[LAU] ZynAddSubFX Usability Survey

[Len Ovens]

On Thu, 28 Apr 2016, david wrote:

>> Agreed, I'm generally a resident of the Knob Universe and now I have the
>> data to show that people who like to reply to the survey tend towards
>> that side as well.
>
> For some reason, I find sliders easier to operate, physically and onscreen, 
> but I like knobs for some functions. I find onscreen knobs less easy to 
> operate. Guess I'm weird.

In my opinion... knobs and sliders should operate the same. The mouse 
moves in a straight line either sideways or vertical. For the same size 
screen area, a knob can probably _show_ a finer resolution that a slider, 
maybe 3 to 1 -ish? In other words, the widget's most important goal is to 
show the control's position. The mouse movement to change that control can 
be independant of that. One of the early sequencers I used (on an Atrari) 
just had the numeric value as a widget. Holding the mouse button down and 
moving it up or down adjusted the value. (sideways may have worked too, 
but it has been a while :) This did (on such a low resolution screen) 
allow a very tight control packing.

My favourite knobs are operated with either/or right to left, down to up. 
There is also no reason a horizontal slider needs to be locked to only 
horizontal mouse movement or a vertical slider to only vertical movment. 
(don't knock it till you've used it for a month)

--
Len Ovens
www.ovenwerks.net