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by FigBug 3189 days ago
I hate skeuomorphic UI and wish it would die. The number of users that have ever used a hardware compressor, eq, gate, analog synth etc is much smaller than the number of users that have grown up creating music completely on their PC. I think it makes more sense to focus on the second group.

The plugins I work on tend to look more like software than any piece of hardware. I still use knobs because they are more efficient use of screen real estate. When you click / drag them, left is decrease, right is increase. You don't need to drag around like a physical knob.

Here is one set of plugins I did: https://www.tracktion.com/products/daw-essentials-collection

1 comments

Its really nice to see your work, it does indeed represent the non-skeu way of going, but .. you lost me at knob.

I mean, it is a bit of a cop-out, and you can't go "skeu is the sux" and then .. just use it.

My question to you, then, is: how would you re-do the knob? It is a uniquely viable control; but lets say you -had- to get rid of it. What, then?

Sliders. Tracktion Waveform, the DAW I also work on uses almost no knobs. (I think the only one is pan on the mixer). The problem with them is that they are big. When we don't have room we make them small and then a bigger one pops up when you click on it.
Check out the UI of Adobe Photoshop.

They use numeric text boxes which also pop a slider when given focus.

You can also let the users drag the textbox left and right directly (with some visual cue), thus achieving the same functionality as the current implementation, but still without getting in the way of someone who just prefers to use the textbox normally.