Close button

please add a close button to every patch window that hides a patch if you click it.

what´s wrong with “alt+3”?

rrrr just owns a one button mouse ;) just kidding

everything is wrong with alt + 3. the keyboard shortcut should be changed to CTRL + W.
(closing a patch window in vvvv almost always means you wanna hide its window, not deleting the whole patch from the node tree–therefore ctrl+w is completely wrongly associated)

the better question is: who doesn’t want to close a window in a GUI application with the mouse? anyone–please name me just one good reason why this hasn’t been implemented to vvvv from the very beginning.

i wouldnt mind a hide button. would make hiding easier for beginners anyway.

Well CTRL+W is generally used to close things, if it is a tab in a browser, a file in photoshop or a patch in vvvv – not to hide them. Control+H would make sense but it´s already in use.
Most of the time while patching one hand rests on the keyboard anyway and the other one moves the mouse . If the cursor isn´t in close proximity to the hide-button it is most likely faster to hide the patch using the keyboard-shortcut than to move the cursor across the screen, aim and click.
Whatever, I also wouldn´t mind the button(s) (+Close).

the less choices you have in a user interface for one task, the better so you learn only one way of doing a thing and leads to less confusion. in windows 7 by default you have 5 different choices where to close a window and the far most effective and fastest is the alt+F4 all the others are relatively small objects or requires more than one clicks (close button on the corner of window, on the thumb, in the thumb menu or in the window’s menu) so i think, the devs removed the ineffective choices and they kept only the fastest choice namely the keyboard shortcuts so users won’t get used to slow methods and more people will work as fast as possible. i think.

In general, vvvv’s UI takes a very minimalist approach. I found it to be somewhat confusing at first, but once I got used to it, I came to love it. There are definitely advantages to having less space (or almost none at all) taken up by the sort of standard UI things that we’ve all become so used to seeing. It’s nice to be able to have many small windows open without there being a lot of wasted space.

begin tangent…
Most UIs these days are filled with toolbars and menus and tab bars and more toolbars and scroll bars and minimize/maximize/restore/close buttons and window headers/borders and so on. There are certainly many uses for that sort of thing within many programs, such as Visual Studio or Photoshop. However, I generally feel that in many cases the only reason that I tend to want that toolbars/etc are present in everything is just that I’m used to seeing them in everything. Over the last few years there has been a shift away from that sort of thing, to varying degrees (and with varying degrees of success). For example, Google Chrome, and the newer versions of Firefox got rid of (or at least hid) most of the standard menu system. Microsoft is going off on their own tangent with their whole win8/metro thing (which I don’t particularly like). Even Photoshop started using custom rendering of their menus/toolbars and reducing the number of actions that are performed through toolbars by using contextual toolbars, etc. So, personally I appreciate vvvv’s experimental UI concepts (once I got used to them).
…end tangent

what microdee and thezer0ist said!

You just waste time, simply put. Going to click on a small button (which also take space) is much much slower than using simple shortcut (unless you’re an expert Startcraft player :)

Also instead on focusing on your patch (which is easily doable while pressing a shortcut if you semi decent in touch type), you will focus on going to click on a small button, thus wasting your precious brain cells on clicking a little _ or X instead of looking at the beauty of your patch ;)

ALT + 1/2/3 works well since all keys for modes are next to each other (which on a logical way makes things easier, rather than having W/H/S which are nowhere near each other, and would also depend on keyboard layout).

Having too many buttons to click gives people a bad habit on not learning shortcuts, which on short term sounds an advantage, but on long term affects your productivity in a complete negative way, that obviously applies to any software.

Examples with Visual Studio, without those shortcuts i’d consider myself close to 10x slower
Build : CTRL+ALT+B (would never go to the menu to do that)
Step into/Step over in debug mode (F11/F10) : No comment needed.

My two pennies…

@bjoern

I see the role of a vvvv patch window more like the one a file browser has for an OS: a window (a patch) is an abstract view on (file) system. you close the window, but you don’t modify the whole system (in vvvv’s case: delete a patch out of the tree). therefore I think ctrl + w would be the perfect match. (ctrl+h is not very accessible). plus: i think noone (zero people) is using alt+1 because you right click on a patch to open it (which should be done via double click anyway). never seen using patchers using alt+2 very much either. so alt+3 is being reduced to ‘hide a patch window’. no logic at all.

@microdee

«the far most effective and fastest is the alt+F4»

??? the one guy at microsoft or wherever that had the idea to use alt+f4 for ‘close an application’ should be put on a wall of shame for his whole life. this is the exact opposite of fast or intuitive. this is not about 5 different choices but having the choice to use the keyboard on the one hand and the mouse on the other hand.

@thezer0ist, @vux

there’s nothing wrong with minimalism. i love it, we all do. with some clever improvements it could be even driven further. this is about intuitive software design, standard conformity and operating speed.

it’s just plain wrong that «it is always faster to use alt+3». i’d give a lot to do a field test to prove that. if you always (always always) keep your left hand on the keyboard there is no question it is the fastest way to close a window. i am a shortcut guy myself and use a lot of them all the time. but there are plenty of situations where only the mouse is in use and you want to have access to the most basic things of a GUI–we’re not talking about complex behaviors or anything here.

it’s nice to swim against the stream while doing something fundamentaly better than all the other guys. but leaving out and arguing against some super basic functionality like that? come on guys, there is not a single improvement in there.

Hello mate,

I vote for minimalism, which means i don’t want to see a close button or any kind. It’s very special to develop a unique style of experience and when it works fantastic in vvvv case i don’t see any reason that needs to be violated with simple close button. It’s like black dot on white paper. it ruins.

If accessing the specific shortcut is the problem then we may need to focus another workaround beyond mouse click. How about a preference settings allows you to modify/add new keyboard shortcuts? this way you may assign whichever key closer/faster for access.

I trust all the comments are considered constructive, some are sarcastic( i enjoy though) but in the end its to retain the best in our opinion.

Cheers!

@Urbankind: configurable shortcuts would be really awesome.

Perhaps this discussion should lead to the next release of VVVV being focused on usability and the editing process in general. There have been a number of things that have come up in discussions like this which probably wouldn’t be particularly difficult to implement.
For example:

  • configurable keyboard shortcuts
  • zooming (which i know supposedly exists, but i’ve never seen it work)… possibly with ctrl+mouse wheel?
  • configurable defaults for newly created nodes
  • some sort of UI for a customizable list of common snippets of patches
  • more configuration of the application in general… maybe including the ability to enable/disable window close buttons

perhaps this warrants its own forum thread…

@thezer0ist : I am glad that you like the idea. The best way to come up with usability solutions/improvements is to address the list problems encountered by the users like the usability problem of “rrrr” lead us to discuss something constructive.

It would be really nice if an most experienced user makes a thread(may be you) listing the usability problem so we can approach them different way.

one more addition to usability consideration is to have “transparent node label”.

Have a great day!

Fresh:

@rrrr : Wow, the best design for window…wait what is apple?

I imagine VVVV running in this mode, will be sexy though and still doesn’t need a close button i suppose.

Again this is a concept from an individual not from microsoft and more likely doesn’t get to microsoft release and that’s sad.

The great thing about the new Microsoft is that they finally realized that it is necessary to let a design team do the UI work to make the best product (the ones that did the Zune and Zune software, ). For the first time they did not copy Apple but came up with their own approach and it’s brilliant (Windows 8 will be a huge success I think). Approaches to a UI from a mere technical perspective are just no good.

The best way to avoid having a close button in vvvv is to create a single window UI concept (open every sub patch in the same window, open a patch in a new window optionally).

But as long as there is no comment on UI ideas or concepts from the developers all this talk is hypothetical and probably goes to /dev/null.

@rrrr : I am sure dev’s are watching us and will consider when the time is right.

Like @thezer0ist)) mentioned, all the ideas and suggestions are scattered all around, lets keep it simple for dev’s by keeping the ideas in one place, here ((forum:vvvv-usability

Doesn’t matter if our ideas doesn’t get through and be implemented, atleast it’s giving us opportunity to interact with fellow users and i’m glad to talk to you guys :)

Cheers!