[added: 152] Knob Functionality

[Lance]

Being in the field of music production and audio software, I tweak hundreds of knobs on a daily basis which led me to working with Cliff on how the knob should be set up and function on drag. All is great so far, the vertical drag is by far the most common form of knob out there.

There's a couple of extra things though that could do with being added.

Firstly, the majority of knobs I come across hide the cursor as standard while dragging is enabled. This is to draw focus to the knob itself and becomes much less confusing than when there's a cursor flying around. Some sliders hide the cursor too but it's not as needed since the cursor position directly relates to the slider height. So suggestion one is to hide the cursor on click.

Secondly, another popular knob function (combined with the hidden cursor) is to have the cursor be in exactly the same place as when you first clicked, after you let go, i.e. over the knob. The obvious reasons behind that are so you aren't always having to pull the cursor from the edge of your screen back to where you wanted to be. This function has been around in production software for as long as I can remember as it increases workflow speed since you only have to move a few pixels to the adjacent knob when tweaking a series of them in a row. Obviously there's only ever really going to be one or two knobs in a skin but standards are worth sticking by.

The next thing is an alternative to hiding the cursor. I've seen a few programs that switch from a standard cursor to an up/down arrow (like a vertical resize) on click. It's a great way of telling the user which way they should be dragging.

The last and final thing applies to the code only. Cliff, you need to make the cursor not be limited to screen height while dragging. At the moment, if your skin is on the bottom edge of your screen and you want to turn the knob down, you can only drag until the cursor hits the edge. FL Studio is a great example of how the cursor appears at the top again once it reaches the bottom, and same from top to bottom of course. Think Portal.

That is all. I know some of you may think this sounds like witch craft but I assure there are indeed standards when it comes to knobs. No point in literally reinventing the wheel

Ciao.

[SLoB]

The other popular method is to use a radial gradient field, that's how Winamp deals with rotating knobs so that a rotating knob handles as you would expect it to, ie rotate clock/anti-clock wise.

[Cliff Cawley]

Firstly, the majority of knobs I come across hide the cursor as standard while dragging is enabled.

Done.

Secondly, another popular knob function (combined with the hidden cursor) is to have the cursor be in exactly the same place as when you first clicked, after you let go, i.e. over the knob.

Done.

The last and final thing applies to the code only. Cliff, you need to make the cursor not be limited to screen height while dragging.

and Done!

[Lance]

:O You freakin beauty! Seriously. I didn't expect it to go that smoothly. Thanks dude! Kisses.