Thank you, just found the auto collapsing toggle feature that’s in double on the beta version settings
What I feel is that the font type is too small also, I’m working on a 27’’ screen and after a while working with darktable I tend to have my face glued to the screen just to read the small letters, never happened before in any other software I work.
darktable has so many hidden things that makes it impossible to find everything in one pass, wish it wouldn’t take so much time compute the preview and show the updates while moving sliders. Maybe in a near future.
I’m also beta tester for easyHDR and they had this preview problem too, but they manage to correct it after a couple of updates and that makes a lot of difference when editing a photo.
FWIW, on my system (Ubuntu 17.10), hovering does not activate the slider. I have to left click the slider, then the key combinations you mention work as you describe them.
I find all the menus and dialogs in DT to be small (old eyes, perhaps), but I can live with it. I’ve just recently gotten into DT, having been aware of it for a long time. I’m loving the application.
i suppose you tried to globally increase size of things by playing with screen_dpi_overwrite=150 or so in your darktablerc? increasing the dpi makes everything scale up. sorry i have no idea where that would be on a macintosh computer.
I’m with you on this. The size of the triangle is simply to small. I know about the right click and the scroll function and use them regularly, but being able to use the slider like in every other software would be really nice.
Most adjustments work very quickly, your hardware seems to be limiting.
What would be the benefit of bigger triangles? As I have written over and over again, those triangles have no functionality, besides indicating the current value. There is no need whatsoever to click them, hit them with the mouse or anything. They are just a visual cue.
I guess people would like to have more tactile controls. If I see an apple on the table, I would try to pick it up where I see it. It is also about “These apps do it this one way; why can’t app x do the same!”.
I’ve always ‘aimed’ for the triangle thinking it was the trigger point to make an adjustment but you’re right its not, just checked it on levels module. I did think that was a bit fiddly so now I know. You learn something every day! Thanks houz
Reducing the interface to this sliders is a bit akward. After several years using darktable and then trying LR or C1 leads to the same experience: “Why is program X so compliated - in darktable it is so easy?”
E.g. it took me quite some time to figure out how to export an image from C1. Man is a creature of habits!
So as a fact we can agree that the Bauhaus sliders used in dt behaves differently than slider elements in other well-known softwares, and that is the basis of misunderstanding and be fair some frustration of new users. On the other hand Bauhaus sliders do provide superior functionality in other aspects.
Question is can we find a common ground: ie enhance the Bauhaus slider to be more friendly with “naive” / inexperienced users, while keeping the existing benefits/functionality?
Indeed. I fixed it in git and eventually it will be put online as well.
I seriously don’t see where our sliders are posing any problem. Even not knowing that you don’t have to hit the triangle I would expect people to figure that out on their own after 5 minutes of using them. And being able to click into a slider to set its value instead of dragging the marker to that position is common among basically all slider implementations I know and not unique for ours.
I’m no UX expert, so this should be taken with a huge pinch of salt, but each person may have its own path specially if using different supports or pointing devices. I actually find the slider handlers very small, that’s not a problem to me because my way of using DT’s sliders is always based on the mouse wheel, but I very rarely use the click directly on the bar neither the keyboard shortcuts mentioned above.
I’ve been using Darktable for a few years on macs, which while not ideal kind of works. I love Darktable for all the wonderful things it can do but the UX is not always great. So, the criticism on the UX of the sliders is valid. I think the out of the box UI dpi is plain wrong for most modern hdpi screens out there. And since we’re talking serious photography here, I can’t imagine low resolution screens are very common among serious users these days. Manually changing dpi in the configuration of course works. But then maybe since the rest of the UI seems aware of the hdpi nature of the screen, maybe it should adapt automatically or be at least easier to edit via the UI.
Arguably the primary UX any kind of scroll bar would be to drag the marker around. That’s very hard and so inaccurate in Darktable that there is almost no point to doing that. And while I’m a fan of the right click to get to the fine grained editing mode, getting there is quite hard when your click target is a tiny triangle. I mis-click quite often in Darktable. Also, It took me quite long to discover this feature even existed; which given how essential it is to using Darktable is a bit of a problem for new users.
Also, I’m not actually using a mouse these days but a trackpad. This actually works quite well but things like scroll wheels and right clicks become two finger clicks and two finger drags (or pinches). Mostly this just works but I’ve been struggling with small click targets and overly sensitive scrolling. I’m guessing the experience of using this on any kind of touch screen is probably quite horrible right now. These too are becoming more common.
Regarding updating the documentation I would just state that good UX shouldn’t need documentation. Darktable documentation is pretty awesome of course but it is always better to just address the underlying problems.
I did the same sort of thing with my blackwhitepoint sliders in rawproc. Also, hover in the scroll area and rolling the mouse wheel works.
And, did the same thing in my curve tool. If you select a control point, you can “drag” it from anywhere in the curve grid. That one was more about attempting to accommodate a touch display on a tablet, but the results in that use are mixed…
