It feels and looks cluttered to me, gives me anxiety.
I think there needs to be smarter GUI/key command development than just stacking all the features into the GUI. I donāt need access to everything all the time, I prefer trying to maintain a decluttered and edit window space maximized. I only want to look at what I need to look at and thatās usually for a short moment, rest of the time it is out of sight.
I guess as long as there is an option to have it old way. Your mockup, I would use 1-5% of the time and at max 5%, I donāt think it would make an essential difference.
I have to agree. I wouldnāt want to permanently dedicate that much screen space to things I hardly ever use. One column and you can choose what is most important to you to go into that column, seems like the way to go.
IMHO the bigger problem is wasting all that screen space on unused insert/send/version slots. Only show the slots that are used and you could fit way more information into the inspector.
For me maximizing the horizontal section that shows the recorded Events/Parts is pretty important. So having the equivalent of several Left Zones consuming space gets in the way. That said Iām sure they could be collapsed if implemented.
If Cubase took its cue from how Wavelab can customize the GUI layout weād be able to let each user decide what is important for them.
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Also a good tip,
Is to create a workspace in which your channel editor popup window is part of that, tucked in a corner (say bottom right) and or, have the edit window size go smaller to fit the channel editor.
Then you can hotkey to this and essentially have the same thing as you have.
edit
This is pretty much what workspaces is for as described ^ I have very specific workspaces all hotkeyd + some extra I manually enter number code for. It actually makes Cubase seem like a modular GUIā¦ it is really.
I can manage fine with the current Inspector on a 32" monitor. So having a ultra wide monitor with 3 x Inspectors would be no problem. And of course, it could all be collapsible and/or part of a workspace.
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The mock-up is a little bit over the top, BUT!
I give a +1 to the general idea behind this.
It would be beneficial if we users could resize stuff, and have the contents (which we can already set up in the inspector, the toolbars etc. etc.) move around to fill the area. Many people complain about the Floating Transport Panel. If the above philosophy was implemented, we could resize the Floating Transport Panel and have it automatically reshape to fit our resizing. 2 lines? 3 lines? So tall that it ends up mostly vertical? All would be possible.
Likewise for the inspector, if people wanted to have an expanded inspector at some time for any reasons, they could just resize to the right, and the sections would be sorted accordingly.
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I appreciate the idea ā however I feel that it is too much more clicking, screen real estate, etc. If we look at how fast and intuitive it is to have things like pan and volume and sends and inserts all directly available in the track headers and done in an intelligent and concise way (all configurable and optional ā in italics for those who will react in fright), we see how much faster and intuitive it can be. You donāt need to click and open anything else to access them ā they are right there, and things like volume and pan faders can pop up when clicked on/used instead of needing precious real estate by opening up other panes, etc.
The inspector is a very great thing and needs to stay, but instead of creating more panes and more clicking we instead need less, which having some of these main things in the headers goes a long way to help achieve (see Pro Tools, Logic, Studio One, Reaper, and more for great examples of this).
I agree with Raino. If they brought in the dockable/tabbed windows concept from Wavelab, it would eliminate a lot of limitations of the current zone concept in Cubase.
There will never be a true consensus among users on which layout is the best, so allowing each user to choose what works for them seems like a great approach.
Again you can pretty much already do this with workspaces.
No, not really - although in conjunction with Workspaces (which Iād expect theyād keep) it would be great. Look at the image in the OP. You canāt use Workspaces to create that. But you could make something like that using a variant of the Wavelab scheme. There was another recent thread about putting the Inspector in the Lower Zone - canāt do that with Workspaces either.
Imagine if you could create Zones wherever you like like and populate them however you want - and then create a Workspace with those components.
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You can pretty well nearly create everything that is in the OPs post and in nearly the same amount of space.
Hi Lovegames,
Have you used Wavelab? Workspaces are not the same as dockable / tabbed windows. You may have given the OP a work-a-round that would help some, which I can appreciate, but my post was not directed at his request specifically. My post was just backing up what Raino said in his post about Wavelabās GUI being more flexible. Workspaces are one way to customize your layout, but not Wavelabās approach is better, in my opinion because you can have multiple items nested on tabs within the same area.
Yeah I realize that I just think this isnāt worth investing time and resources into when we have workspaces whichā¦ essentially does the exact same thing. The only real difference is in WaveLab all the windows move in relation to one another, resize one and the other resizes accordingly. Iām actually not sure I would like this though, as sometimes I intentionally want window overlap when working, am quickly resizing, or am bringing new windows to view, etc. Floating windows can be useful.
Also, WaveLab is used for a wide variety of very specific detailed tasks and dockable makes a bit more sense.
3-5 of my workspaces I use %90 of the time without issue or needing anything, they mostly stay put without needing to resize. In fact, Iām not sure I would like dockable windows at all apart from what we already have.
Workspaces and dockable are not mutually exclusive.
No but they do take time to code and implement.
Why is it that workspaces does not suffice in place of dockable windows?
Fair enough about resources. Iāve used the same argument regarding other requests. Hopefully Steinberg is not allocating resources based on us randos in the forum.
Clearly Workspaces at some level suffice. I use Cubase which only has Workspaces and donāt see myself abandoning it because of that.
To me Workspaces feel like using a cleaver & dockable feels like a scalpel. Both are useful for different situations & there is overlap. Iād like to see Workspaces in Wavelab too (but thatās a different sub forum).
Here is something Iād love to have and it has been requested several times - the ability to see the Chord Track in the Key Editor. With workspaces I need to wait for Steinberg to build that into the Key Ed. With a dockable system I could just pop one in at the top or maybe a tab down where the Lanes are.
Could you do these by combining a visibility PLE and a workspace into a dedicated key command macro? edit never mind, misunderstood what you were talking about.
I think the difference between Workspaces and Docked Windows is best described by looking at where docked windows are used most and that is in video editing programs because the user always has to be able to see the video regardless of what they resize. Wavelab is much more akin to that because a mastering engineer or someone doing sample fine editing is always wanting to have their meters visible, etc.
I feel this should be less important in music focused DAWs because the user is looking at very different things and is wanting to at maximized screen, thereās too much moving around and randomness. Thatās why Workspaces imo, works much better. You can have both Project WorkSpaces, and Global Workspaces, and you can also have pretty much as many workspaces as you need and can hotkey enter in their number āWorkSpace Xā.
Actually I think, what would be better is to focus on improving WorkSpaces and window managment with some new organizational functions like - āFit all open windows to screen (proportional to current sizes)ā, āfit all open plugins to screenā.
I would be hitting those function hotkeys all the time.
Another very useful thing would be in macros or PLE to be able to enter values into the āWorkspace Xā protocol.
These are just my opinions, but I feel like docked windows would make me feel constrained and like something is always taking up too much space when I donāt need itā¦ You might not realize it right now, but it is kind of nice sometimes to have windows disappear behind others when you click on themā¦
In which case you would never even need to touch the docking & could stick to exclusively using Workspaces.
Yeah fair enough, I just like playing a little devils advocate here on the forums to suss out what is actually priority and if people even actually want what they say the y want - especially over other maybe more important feature requests.
I would say on a list of 50 or 100 feature requests, neither docked windows or extended zone tabbing would be on the list.