Cantabile Development Blog

Lots of new stuff

Its been a while since I posted anything up here, but there's been lots of progress on Cantabile's new user-interface.

Firstly, all keyboard navigation in the rack/plugin list now works perfectly. Arrows can be used to move around the list and between controls, Ctrl+Left/Right collapses or expands the rack slot, pressing enter on a slider pops it allowing arrow keys and page up/down to adjust the slider. Given that keyboard navigation issues was one of the main reasons I started on this new UI I'm happy to finally get this sorted.

Next, the master levels, metronome and recorder panels have all be moved into the ribbon toolbar:

Also, the ribbon can now be minimized by double clicking a tab, or selecting the "Minimize the Ribbon" command from the customize menu. This screen shot shows the ribbon minimized and all racks collapsed:

Clicking on minimized ribbon displays it as a popup over the main window content. It disappears automatically on using a command (and yes it all works with keyboard, keytips, tool tips etc...). There was a heap of effort getting all this to work correctly but I think its worth it:

New menu support for multiple menu items on a single row allows the MIDI channel selector menu to be compressed. Note too the new support for headings on menus:

Finally, there's been many other fixes and minor enhancements:

• Fixed normal menu rendering issues
• Fix sub-menu crash
• Fixed resize with collapsed keyboard
• Display window title in task bar
• Main frame icon
• Toolbar buttons that repeat
• Removed gripper from status bar when maximized
• Tool tips in the quick access bar
• Fixed heading sizes in plugin list on resize
• Fixed large ribbon buttons paint when hot checked
• KeyTips and tooltips for all ribbon controls
• Fix to not show tooltips offscreen
• Slider's that don't take focus for use in ribbon
• Fix for Alt+Space not working
• Title not appearing in active colors on startup
• Fix for inability to display dropdown from toolbar with keyboard

Posted on July 3, 2007

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