Komplete Kontrol full screen and resizable?
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I don't know where you get the idea that there is a "standard" computer screen size. Only about a quarter of people have Full HD 1920x1080 screens, most have something lower, probably because they're laptops; the 15" Macbook Pro, which is probably the single most significant device among NI's user base, has an effective vertical height of 900. But 1920x1200 is also a common screen size, and like other creatives, many producers like to use larger screens still, 1440 and upwards, precisely because they can display more information at once, for a better workflow. It's strange that NI doesn't cater to this, because what is standard is software windows that are user-resizable; fixed-sized windows are the exception and in a small minority. I tend to associate them with late 1990s/early 2000s freeware.
As for it working perfectly at 1920x1080, even at that resolution KK only takes up about half the screen height, wasting usable space while making the Browser more awkward to use than it needs to be.
And then when I load a plugin with a big enough GUI, KK automatically resizes to accommodate it! So why on Earth they didn't just toggle the switch to enable users to do the same according to preference like any other software?
In case you're wondering why it really matters given that it does enlarge when plugins require it:
1) The aforementioned Browser issue. I don't want to have to load a large-interfaced plugin just to get KK to expand to a size I'm comfortable with to start browsing presets.
2) When it does resize it often has to reposition itself too, and it usually does this badly, requiring the user to reposition the window manually anyway; I might as well have been left to handle the sizing/positioning myself, as with other software.
On top of that, it doesn't even expand vertically as much as it could, and I'm often left unable to see the full plugin GUI and having to use a vertical scrollbar, even though I still have unused screen height. At the same time, it expands fully horizontally even beyond the width of the screen, so I'm forced to continually reposition the window to see the full width of the plugin GUI, rather than use a horizontal scrollbar like any other software.
It's just terrible UX. That's why people moan about it.
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I'm confused by your comment on tagging. Tagging is the modern replacement for traditional hierarchical "folder" structures because it supports many routes to a given asset or resource, so I'm curious how you think it's outdated, and what should replace it, bearing in mind that it should be a system for helping a user find what they're thinking of, not what some algorithm thinks they might be looking for.
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Tagging is labor intensive, too dependent on personal subjectivity, and too firmly fixed to the asset to allow for a clean "reset".
A much more robust and flexible browsing method could be made possible by embracing AI/ML technologies and a new metadata structure.
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To the former: yes.
To the later: yes. I've seen prototypes internally of such things. Remember - I used to work at iZotope before we came together as NI. So AI as a tool in the toolkit is near and dear to me.
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As long as people don't foster the illusion just because something is AI and not a human that doesn't make it any less subjective or flawed. AI is fine used as a tool but it is a tool and nothing more.
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And this is also true. Tagging is a modern approach, not at all outmoded, even if AI can assist (and I need to be convinced it would do a good job) - just as AI can assist with mixing but people still need to listen and decide this is a good or bad mix.
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"A new metadata structure" - That's still a bit vague for me. I take your point about the labour-intensiveness of actually doing it, and can see how AI could really help with that, and to help ensure that the tags produced match as closely as possible with the way most people understand and will be using them, but you're always going to have the problem of translating what a user may be thinking of, which pretty much has to go via language, i.e. tags, of some kind. Of course, if we could somehow enable users to provide samples from recorded music and have the system find presets that match those sounds as closely as possible, that would be an alternative, although I don't much like the sound of that.
If you can explain in more detail, I'm intrigued, otherwise it sounds like I may not have to wait to long to find out, based on what Matthew_NI said!
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NI introducing some implementation of iZotope's AI/ML technologies to the preset browsing experience is something I have high hopes for in the future.
An instructive "parallel" is finding and organizing photos using face/object recognition and "Smart Albums" in Apple's Photos app.
Fun to imagine the possibilities and how powerfully useful analysis of NKS audio "previews" could be!
And shouldn't we be calling them "prehears" instead? 😉
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Ive just updated KK and a redesigned UI!
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Yet they have done nothing about the resizing and full-screen. Very sad indeed. They don't want to fix this at all.
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That's not true. Matt has been clear that resizing is on the list, but it was important to start somewhere - it will happen.
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Still no ability to resize the screen?
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I agree it’s such a pathetic long term KK problem I was surprised to see this not fixed in KK3.1 please NI fix this it would improve usability especially for the visually impaired . It is a waste of screen space but we have no choice but to put up with it there is no alternative ,please fix this out of date experiance
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What bugs me about the whole resizing issue is the artificial limits that are placed on window resizing. Not just the main UI but other parts of the software. For example, open Preferences and resize the window. You can resize it, but only to a fixed maximum size. There's no logical reason for this and it means that if you're looking at the Library view you can't expand the window horizontally enough to see the full library locations and the names at the same time. You can expand it vertically, but you can't expand it all the way down the screen to see more locations at once. Someone has actually programmed in "You can't expand the window bigger than this set size" which seems crazy.
-- Mike
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It's great to hear that they're working on scaling. I really hope you could scale up that postage-stamp-sized browser. Also, it seems that some NI plugins are not scaling properly. However, the scaling of Arturia's plugins works quite a bit better.
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