Control Locks in V4???

Keep seated waiting for an answer for FF 4.0, it has been already six years without an answer, and I have already put older threads related to this very interesting, helpful, useful and very needed topic but it seems that Vladimir have ignored them totally and have not given any answer.

I do not know if this is because this is not going to be included in FF 4.0 or they do not know if this has some priority for this version or they will not have time for this and so Vladimir does not want to say nothing about this until he can have a possible answer.

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Vladimir Golovin One ingredient for this is still missing (on the GUI side). If all goes well, we will introduce this ingredient in the next beta. (this is refering to FF 3.0 Beta and it never happened, so this is why I think now he do not want to tell until it will be possible)

THREADS already about this long and much requested topic JULY 2006!! and we are now in OCTOBER 2012 already MORE THAN SIX YEARS waiting for this and there is still no news how much we will have to wait for having this very needed and very useful feature.

I have found TWELVE THREADS requesting this feature since 2006 and still in 2012 there is no news about this

How many more threads and request are needed to have this included in FF ?

Randomize Options July 2006

Lock Controls On Randomize October 2006

'Randomizable' option for controls April 2007

Steve's Most Wanted September 2007

Top 5 "Fixes"...... January 2008

Wishlist: Randomize ON/OFF for each setting. May 2008

Randomizer Locks April 2009



Control Locks for Settings April 2010

CONTROL LOCKS!!! April 2011

*cough* CONTROL LOCKS!!! *uncough* August 2011

Please, which features from the WIKI are the most wanted by you ? November 2011

Top 3 Features Wanted!!! January 2012

SOME COMMENTS ABOUT THIS TOPIC

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StevieJ It's not possible to suggest this feature too much.....it's an obvious feature that should be with this program...

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StevieJ The "benefits" of this are actually two fold... Not only would you be able to efficiently utilize randomization towards zeroing in on desired results...but you would also be able to use it towards troubleshooting and zeroing in on problems in filter construction...

There are LOTS and LOTS more comments by StevieJ for more of them see the the threads

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Kraellin i'd like a little 'lock' that i can toggle on and off on each control in the browser to allow or disallow this control to be randomized when i hit the 'next variant' button. there are just sometimes that i dont want a certain slider/control randomized when i hit the 'next variant' button.

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Crapadilla Time to bump this... + 1 Filtrillion

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CorvusCroax Yes... PLEEEEZEEE include this in 4.0!!

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Morgantao +100000001

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beekeeper My word, good Sir, I thank you for mentioning the subject. Many has been the time when I have DESPERATELY wished that such a feature existed especially when working with filters with a large number of variables, as you yourself mentioned in a previous post. Personally I think it would cut down a lot of 'fiddle' time when trying to find that elusive perfect combination when working with filters, particularly the ones with a kazillion Controls. So I most heartily echo Morgantao's +100000001.

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Orteil I shall plus this also.

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Totte + π*10E31

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Sphinx +1 here (and its an easy one to add..looking forward to it)

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lipebianc Man, that's a MUST HAVE feature!!!

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Skybase ... that last post was 100% unnecessary.

Well this is your own personal opinion

I do not think so. I did not start this thread.

I agree with StevieJ and I want to help him AND all the other that have been requesting this since 6 years ago in 2006

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Skybase The message is clear, I'm sure voices are heard well enough at this point.

Well now after I have added my super post is really clear

Are you sure that the voice are heard ???

They have not been heard since 6 years ago, why would be different now if I do not show how much this has been requested?

It seems that they are really not heard enough as there has not been any answer to this even when GMM and Vladimir must have seen it.

And although I do not know what would be needed to make this, I do not think it would need a huge load of work and lots of time to be able to make this request, AND this would really be very useful to get a much better use of the randomizer and get much more from it IF you could choose WHAT to randomize, on some filters this would not do much, but on many of them this could mean a big difference.

No confirmation doesn't really mean we do not listen or ignore your requests

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GMM No confirmation doesn't really mean we do not listen or ignore your requests

I know that you may read it and KNOW about it BUT as there is NO answer or ANY comment we can´t know if you really care about it or not and if you will want to make something about it or not.

I understand very well that of course you CAN´T agree and make all the requests for FF and I would not expect that at all, BUT for something that has been already requested during 6 YEARS, I think we could have a little more information about it.

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StevieJ Good job, SpaceRay!!!

Thanks, we both want to have this very important and useful feature in Filter Forge and I also want to help you and others to keep requesting for this.

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StevieJ I personally would like to see little buttons that toggle red for locked and green for unlocked...much more contemporary than the open and closed padlocks...and much easier to see...

YES! I agree with you that it would be much better to have red and green icons or buttons instead of the padlocks and I would like it this way too, BUT really I do not care much HOW they do it, what is important is that THEY DO IT AND COULD BE AVAILABLE IN FF 4.0!

I do not know WHY is so difficult to have this that seems to be something simple.

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I personally would like to see little buttons that toggle red for locked and green for unlocked...much more contemporary than the open and closed padlocks...and much easier to see... Just say'n... Steve

FYI Actually, many UI designers try to avoid red/green dualities: color blind people can't differentiate them. (I forget the statistics, but it's actually a surprisingly high level of the adult male population.)
A lot of UI's will have 2 differentiating features: text AND color for example. Stoplights use color AND position.

Just sayin

One of these days....

Here below I have made the conversion of your great design of the padlocks with the red and green colors suggested by StevieJ

And for me surely looks better and easier to identify with these red and green, but as already said I really do not care much HOW FF INc. could do it, what is important is THAT THEY DO IT !

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CorvusCroax Which I made many, many years ago

Thanks very much for making it as it is really very good and well done

And as it happens with many things in Filter Forge requests, you request or suggest something and it can happen that must wait many years until it perhaps can be implemented and really be inside Filter Forge, EVEN if it is something simple and VERY needed and useful like this and that would bring a whole new way of randomizing and would be much more useful and interesting.

Why not just a simple column of on/off boxes on the left, like the one used for Seamless Tiling, with a header "Lock". The ones you want to lock will have an X after you click on them. No need to use icons or colors.

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Skybase are we subconsciously being reminded of Christmas?

I have just made the suggestion made by StevieJ

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Skybase Just colors on the locks will throw people off.

I do not see why, and if you do not like these colors it can be changed or made in another way

If you do not like it, you could make your own mockup and suggest what you think would be good and best

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Cierracat Why not just a simple column of on/off boxes on the left

As I have alread said I really do not care HOW they do it, it can buttons, checkboxes, padlocks, colored padlock, icons, or whatever FF Inc. considers good, what is really important IS THAT THEY MAKE IT AND INCLUDES IT IN FF 4.0

The screenshot no.8 gives me nostalgic feelings. This is Internet Explorer 4.0 or even 3.0.

As my post here has been lost I put it again

Yes, GMM you are right I did not notice this until you have told it and I have seen that it has the very old IE logo and also the windows style is old too, I have only seen the checkboxes

I think that we will not have any news about this if this is going to be included in FF 4.0 or not, until it happens or not.

I really hope and wish that Vladimir will really consider including this in FF 4.0 as it is very handy, useful and needed thing to get the most of the filters and to be able to have more possible ways to get variation in a customized and controlled way.

Please, Please, Vladimir be so kind to include this

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StevieJ GMM said it was happening

I have not seen that GMM have told anything about this topic and this was "happening" or that it will be included in FF 4.0, so he did not lie (at least I did not see where he has said something about this)

hahaha I see what happened here.

You know, part of the reason why companies don't want to spell everything out is that they don't want to make empty promises. This is something I learnt from just doing business on a regular basis. Just gets nasty when things don't happen. See, if I were planning to make a GPU-based graphical development toolkit, I'm not going to say that until I have something. And if I say it during the planning phase or even during any alpha stage, but the software becomes vaporware I'd get a mob.

See, if SpaceRay's begging for answers in bold with "please please" in the sentence... then FilterForge has done a very good job keeping people excited. hahaha Patients isn't just a virtue, it's also practice.

And I doubt answers will be coming out anytime soon. And hey, if it does, that's cool too.

I agree with StevieJ in his last post here.

We are not asking something really very difficult and that would take a huge amount of time and development to make. I am not a programmer and do not know really how easy or difficult it can be, BUT limiting the data the randomizer can get from the settings in the filter, can´t be too much difficult.

I do not know if there could be any other possible technical reason or any other thing why this has not been done already in the the 3 versions available, but I hope that in the FF 4.0 this will be possible. And adding some kind of checkboxes to the UI does not need an high engineering master degree to make.

It would be a pity that this continues to be the same in FF 4.0 without any possible control and customization of the randomization.

Please consider adding this feature

Thanks very much

And begging even more I can say "Please" in more than 270 languages

Oh man, not this again. Spaceray, is it really necessary to post these endless repetitions of the same thing over and over and over and over? If anything, it makes things worse by creating an impression that "X is a feature requested by a single overly vocal member of the community" as opposed to "a feature requested by many different people".

I repeat again, SpaceRay, we know what features people request. I ask GMM and he compiles forum digests for me. Your endless posts make his job harder, because he has to filter out your comments and threads.

Some of your posts that have actual novel content in them may simply get mentally tagged as "another repetitive post with little substance", so you may want to consider improving your signal to noise ratio, just to get your ideas noticed.

Also, we know how to design checkboxes. We know how to google "checkbox UI", and how to use Google in general: I've been a white-hat SEO in one of my past careers. Please don't assume that the absence of urgent attention to a Feature X is a result of our inability to use Google or our inability to implement said feature in general. As for the examples you posted, they are all unusable for us because we follow native platform UI guidelines on Mac and PC, so our checkboxes have to have a native platform look. No need to reinvent and repaint the wheel here. (Let alone the fact that a checkbox without an explanation, next to a parameter name would be a bad interface for randomizer lock).

<official hat off>
P.S. And on a personal note, I'm an introvert, a rather extreme one, and my brain simply shuts down when it has to endure even lesser amounts of verbal overload. I apologize for stating this bluntly, but I just skim through your posts and heavily discount their value, and sometimes the value of the entire thread as well (unless GMM thinks the thread is indeed valuable).
<official hat on>

P.P.S. We definitely need a threaded forum with a karma system.

Another remaining question is where to store the locked/unlocked flag: per filter or per preset?

Here's a rather strong flavor of the "little lock" approach I described above. When the mouse hovers over a parameter, it sort of turns into a button. If the parameter was unlocked, a "ghost unlocked lock" icon appears on it, and if the mouse cursor lingers for a little longer, a yellow tooltip pops up, with a stem pointing at the lock and a text explaining its meaning.

Turning the parameter name into a button is somewhat too strong, because it will be a bit annoying when scrolling long list of controls. On the other hand, if we remove the "buttoning", the link between the lock and parameter name will become less reinforced, and if we remove the on-hover behavior, the entire thing becomes much less discoverable.

Both are interesting UX questions.

First, which of the two options: "transparent" button (right example) or drop-down menu (left example). As you note, the drop-down UI option (left example) is nicely extensible. I'd recommend that direction IFF you have an actual intention to make use of that capability. If there aren't any, on the other hand, then definitely the lighter load of the simple on/off switch.

Second, though, is if you do go with the drop-down menu, there needs to be some visual indication of the fact that one or more non-default choices have been made under that item. Simplest would be a mini-icon to the left (a bullet, star, whatever) to the left to indicate that one or more non-default values have been selected.

<possibly unwarranted>
Another possibility would be to somehow indicate which item has been selected (as opposed to the simple option which simply indicates THAT an item has been selected).

So perhaps if "Parameters is not randomized" is selected, then an orange border or background is drawn around / used for the value field. If you also include an "always use filter's default value for this parameter" (an invented parameter -- not a request then perhaps the entire parameter appears greyed out.

Finally I can imagine some menu items which are actions rather than state (e.g. "Reset to Preset Default") and so would not require specific GUI representation.
</possibly unwarranted>

Your second question is more interesting as obviously whichever answer you choose will not fit all use cases (and therefore guaranteeing some grumbles).

I happen to be one of the people who, years ago, made a request for the ability to suppress randomization.

Then, and now, I could actually live without persistence entirely.

For myself, anyway, I don't see this as some associated with either a particular filter or a particular preset within that filter. It's more of a particular state I'm in in terms of exploring a filter.

Then (and now) I expect I would use this to explore a downloaded filter. Start with a preset and start monkeying around with individual parameters, resetting to the default after toying with various values.

At that point, I have a decent idea of which respond in an interesting manner to variation and which are the ones I want to stay put. I'd like to then lock those down and start banging away on the Randomize button. As I go, I'd be likely to lock additional parameters down as the randomizer finds values I like.

So from one point of view, attaching the lock to the filter is reasonable: it potentially signals a parameter which doesn't necessarily respond well to random values. On the other, attaching the lock to a preset signals a SET of parameters which together define the style, with the unlocked parameters being potential variations within that style (e.g. Colour or Scaling)

Really the obvious suggestion is to allow both Filter level locks and Preset level locks. It moves you into the left-hand-side design, but then that would allow things like "Reset to Preset Default" and possibly others you have imagined.

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Control locks should be per-filter, and only per-filter, IMO.

That was my initial say but I also just can't let go of a possibility of developing some filter that behaves like a little tool pack. haha. FilterForge for control freaks.

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Then, and now, I could actually live without persistence entirely.

Gilles, yes, but I think you'd still prefer that your randomization lock settings were retained at least for the current session. That is, when you lock some controls in a filter, switch to another filter then back to the first one, you'd see all your locks still in place.

Technically, the per-session persistence of filter settings is currently implemented by saving a temporary memory-only preset when you switch from one filter to another, and when you switch back to this filter again, FF applies that preset and you get your original settings back. Otherwise, you'd lose all your settings as soon as you switched to another filter.

So, presets, in their current implementation, are a natural candidate for storing the locks.

Well I´m happy if we get control locks at all, but I can see how per-preset storage could add nice options, especially in complex filters. If it can be done that way, why not add it.