!! (…) RIGHT when qwerty became OBSOLETE it began to be widely distributed"

Hello maxers,

very interesting ; is it the same for AZERTY ?

Maybe everyone could agree with this new type of corner :

[attachment=147249,1440]

And what about an option for patchcords like this :

[attachment=147280,1444]

ooooo hello decorative blacksmithery! "wink"

i think i found a solution: no corners at all could be a perfect compromise.

Glad there’s a mention of DVORAK. I spent a few months at a slow desk job about 5 years ago learning it. I was pretty fast with QWERTY but had to look while typing. I decided to go DVORAK and to learn it touch-typing style. It was *very difficult and frustrating* but once you start getting some of the common words you’ll start to see the difference. I will NEVER go back, it’s really that much better for most everything one does on the computer. I got key stickers to go on both my keyboards, easy as can be. I don’t recommend removing the keys, especially on a laptop. The stickers are much better.

The only problem is the common control- or command-keys, they are now spread all over the place instead of nicely collected by the left hand. There’s an option to go "control-QWERTY" on Mac to fix this, but not Windows, and I thought it would just be more confusing. Either way, it’s not a big deal and I’m used to the new control keys. Both Mac and Windows OS have DVORAK layouts built-in, so no worries if you move to other machines, provided you can touch-type it.

If you have some time on your hands and want a challenge, but also one that will pay off huge later, try it out!

http://learn.dvorak.nl/

again… so off-topic! ah well. seriously though, I wonder how much money is lost each year by hundreds of millions of people using a keyboard layout from the 19th century. It’s got to be in the hundreds of billions each year.

now here some statements from myself…

I think it would be more useful, perhaps in the next update of Max6, to embed the choice
to changing the layout design like the Max ver.4 and (of course) the newer features in Max ver. 5, 6

die derzeitigen Möglichkeiten befriedigen überhaupt nicht, das gilt vor allem beim Öffnen von Max4 patches in Max 6
ich hoffe und erwarte, daß hier Userwünsche endlich mal beherzigt werden anstatt "zur Tagesordnung zu gehen" !