great features in MaxMSP 7 - what a pity about the interface
If Cycling 74 had released this totally exciting feature set two years ago, it would have saved me hundreds of hours programming work-arounds. In Max 7, all my interfaces look horrible, very uninviting, hard to decipher and awkward for me to work with. Rather than spending all that time to fix things, I probably shall give Max 7 a miss for the foreseeable future - as it happens: less than a month ago I finished building the toolkit I need for making my music, it works fine ... it just isn't the latest version, so, what?
I could never understand why easily about half the Max-using music makers I know still use 5 - I think now I know. The "upgrade" then must have been similar for them to what this experience is like for me now ... ;)
in the screenshot of a subpatcher (presentation mode) below, you can see what I am on about - no custmization used, just v6 defaults compared to v7 defaults. I believe it is a step backwards.
Edit: I fixed a silly typo
corkcitygamelan,
----- In Max 7, all my interfaces look horrible, very uninviting, hard to decipher and awkward for me to work with.-----
I 100% agree with this. :-(
Joe
you can change all these colors, but..borderlines (borderline colors) for toggles, numboxes would add some clarity in my opinion.
+ 1 +1 +1 1000% agree with all except Frans-Jan Wind.
Not taste and coolness and blablablab.
Just plain quick visual grasping.
In the patches below, is it a message, a number, an object, an attrui, a bird???
I don't know, I can't see
The solution is simple. The design of Max 7 is great. They should only change the default color of some objects (like messages to white) to obtain the same clarity as max 6.
Thanks to the team for this incredible upgrade !
For the interface I think there is simply not enough contrast between dark shades of grays to distinguish let say sliders from backgrounds of the objects or gui on or off. Confusing for most eyes ! Shouldn't be difficult to modify ?
At first let s clear something..The step from max5 to max6 had minimum font incompatibilities because of object defaults existence. As a dark font lover i prefer the new look of max7 but we need a feature of "basic objects configuration" from object defaults menu(for the time we can configure only the object boxes but not the messages,coments). The "styles" of max7 cannot affect a preexisting patcher and this turns to a problem when you have to deal with help files etc. For example you cannot choose grey global background color because the comment boxes of help files have usally grey letters.
the look of v7 is much better than v6, but one problems remains, which we also had when moving from v4 to v5.
it is very annoying for people who built their own interfaces that the graphical objects have a different size in another version of the runtime.
while we have to accept that e.g. [umenu] depends on the OS, it should have been possible to make at least numberboxes or message objects keep their dimensions over the years. because optherwise in a worst case scenario this makes a patch unusable and you can start all over again building your GUI.
I really dislike the new appearance. I also find it very irritating that cycling is not taking into account
people that have spent extra for Gen~
Still, max 7 has too many other improvements so i'll definitely upgrade.
Oh question on jit.world
is there a function like "border 0" for jit.world to get rid of the title bar ?
i changed objects colors back to black font on nearly white background. that made me feel back home in 7. I really can't understand the dark theme decision. Maybe it looks better on macs.
is there a function like "border 0" for jit.world to get rid of the title bar ?
sendwindow border 0
Hey thanks Pseudostereo ! It works beautiful !
Sigh- Brightness of general field and contrast of elements are the two most important contributors to ease of perception: the v7 default choices are aesthetically fine: but practically *fail* in their perceptibility, due to these two well known issues of brightness and contrast.
One my not care much about this, *until* poor programming choices (lack of useful encapsulation, "spaghetti code", lack of clean screen organization, etc.) exacerbate this lack of clarity. Or it may consume all your joy in Max patching... Y.M.M.V.: in fact your mileage obviously *does* vary here.
I have no real argument with *any* of this visual cr...er... garbage. If one wishes to ignore ease of reading the code ("literate programming") while developing, then they get what they get. I find little to judge (even about the default colors) when the code is well laid out, as in the first example here. In some later examples, I find *much* more to complain about in the lack of encapsulation, the general disorganization of the patcher, and the lack of informational comments (as opposed to cryptic foul mouthed comments), than I do about the default choices for display colors and fonts. Although one would be correct in pointing out that the defaults shown may be pretty, but lack in clarity and perceptibility.
Just an idea
A more *readily* *obvious* *global* display preferences might alleviate the rancor here, but since we as a community went on for 2 years about square vs/ rounded corners, I hold little hope.
Not even gonna go get the flame suit out for this one... I've already been fully toasted in the forum for my opinion,
;-).
charlieb AKA J2K
Edit to add PS: I've been with Max since before MSP (1990?)...so since I do not object to any of these display changes, I would be an point well off the line given in the fanciful graph shown. Double PS: since the folks who implemented the display changes are probably some of the most experienced folk on Max.Msp there are... the graph seems even sillier to me.
The graph is obviously a piss take, salty pants
There is an interesting tools and options called
"create template"
or "File > New from template"
and documentation about creating / modifiying the default new patcher color scheme.
Thank you!
I have to add that at this point, C74 has made a *great* deal of customization of the ui available to the end user, and perhaps we (I) should not focus solely on readability, but also on aesthetics: these are our instruments, after all, and the visual presentation is a part of their entire gestalt: as in Harry Partch's instruments, the visual beauty (and the beauty of the human playing the instrument) can be quite important in the theater that is our art.
or not. sit (preferably dressed in a dark hoody), behind a glowing audience-invisible screen and produce your art with mysterious unseen taps and gestures. and perhaps lots of amazing projected visuals.
or not.
ymmv
You are welcome Charles
I totally agree with you as I have spent a lot of time personnaly to design my patches for organisation and readability during performances. So these new tools will help me a lot.
The only thing I would request is the possibility to apply a color scheme to an existing desingned patch … but maybe I have to finish reading the documentation about the "template" ;-)
MHP
Hi Marie-Helene,
Be sure to check out the documentation on Styles as well, which is how you would apply a color scheme to an existing patcher.
-Ben
An example of a I just put in another thread
Here is an example of a patch that is not mine.
It a patch for parsing Leap Motion data.
Now tell me objectively, with no effort , not close up thinking and analyzing the patch object what they do,
nothing, just look and tell me which one is clearer.
Max6 is clearer. Our eyes can isolate and differentiate toggles from objects from messages.
Look @ max 7. These 3 objects look the same
Again this is not my patch.
Just sayin’
Ben
Awsom ! tx
I'm all set … fantastic Cycling74
I was going to go on a massive rant but in the end all I have to say is... Please Please give us the option to switch the GUI to the one we like.
Peace and love :-)
Until this is sorted, I ain't touchin 7. No way
Goodness Gracious!! Max 7 interface is as ugly as it gets; what in the world is this depressive color scheme? All my patches look horrifying and I spent a lot of time designing them to be easily discernible. How can I get my color scheme back without having to redo every single one of my patches? Bad contrast, bad font resolution, difficult to discern objects and connectors... and the list goes on. I was expecting to be able to change the interface back to a decent color scheme from options/ preferences/ BASIC/ interface/ which would make it an intuitive interface, but no joy; Color scheme should be a basic option. Why do I have to work extra to fix something that was already right the way it was? At the amount of work I do in Max this is a no no.
Hi MIHAI
search the forum I did a walkthrough. Max 7's interface is completely terrible. I'll never say it enough. took me 3 weeks to get the template thingy to work. Max7 came outbon nov 11th 1 year ago. After tons of demand, you woulda thought they would have include the object outline option in one of the software increments. But no we still have broken look Max. Hope it changes for Max 8 :)
Well... I think somethings may be getting overstated but I can understand the complaints. I personally like Max 7 more than 6 - including the overall look. However, some elements are annoying. One irritating issue is light blue borders/sliders. Light blue? 99% of my existing work has dark borders/sliders. Now it's either unreadable or looks like shite. Especially patches that contain matrixctrl, multislider and toggle. Most are unreadable without making changes
But again, I give Max 7 a thumbs up (just "up", not anywhere else).
Templates do not solve the "mortuary" style issue because it's only for new patchers. A not-so-bad solution, would be to allow the user to choose himself the settings of the default style (and this is a completely different thing than applying a personal style to existing patchers manually). Again I would like C74 to think more about long-time users with big libraries.
Before Max 7, patching was a real pleasure. Now I am almost reluctant to open Max. Even Pd seems more sexy now. Duh.
'Templates do not solve the "mortuary" style issue because it’s only for new patchers.'
Ha ha, good name 'mortuary style'....soo depressing even one year on despite the template fiddling.
And its busting all my old stuff!
Please C74, an option to 'revert to Max6 style' or some sort of proper 'skinning' system
No criticism of functionality, that's great, really nice in Max7.
For the record, I have no problem with the interface. It feels a little cluttered to me. Like anxiety is hitting my patcher from all four sides. But it's not a huge deal to me. Max, to me, has gotten better in 95% of ways. To me, it's declined in its reliability and the quality of its documentation. not bitching though. Seen enough of that.
Matt, just unpin the edges you don't want or need. Works for me (cue "Don't fence me in" in 3... 2... 1..)
@max, that's hilarious! Just thought about it. I like em there despite knowing the keycommands. Just tried unpinning everything anyway. Just noticed control clicking the toolbar. Pretty rad since I only use a few on a regular basis. I understand why the vertical ones are vertical and the horizontal ones are horizontal. But maybe if I had an option to add presentation to the top or beap to the right I could compile them all into two sides. Again, not a big deal. As a guy who knows the key commands, I really like the meter, power button, zoom, format pallet, and a few other things. But the rest can go in my personal workflow. so it's only two toolbar's worth at the most.
I really like max 7.
exactly what I am experiencing, I am working on a sequencer using max6 because it is faster on my PC, and i think it looks better, BUT I just found the max6 patch works very slow on my retina mac in low resolution mode, way slower on high resolution mode, so I have to switch to max7, and man the UI is ugly, I want the textbutton non-gradient mouseover, tab mouseover color change, bubble preset, integer object round edge back,