Hacker News Reader

Comment by mfkp | Hacker News Reader

Wow, very cool implementation, fun to play around with.

The "knobs" are a UX nightmare with a touchpad on my laptop though, nearly impossible to use.

Sometimes replicating a physical object doesn't translate well to the web - a simple slider (input type=range) would be much more effective here.

View on HN

Thanks mfkp!

Yeah I know what you mean, I have an open issue to fix touch screen handling. I didn't have a touch screen handy but I'm hoping to fix it soon.

I wanted to play around with realistic UIs but I agree that sometimes digital interfaces like a slider are much more intuitive.

Nothing digital about a slider. The Juno, the SH-101, loads of classic synths had sliders.

Yeah you're right JonnieCache, I meant a more physical-like interaction but sliders are as well.

Maybe you could delegate scroll events to a scroll area a few hundred pixels tall (or roughly the knob circumference?), and then bind the knob value to that area's scroll percentage.

I surveyed my own VSTs when I went to implement a synth UI knob and discovered that most actually behave like a y axis slider. A few, like Synth 1, will teleport the cursor to an actual slider as you start dragging. The ones that try to make you literally "turn" it are by far the exception.

As for other feedback... it's unusable for me. Notes are triggering unexpectedly or get stuck, the interface goes unresponsive for seconds at a time and then suddenly catches up. I haven't been able to see what the knobs are like on this program because of the unresponsiveness. Tested Firefox 42, Chrome 46.0.2490.86 m.

I can play a few chords, at least. It reaches hard clipping distortion easily when I do that.

Sliders are far less buggy to implement and more intuitive on a 2d surface. Check out Roland's 101, Juno 106, Juno 60, Jupiter series, Arp Odyssey, 2600, etc. etc. etc... You won't be breaking any analog rules.

Knobs are mostly en vogue because modern modular and Moog, but sliders are still on new products (Roland System100 modular revival/re-invention stuffs)

There are variations on how a knob "works" with a cursor and this leads to guessing, if not bugs in the implementation.

Huh... these are pretty cool ideas on implementing knob UIs without the actual knob turn. I'll try working on a more reliable implementation, with a slider or a drag area and just map the values.

I tried clicking and dragging the knobs, nothing happened and I concluded they're non-interactive. What mouse interaction do they respond to?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com