Cantabile Development Blog

Main Screen Changes

Yesterday and today I've been working on some minor, but important changes to the main screen. (click for full size screen shot).

Changes include:

• The rack and plugin slots are now contained in their own expander panel "Racks and Plugins"
• The file player is now contained in "Media Files" expander. This panel will soon be able to hold multiple media file clips.
• There is a resize splitter between these two expanders.
• The file player has an expand button (like the rack slots) to hide/show the microscore.
• Increased the spacing around all the expander panels and darkened the background color to add more definition between these panels.
• Added a bypass button to the rack slot (immediately to the left of the mute button). This is not functional yet.
• Added mute and solo buttons to the file player. This it not yet functional either.
• Changed the icon on plugin slot mute button to the bypass icon to more correctly describe it's function.

Next is to put heading labels in the media files panel (this is more difficult than you'd think as it needs to resize correctly with the buttons they head). Then I'll add the ability to load multiple media files at once.

I realise that the changes I've been making lately are bit all over the place but there is method to the madness (hopefully). I've got a list of features that I'm trying to pull together and while I'm concentrating on the more difficult parts first I've got bits of UI and overall design that need to be done along the way.

The other problem I'm facing is a serious case of "feature creep". I was hoping to be well into beta testing by now, but by re-focusing my efforts on live performance I'm adding quite a few new features that I hadn't originally counted on. I'm also planning and designing for features that will be added in versions beyond this one.

I'm sure it will all come together in the end.

Posted on June 18, 2008

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