On 23 May 2004 at 15:30, Darcy James Argue wrote:
Next, transparency *is* actually useful, at least to me, and also for anyone with a laptop or a small monitor. Ironically, probably the best use of transparency I've seen is in a Microsoft product (albeit the Microsoft Mac Business Unit). In Office 2004 Mac, you have the option of having the Formatting Palette automatically fade -- to as much as 90% transparency -- if it's not being used. . . .
How is this less useful than a windowshade UI?
Oo, I'll take this one! If I can SEE a tool, and be able to click on it easily, while seeing the score underneath it, this saves mondo clicking to un-shade and re-shade the tool palette. If it takes one click to roll down the window shade, then I have to move the mouse to the tool, then move the mouse to re-shade again, that's three clicks and some index movement that I would be able to replace with one click and little or no mouse movement.
> . . . This means thatpeople with 1024x768 screens can use *all* of their limited screen real estate for the document they are working on. The Formatting Palette becomes opaque when you mouse over it, and fades again when it's no longer needed. This system actually works exceptionally well, and I'd like to see other apps -- like Finale! -- adopt fading palettes.
OK, you've come up with *one* UI component where transparency is useful. Why, then, should it be implemented system-wide?
Not system wide. Just in Finale. The pallettes CAN get kind of big, and eat up a lot of real estate. It could be turned off, too, if it bugs people.
> To give you another Finale-specific example, I've been bugging Tobiasfor a while to add the option to control the transparency of TGTools dialogs, especially the Staff List Manager. The big problem with the Staff List Manager is that it's, well, so *big* -- the dialog box is huge (unnecessarily huge, IMO, with lots of wasted space) and it tends to cover up the music that you are trying to adjust. Of course, you can move the dialog around the screen, revealing bits of it at a time, but whole point of using the Staff List Manager is that you want to be able to see the entire page (or, at least, an entire system) at a glance. So yeah, transparency here would be an enormous help.
On Windows, Tobias has implemented his plugins with a windowshade like roll-up when the plugin window doesn't have the focus. This means the dialog not only leaves more of the Finale window visible, but it also actually takes up less space. Isn't taking up less space more desirable, since it reveals more of the windows behind it while also making those visible areas fully accessible, which, so far as I can tell, a transparent pallette would not?
Hey! Keep BOTH! Roll up the dialogue box window when not used, AND have it be transparent when open! Whoo-hoo!
Christopher (who is always ready to volunteer OTHER people's time to make his life easier.) ;-)
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