Add G.U.I. indications to reveal hidden features

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rsf123

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Add G.U.I. indications to reveal hidden features

PostThu Oct 14, 2021 11:59 pm

Over time, I've become aware of features that are hidden for which there are no GUI indiction that they exist.

For example, to edit the style of individual letters of a word, one has to right-click the text-field to reveal the menu, then select "character level styling".

cl.png
cl.png (68.83 KiB) Viewed 1400 times


There is nothing in the GUI or menus of the Text+ node to suggest that this feature is there. The way it gets discovered in the Davinci Resolve online YouTube community is that someone puts out a tutorial, and then it catches on, followed by several tutorials by others. Then it becomes widely known.

But for such hidden features, until that first one person puts out the initial tutorial, the feature remains hidden.

I'm guessing there must be numerous other hidden features that new-players are unaware even exist. For example, recently, I saw a tutorial that pointed out that there are "Ease In" and "Ease Out" fields in the Spline panel. But there is no indication that it is there. The tutorial told us that it requires pressing the T keystroke to cause these features to appear. There seems no indication that this feature existed.

dg.png
dg.png (83.89 KiB) Viewed 1400 times


I am guessing there are numerous other features for which there are no GUI indication.

As a relatively new Davinci user, it took me some time to realise that certain words (but not all words) in panels could be right-clicked to reveal sub-menus. For instance, I never would have guessed that the text panel in the Text+ node could be right-clicked until someone pointed this out in a tutorial.

Hence, my suggestion is to adapt the GUI to indicate the existence of hidden features.

I realise one doesn't want to clutter the GUI. What about a dot beside things that can be right clicked? Maybe there could be a Preference item where people could turn on these visual indications, and then experienced users could turn these off to make the GUI less cluttered.
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Hendrik Proosa

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Re: Add G.U.I. indications to reveal hidden features

PostFri Oct 15, 2021 7:02 am

Maybe modern UX paradigm is to have user furiously click everywhere to see if something is there.

Reason is probably dumb and simple. Resolve UI has so much empty space between knobs and within knobs themselves that options simply don’t fit anywhere without creating miles of scrolling. Fu users have pointed the ”going backwards in usability” nature of UI change for a long time now with zero reaction from BMD.
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rsf123

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Re: Add G.U.I. indications to reveal hidden features

PostFri Oct 15, 2021 11:29 am

Hendrik Proosa wrote:Maybe modern UX paradigm is to have user furiously click everywhere to see if something is there.


Maybe I can understand that as being a pragmatic GUI for features that are revealed by right-clicking. It may not be obvious to a new-user, but after they see a few tutorials, it becomes quickly evident that many of the words in the panel can be right-clickable.

However, when it comes to needing to type in a certain character -- e.g. type the letter T in order to reveal certain fields -- there is no way I would ever have guessed that. Someone has to tell you that, or -- drum-roll - I'd have to read the Manual.
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TheBloke

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Re: Add G.U.I. indications to reveal hidden features

PostFri Oct 15, 2021 1:27 pm

I agree that the Fusion UI in particular has far too many hidden-features. I've told new users many times to "right-click everywhere!". Really important functionality is often only available via right-click menus, with no indication that it's important to right-click there.

For example the often-important Purge Cache and Re-render Current Frame features are behind a right-click menu in the RAM usage indicator in the very bottom right of the UI. 99% of people will never know these features exist unless they are told in a tutorial/forum post, or else they read every page of the manual.

This gets even worse in Resolve (as opposed to Fusion Studio), with the annoying Auto Proxy feature, and some others, are hidden behind a completely invisible right-click menu near the play/stop/rewind buttons, which has no indication at all that there's any reason at all to right-click there. The only thing you might think of right-clicking is on the play/stop/etc buttons themselves, but that gives a different right-click menu.

And yeah, to be honest every user who plans to use Fusion regularly should read every page of the Fusion manual. Eventually. But I agree that's not an excuse for bad UI/UX design. Well designed software has both an intuitive, informative UI, and detailed and helpful documentation.

So yeah, I support improvements in the Fusion UI with regards to discoverability.

rsf123 wrote:.g. type the letter T in order to reveal certain fields -- there is no way I would ever have guessed that. Someone has to tell you that, or
That said, I don't fully agree with the 'T' example. It's listed in the right-click menu in the Spline Editor:

Image

It's only active and not greyed out with one or more points selected, which I don't have in this example.

The general issue does somewhat apply: you might not realise there's any reason to right-click in the Spline Editor. But I feel this example is more forgivable than others, because it would occur to me to try a right-click on a parameter or a point in the Spline Editor to see what options might exist there.

I do still agree that there could easily be toolbar icons for more or all of the features in that right-click menu, and/or some indication that there's a reason to right-click to see all the options.
Last edited by TheBloke on Fri Oct 15, 2021 2:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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TheBloke

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Re: Add G.U.I. indications to reveal hidden features

PostFri Oct 15, 2021 1:33 pm

Wow, and there's even right-click menus that require modifiers!

Totally by accident, I just found all these Debug options when Shift-right-clicking the RAM usage display:

Image
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Hendrik Proosa

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Re: Add G.U.I. indications to reveal hidden features

PostFri Oct 15, 2021 1:52 pm

TheBloke wrote:Wow, and there's even right-click menus that require modifiers!

Achievement unlocked! :lol:
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TheBloke

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Re: Add G.U.I. indications to reveal hidden features

PostFri Oct 15, 2021 3:50 pm

Hendrik Proosa wrote:Achievement unlocked! :lol:
:D

This thread inspired me to catalogue every 'hidden' right-click menu in Fusion:
Image (click for full size)

For full context and screenshots of a few more right-click menus, see this post in the Fusion subforum.
Resolve Studio 17.4.3 and Fusion Studio 17.4.3 on macOS 11.6.1

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rsf123

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Re: Add G.U.I. indications to reveal hidden features

PostSat Oct 16, 2021 3:46 am

TheBloke wrote:
Hendrik Proosa wrote:Achievement unlocked! :lol:
:D

This thread inspired me to catalogue every 'hidden' right-click menu in Fusion:
Image (click for full size)

For full context and screenshots of a few more right-click menus, see this post in the Fusion subforum.



Wow. TheBloke, can you post that on the Discord forum and ask someone to make a tutorial about that? It'd be great if there can be tutorials showing the location of these hidden menus, and so we can understand what they do.
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waltervolpatto

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Re: Add G.U.I. indications to reveal hidden features

PostTue Oct 19, 2021 2:25 am

That remind of my wife that wants a BIG house but also she want it empty so you have to cleverly hide every single piece of necessary clothings and things somewhere that you will never retrive unless you make a map of where things are hidden…..
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Marc Wielage

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Re: Add G.U.I. indications to reveal hidden features

PostTue Oct 19, 2021 10:28 am

Ya know... give it 5-6 years, you'll figure out where all this stuff is.

Although... I just learned the other day how to sort the Timeline drop-down menu, so there you go.
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Hendrik Proosa

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Re: Add G.U.I. indications to reveal hidden features

PostTue Oct 19, 2021 10:36 am

Some poor bugger just got a hang of Fusion 8 and now this… He’ll get on top of Fu 17 in 2027 when cars fly and MS Word has color grading capabilities.
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