Sridhar Raghavan Posted April 12 Share Posted April 12 All, Preface: This is a UI practice observation and I am hoping to get the rational/history behind from the long timers and developers. When you take the cursor to/near a marker, you get a Double Vertical Line, with left and right pointing arrows on both the sides, and letter M appearing to the right above. (I thought I had captured the screen shot with that Graphic. But it does not show up as you can see below. Any tips on how to capture it on the Screen Shot?) While keeping the Cursor on it, press delete.. the marker gets deleted. It is an interesting UI but I would have never found this behavior on my own.. except after reading some frustrating post threads on this topic from few years ago. Why not support the Normal UI Practice? Curious Show Visually that the Marker Has Focus, with right mouse click providing for the actions like: Delete, Move (that is what that complex Graphic does), Rename etc. Also provide Left Click, Double Click actions. May be complex Graphic is providing Visual Feedback?? Probably but quite not. Left Mouse click does not do anything. Right Mouse Click brings up Marker Rename panel!! The fact that holding the Left Mouse on it, you can click Delete - does delete the marker. Was this intended or a bug turned into a feature? What other keys may be pressed for other actions?? (hopefully non-destructive). I already noticed that pressing T brings up a pop up panel, though I have not checked out the options there. Question: Is this UI paradigm an isolated instance or there are more such instances ?? Hope you can share some of the useful ones here.. Thanks, Sri. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
user 905133 Posted April 12 Share Posted April 12 (edited) 14 minutes ago, Sridhar Raghavan said: Preface: This is a UI practice observation and I am hoping to get the rational/history behind from the long timers and developers. When you take the cursor to/near a marker, you get a Double Vertical Line, with left and right pointing arrows on both the sides, and letter M appearing to the right above. (I thought I had captured the screen shot with that Graphic. But it does not show up as you can see below. Any tips on how to capture it on the Screen Shot?) While keeping the Cursor on it, press delete.. the marker gets deleted. Cakewalk/SONAR/Cakewalk by Bandlab uses a variety of cursors to clue users into many things, such as focus, working mode, possible actions, etc. I can't speak for the developers, but as a long-time user, paying attention to the cursor changes and developing an automatic/intuitive sense of the workflow based on the cursor changes is essential, helps navigate the robust UI, "paves" an otherwise bumpy "learning curve" for those who just want to speed through using the software by pushing the pedal to the metal, etc. I have found that automatic workflows (i.e., a sense of personal usage and "intuition") are made automatic because of the visual clues. In my experience, Windows' built-in screen capture does not capture the various cursors. I don't know if there are third-party utilities that do. Edited April 12 by User 905133 added a missing ")" 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
user 905133 Posted April 12 Share Posted April 12 16 minutes ago, Sridhar Raghavan said: It is an interesting UI but I would have never found this behavior on my own.. except after reading some frustrating post threads on this topic from few years ago. Why not support the Normal UI Practice? Curious Forgive an analogy: As a pedestrian I learned decades ago when crossing a side street that has a stop sign for cars, many drivers will look left to see if there are cars coming on the main road and then sweep their eyes right to see if it is "safe" from that direction and will totally miss that a pedestrian in crossing right in front of them. In my opinion when people are learning robust software (such as Cakewalk/SONAR/CbB) many are like the drivers--looking to see where they want to go. However, the workflow road signs (very consistent and specific cursors) are there to help. Based on decades of experience, for me they are extremely helpful in navigating the software, though it is easy to ignore the signs. Even though I have used the software since Cakewalk for MS DOS, when I teach myself new features, I find it very helpful to understand and pay attention to the cursor changes. Hope this helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Canopus Posted April 12 Share Posted April 12 2 hours ago, Sridhar Raghavan said: Why not support the Normal UI Practice? Curious I agree. The way to delete a marker in CbB/Sonar is one of the (few) things I find unintuitive. Hover the mouse over the marker and press the Delete key? Seriously? Simply hovering over an object does not make it selected. And, to my knowledge, allowing deletion of an unselected object in a software GUI is highly unusual. The way I think it could be done without too much hassle would be to add a Delete button to the current Marker dialog. If the mouse has been right-clicked on an existing marker, then enable the Delete button. Otherwise, disable the Delete button. Simple to achieve, yet much easier for a Cakewalk newbie to find. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
msmcleod Posted April 12 Share Posted April 12 10 minutes ago, Canopus said: I agree. The way to delete a marker in CbB/Sonar is one of the (few) things I find unintuitive. Hover the mouse over the marker and press the Delete key? Seriously? Simply hovering over an object does not make it selected. And, to my knowledge, allowing deletion of an unselected object in a software GUI is highly unusual. The way I think it could be done without too much hassle would be to add a Delete button to the current Marker dialog. If the mouse has been right-clicked on an existing marker, then enable the Delete button. Otherwise, disable the Delete button. Simple to achieve, yet much easier for a Cakewalk newbie to find. Hovering the mouse over the marker and pressing delete won't delete it - because as you said, hovering doesn't select it. You need to left click on the marker and press the delete key while the mouse button is down. Either that, or delete them from the markers view. I agree it's not intuitive, but it's been that way for a while, and will likely stay that way until the current marker view is replaced. It's been discussed, but nothing has been planned yet. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Canopus Posted April 12 Share Posted April 12 3 minutes ago, msmcleod said: You need to left click on the marker and press the delete key while the mouse button is down. I stand corrected. Guess my memory has seen better days. However, pressing the Delete key while at the same time left-clicking the marker is not that much better. And I do think that adding a Delete button to the existing dialog would be a pretty low-cost way to get a function that Cakewalk newbies would be able to find. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
user 905133 Posted April 12 Share Posted April 12 3 hours ago, Sridhar Raghavan said: When you take the cursor to/near a marker, you get a Double Vertical Line, with left and right pointing arrows on both the sides, and letter M appearing to the right above . . . . While keeping the Cursor on it, press delete.. the marker gets deleted. It is an interesting UI but I would have never found this behavior on my own.. except after reading some frustrating post threads on this topic from few years ago. Why not support the Normal UI Practice? Curious Sorry, I still don't see what the problem is. I used the markers extensively several years ago to mark up several digitized oral history tapes. Part of the process involved entering the words of the speaker [and sometimes comments] to mark potential edit points. When the initial or added markers needed to be moved, it was a simple task to left-click on the flag at the top of the marker, hold the mouse button down, and slide it left or right. To me, the parallel vertical lines with the left- and right-pointing arrows is a very sensical icon that let me know when I had grabbed the marker and it was safe to move it. Maybe it took me a few tries to get it right the first time, but after that I had acquired eye-hand coordination that I didn't have to think about the meaning of the lines+arrows. Holding the left mouse button down means that marker is selected for whatever action I want to take. Most of the times it was sliding the marker left or right. But if I wanted to delete the marker that was selected, I could press the Del key. Sorry, but if you want to say something is or isn't intuitive, this is a poor example. Intuition is based on one's personal experience. Experience isn't what happens to a person, it's what a person does with knowledge and understanding of those things the person observes. To me after the first 3 or 4 times I tried, editing markers became transparent to my brain. My eyes saw the icon change, I automatically knew I had hold of the marker, and my hands did what I willed them to do (move the marker left, right, or deleted it). The icon is intuitive to anyone who observes that the parallel lines+arrows allows them to do something with the markers--either move the marker left or right. Implied by holding the left mouse button down is selection (this item has been selected for some operation). The Del button is commonly accepted to mean "Delete." Computer usage implies that a selected item would be deleted by pressing the Del button. I suppose if the icon would switch between the parallel lines+arrows and a pair of scissors, you might say that would make the icon and process of deleting the marker more intuitive? Sorry, but I think making the moving and deletion of markers more "normal" (whatever that would be--having to use a dialog box???) would be very destructive of what for me is a very intuitive process that maximizes workflow efficiency. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kevin Walsh Posted April 13 Share Posted April 13 (edited) What a great discussion! This is why I love this forum. I have so many projects with bunches of markers clustered in a group at the end out of the way because I didn't know how to delete them. I can't wait to go back and remove them all with vicious glee. Edited April 13 by Kevin Walsh 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sridhar Raghavan Posted April 13 Author Share Posted April 13 Usr 095133, canopus, smcleod, Kevin Walsh /All I truly appreciate your diligence, thoughts and comments on this conversation. I was a bit digressed on other things to respond promptly. It makes this, especially to Kevin's comments, a very useful conversation. I do hope there are many others, may be shy to post their thoughts, find some tips for productivity and joy of using Cakewalk. I am also seeing lots of other valuable thoughts here, especially resonating with my original post's suggestions. Usr 095133, I see your passion and expertise reflected in your meticulous sharing your thoughts. You have made arguments in defense of the current status, through various analogies. I will discuss those point by point a little later. However, I am intrigued that you put all your might justifying the current implementation as "par excellence" (my paraphrasing what you intend to say). As a long term professional immersed in this (a lot of things to say, so I will skip and leave it to fill it with your ken), I find it very difficult to resonate with your bulls-eye assertion of your argument. Essentially, you are saying Leave things as they are .. as changing it will lead to less than optimal Usage and User Productivity. In my technical parlance, I would say this (rather exaggerating and stretching to make a point) that your point of view is tantamount to system saying "Read My Mind" and if you (whatever type of user you are) are unable to do so, you are rather Dumb. br Sri. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
user 905133 Posted April 13 Share Posted April 13 44 minutes ago, Sridhar Raghavan said: In my technical parlance, I would say this (rather exaggerating and stretching to make a point) that your point of view is tantamount to system saying "Read My Mind" and if you (whatever type of user you are) are unable to do so, you are rather Dumb. Thanks for starting the discussion and for your very thoughtful replies. I would agree that anthropomorphizing the software to be saying "Read My Mind and if you can't you are rather Dumb" could be considered as a bit of a stretched exaggeration. For what it's worth, yesterday I wrote up the following and decided not to post it. It was in my edit buffer, and after seeing all the new comments thought it might be good to include: Quote So, I tested what happens if I hover over a marker that hasn't officially been selected (as described above) and pressed Del in the case where there is a section of audio selected somewhere else in the track. The delete operation deleted the audio that was selected (instead of the marker). If this happens, it seems to me that holding the left-click button down to make sure only the marker is selected is a good thing to avoid deleting a section of the track not in view. I can easily imagine that changing the current procedures (described above), so that a marker can be deleted without having to select the marker (by holding the left click button down to delete) might accidentally introduce what could be called a "regression bug." To be clear, what you call my "defense of the status quo" was not merely for the sake of just keeping the status quo. In my view things should not be kept, changed, or removed simply for their own sake independent of consequences, functionality, etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sailor55 Posted April 13 Share Posted April 13 On 4/12/2024 at 9:53 AM, Sridhar Raghavan said: I already noticed that pressing T brings up a pop up panel, though I have not checked out the options there. That "pop up panel" is exceedingly important to me and central to my workflow which involves much audio editing. All the stuff one continually needs in a tight little box only an inch away from where the cursor is now. Please never take that away. Never. - Daniel 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sridhar Raghavan Posted April 13 Author Share Posted April 13 Sailor55/Daniel I love that Panel and was arguing that it be expanded for System-User communication and actions. So I am with you and not suggesting that they be removed, at all. Sri. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sridhar Raghavan Posted April 13 Author Share Posted April 13 I can easily imagine that changing the current procedures (described above), so that a marker can be deleted without having to select the marker (by holding the left click button down to delete) might accidentally introduce what could be called a "regression bug." To be clear, what you call my "defense of the status quo" was not merely for the sake of just keeping the status quo. In my view things should not be kept, changed, or removed simply for their own sake independent of consequences, functionality, etc. User 905133 Thanks for your above additional clarification, bounding what your were saying and arresting the extra interpretations. a) I agree that Selecting an Object and Visually indicating what is in Focus is a MUST, before users actions are passed on to it for execution. b) My main objection is for the In-Focus object to receive Keystroke inputs and executing them in a "occluded" manner. By this I mean the following: i) The System is not indicating to the user, that it CAN and WILL take keystrokes and execute them without user being made aware, or taking for granted that the user is fully aware. ii) It should show through common sense methods, what key strokes are "alive and admitted" for action and what are not. For example left click, right click, double click, popup/hover panels etc. ii) The current implementation is not doing this even once! So new users have no way to become aware of it, learn and evolve. (Reading DOC should not be required for such things, and that is what Intuitive means in an axiomatic sense). ii) I do not have any issue at all with supporting power users, through accelerators even if "arguable" as not good methods. This is consistent UI best practices, allows normal communication mechanisms may be skipped (so power users are not slowed down) through [easy to do] configurations. Sri. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sjoens Posted April 13 Share Posted April 13 I requested a " - " (delete) button for the Markers Module awhile ago. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CSistine Posted April 14 Share Posted April 14 9 hours ago, sjoens said: I requested a " - " (delete) button for the Markers Module awhile ago. I don't understand! There is a "-" in the Markers view! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CSistine Posted April 14 Share Posted April 14 IMHO there is a worse issue for deletion in Cakewalk: If you select a clip(s) with drag right mouse button and press the "Del" key, then it can happen occasionally that a selected plugin is accidentally deleted, even if it is out of view. This happened to me several times until I understood that the "nothing is happening" when I have pressed the delete key, was a misunderstanding and it caused a severe problem: A plugin with its settings was deleted from any track in the project. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starship Krupa Posted April 14 Share Posted April 14 On 4/12/2024 at 2:19 PM, User 905133 said: I think making the moving and deletion of markers more "normal" (whatever that would be--having to use a dialog box???) would be very destructive of what for me is a very intuitive process that maximizes workflow efficiency. Relaxxxx. Why do we get this kind of thing when people suggest adding a new way to accomplish something? "Nooooo, pleeeease, I like it the way it IS! Don't force me to learn a new way to do it!" Nobody has suggested that the current way of doing it should be removed. We're just saying that it's clumsy and nearly impossible to figure out without deep-diving the documentation or Googling or asking how to do it on the forum. Maybe you were able to intuit how without research, but I wasn't and I've seen plenty of other users who also found it obtuse and frustrating. Me, I hate deleting markers in Cakewalk because I'm always afraid that I'm going to hit Del at the wrong moment and delete a clip or a plug-in or something. Every time I do it, it makes me clench up. This is 5 years and 11 months after I learned how to do it (it took me a month of using Cakewalk to get around to learning how to do it). I've been asking for years for Delete Marker to be added to the dialog that pops up when you right click on a marker. For those people who like clicking on a marker, holding, then pressing Del to delete it, nothing would change. You would be free ignore the fact that there's a way for new users to figure out how to do it without Googling. Which is how I figured out how to delete a marker in Cakewalk. Gave up in frustration, Googled it. Found a post on the old forum responding to someone else who also wasn't able to figure it out. If anyone reading this thinks that experienced DAW users needing to use a search engine to figure out an operation as common as deleting a marker is just par for the course, you're wrong. Yes, there are many operations where it's not out of line to have to consult the manual. Things like setting up Groove Clip Looping and such that exist in every DAW, but usually in different forms. Deleting a marker? C'mon. It doesn't have to be a complete overhaul of the feature or a rethink of the UX philosophy or a retool of the Markers module or view or any such thing. Just add Delete Marker to the context dialog. It's the very kind of thing that context dialogs are meant for. 4 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
user 905133 Posted April 14 Share Posted April 14 (edited) 9 hours ago, Starship Krupa said: Why do we get this kind of thing when people suggest adding a new way to accomplish something? "Nooooo, pleeeease, I like it the way it IS! Don't force me to learn a new way to do it!" (1) I cannot speak for others. (2) If you are trying to claim this is my position, I highly recommend you rethink this in the context of my posts in this thread as well as in other related threads. 9 hours ago, Starship Krupa said: It doesn't have to be a complete overhaul of the feature or a rethink of the UX philosophy or a retool of the Markers module or view or any such thing. (3) To be clear, I never thought (or said) that a "complete overhaul . . . ." was required. (4) As regards the issue of adding additional methods/workflow options to delete markers, so far as I can see, I never opposed that. For example, see the "JMO" sections here: On 4/24/2020 at 8:02 AM, User 905133 said: JMO: If there were a delete marker button in the Markers Module, it would be too easy to accidentally delete a marker. Right context menu for modules seems to relate to the modules, not the functions within the modules. JMO: If there were a delete marker button, it might be helpful to have an optional "Are you sure?" pop-up that is on by default, but could be turned off with a preferences settings. This would benefit both people who make mistakes and those who don't. Edited April 14 by User 905133 fixed typo (Jor --> For) 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starship Krupa Posted April 14 Share Posted April 14 2 hours ago, User 905133 said: If you are trying to claim this is my position, I highly recommend you rethink this in the context of my posts in this thread as well as in other related threads. My mistake then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sjoens Posted April 15 Share Posted April 15 16 hours ago, CSistine said: I don't understand! There is a "-" in the Markers view! Markers View = yes Markers Module = no If nothing else I'd like to see a Delete button when I right-click a Marker -or- click the Module dropdown and right-click a marker to delete. I never open or use the Markers View so it would add time and inconvenience to my workflow. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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