The latest band template changes have greatly decreased my productivity/workflow and discouraged me from enjoying little ‘sketch’ sessions on Hookpad by adding many, unnecessary extra clicks and making it impossible to keep track of where you left off if trying to quickly preview different templates before deciding on one.
It used to be that I could compose some music and then quickly switch through my custom bands with a single click on an always-visible list until something fit. The selection would also stay where I last clicked, making it easy to pick up where I left off.
But now you have to CLICK to open a now HIDDEN menu, CLICK on the user tab, CLICK on the scroll bar to locate a template then either CLICK on the template and CLICK ‘Open’ or DOUBLE-CLICK the template. This has quadrupled to quintupled the amount of clicks just it previously took to switch templates… And to make matters worse, it doesn’t leave the selection on the last template you had selected, so now you have to remember the exact template you last used (no indication of the name of the template you’re currently on anymore!) and scroll down to it to move onto the next one. This is incredibly disheartening, especially for people with text memory and dyslexia issues…
What is the point of the of over-complication and obfuscation of a previously fast, easy, working system? If there’s no plans to revert these new, clunky changes, can we please get the old selector back as an alternative method for switching?
To be a bit more concise and constructive, the change that removed the mixing control button and made the mix controls always visible was great! For me, the more things that are at one’s fingertips, the better.
I created the new view as there were just too many templates to scroll them all through. I also thought about your problem that you can’t switch that easily between templates now but didn’t get to do anything about that yet.
One possible solution could be a preview button on the bottom of the new GUI which just plays the material in the current band section with the currently selected band. When you select another band it loads the instruments and then starts playing the same notes again with the new band.
This way we could still use the better GUI but at the same time switch bands and hear what they sound like. What do you think? Would this be helpful?
Rather than a preview button, loading the template upon selection (as it previously worked), and then you can just close the list when you’re done would be preferable. I have 115 user-made templates, and having to click twice in two different spots (selection and preview) for each and every one as I go through the list would still be very tedious, compared to just clicking items on the list and hearing them as I browse.
Also I do like the addition of the search filtration feature of the new GUI, it’s just all the extra clicks and GUI closing when I’m still trying to find the right template.
Yeah, I imagined a like a toggle button at the bottom. When it’s enabled every template you click on would be automatically loaded and played without leaving the GUI.