Please make all UIs scalable

Jon Watte
Jon Watte Member Posts: 79 Advisor
edited October 22 in Komplete General
I'm a long-time NI user. I started with Kontakt version 1.5 on CD, and have now been a Komplete user for a long time. I also use a Maschine+ for noodling around on the couch, and as a controller for my main setup which is Cubase on Windows.

The one thing that really annoys me with NI software, is how cramped the UI is, and how it can't ever be expanded or resized. I remember it was a major improvement when Kontakt got the ability to expand from, like 1024 pixels wide to 1280 pixels wide or something, and that apparently took a very long time to do ... and since then, nothing.

Similarly, the Komplete Kontrol UI has about three lines of instruments available, unless I roll up the kind and flavor selector boxes. But what if I want to browse both kind/selector and actual instrument patches at the same time?



That's not to mention that, because I'm a long-time user, smaller text is becoming harder to read, and there's no way to increase the font size. NI instruments also don't pay attention to system font size or accessibility settings.

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Comments

  • chk071
    chk071 Member Posts: 543 Pro
    https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/470#Comment_470

    "Scream"? Really? I prefer to suggest, not to scream.

    Making GUI's scalable couldn't be so trivial, BTW. It depends on the plugin.

  • chk071
    chk071 Member Posts: 543 Pro
    edited January 2022

    "When you (and 1000+ of your friends) ask nicely for something for 7 years and even do a heap of chores and still nothing you start to wonder should we maybe make some more noise?"

    Maybe you should realize that making noise often doesn't yield the desired result then. ;)

    "1000+ of your friends" - well, you have a lot of friends...

    Anyway, screaming and making noise is not my style. I prefer to make suggestions in a non-aggressive way.

    Also, when you scream and make noise, you may overhear the voices which tell you that implementing scalable GUI's is a non-trivial task on some plugins. Especially the ones which rely on showing other plugins, or libraries GUI's inside a GUI.

    Seriously, don't you think NI know themselves by now that scalable GUI is a good thing to have? All of their newer plugins have it. It's really no news for them, and a thousand more screams won't change that they already know it.

    BTW, this new forum software has a lot of disadvantages... can't even edit quotes anymore.

  • JesterMgee
    JesterMgee Member Posts: 2,929 Expert

    Think you are taking my comment of "scream" far too literally there man as I meant it in terms of more voices asking and more often, not to literally start writing in all caps. Probably should have selected a better word as I did not expect to have to defend such a simple comment.

    By 1000+ friends, again not sure you are reading the subtleness between the lines, so let me re-write it in a more deliberate way:

    Myself and many other users for the last 7+ years have been suggesting many times on the forum, direct to NI personnel, in the Beta forums not even for a whole scalable GUI but (again, just for Komplete Kontrol for instance) just a way to make the window resizable and not a fixed dimension.

    This was echoed as "planned" about 5 years ago but still has not been hinted at.

    As you said, obviously the calm "can we please have this considered" approach hasn't worked so far, so what is needed is a dedicated thread with many more voices added to it. This is what I termed "scream", more people and more voices about the same feature yields results just like a petition.

    Seriously, don't you think NI know themselves by now that scalable GUI is a good thing to have? All of their newer plugins have it. It's really no news for them, and a thousand more screams won't change that they already know it.

    I think you underestimate the power of people. I am certain NI know and are working on something along with dozens of other suggestions and things will have a priority, OS and compatibility issues are always the dominating ones.

    Resizable GUI is one of many other features being asked for and times this by the number of software and hardware products they now have and that's a lot of noise. Since users are the ones that keep a company like NI in business, if enough of us want something (that is achievable) then it will probably be delivered but to get it as a priority you do sometimes need to rally people together and make some noise (by this I mean post and write your thoughts and suggestions.... not literally bang on the desk just to be clear)

    A company I work operates their feature releases exactly this way, the more people in their request base voting for a feature, the more likely it is to be accepted so I am constantly encouraging users to add their voice and tell their friends to make some noise for a feature that is a good idea.

    Hopefully my position is clear

  • SH-1
    SH-1 Member Posts: 34 Helper

    I'll reiterate my comment from the old forums here. While I'd of course enjoy a proper vector based UI update for all NI products that do not have it, I would also be happy with "simple" integer scaling of the interfaces... (2x, 4x etc)

    That would very likely make it readable without having to forego Hi-DPI mode for stuff that supports it. Waves for example did this 2 years ago to their whole plugin catalog. While it's not the ultimate solution, it makes their plugins usable on a Hi-DPI system.

    Of course, they have their Shell-Plugin approach which probably made this a bit easier to do even for their 25 year old stuff. I'm just saying: it's working.

  • chk071
    chk071 Member Posts: 543 Pro

    I think you forgot that you got it from Waves in a yearly paid update.

    I also remember a lot of people complained about blurry GUI elements.

  • Jojo123
    Jojo123 Member Posts: 341 Pro

    Putting my hand up again to hopefully see this instantiated. It really needs to be. When you have to lean forward to see the minute type its not helpful to keeping a good posture.

  • Impermanence
    Impermanence Member Posts: 165 Pro

    Come on NI. I send you good vibes. You can make it.

  • pet
    pet Member Posts: 25 Member

    can we ask NI employee about this subject?

    the real funny thing is, I made litterally a "baby-pause", 12 years, I erased everything from NI back then for private reasons, and stopped with producing. so the last time, I used kontakt and komplete players/Software, was around 2010. since then, I cannot see an improvement of NI software regarding text-sizes, scaleability and UI / UX-user-friendliness and user experience. and all this happens in the decade of 4k or 6k displays at 32" or even bigger.

    sorry, firsthand, I started a separate thread, cause I could not find this one. now I found it.

    https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/1586#Comment_1586


  • Wolinger
    Wolinger Member Posts: 18 Helper

    I confess that this is a big problem for me, I miss it when I use Kontakt, Komplete Kontrol and Maschine 2. Some VSTS when they are loaded exceed the limit of my screen and I always have to set the size in the plugin itself. These 3 NI software I mentioned could have the system write to the user the desired screen size that was set earlier, thus avoiding resolution overflow problems.

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