User interface issues MU4
MU is arguably still improving, and sometimes - but not always - can give very good results quickly.
However some of the user interface issues are bonkers.
I can think of two right now.
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Putting the buttons for Workspace, Page View/Continuous View, Concert Pitch/Transposing, plus resizing at the bottom right of the panel - totally mad, and for a Mac user on a large screen it is easy to forget about those, and for them to disappear out of sight.
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Similarly - the "three dots" to allow extra features such as Sends in MU4 in the Mixer - which appears to the right of the panel. Again, as with point 1, on a large screen display it is possible to miss this completely.
In both cases the buttons may be placed so far out of sight, and even go off screen completely, that users who don't know about them may not find them.
This is really not good interface design at all, and since those features are fixed in place [AFAIK], there is no easy remedy other than to hope that by mentioning this as an issue here something will change in the future.
Of course if those buttons could be put on movable panels and docked in different locations, then that criticism could easily be overcome, though it might cause extra confusion if a lot of buttons get assigned to movable panels.
Comments
There are so many things that are in a different place. Not sure that makes it bad. Seems to me that if you are having problems with things being off screen, than maybe it's a resolution problem.
In reply to There are so many things… by bobjp
Absolutely not a resolution problem. Just bad design.
Given that one of the people now involved in MuseScore has produce videos about user accessibilty and usability, this is really poor.
In reply to Absolutely not a resolution… by dave2020X
What happens when you uncheck Full Screen? Nothing off screen then. drag the edges to make it bigger.
In reply to What happens when you… by bobjp
Thats's completely irrelevant. The problem is in the MU4 layout.
In reply to Thats's completely… by dave2020X
Sorry. I'm just trying to understand what you are talking about. What is "out of site"? Not where you think it should be? What do you mean by "off screen"? Both could mean that the item is buried in a menu. I took it to mean a resolution problem.
There are plenty of things about the layout that make me wonder. It is very different from MU3. But then I also use other notation software that is even more different.
We all use MU4 differently. I could care less about the new engraving improvements or that the layout is different. I am after play back. Which is better, but has a ways to go.
In reply to Absolutely not a resolution… by dave2020X
It would help if you explained why find the bottom of the window to be so hard to see. If your display has dead pixels there, it could be time for a new display. Or if you find yourself regularly moving your window off the screen, that's a bad habit you may need to simply break. But assuming your computer is functioning correctly and you don't move the window offscreen, I'm not understanding why you'd consider the bottom of the window a worse place than any other to place controls. Certainly tons of other programs do similarly. It's a standard UI design practice and has been for decades.