It just struck me today how unwelcoming the Select Project window is.
Why is it un-sizeable? Some people have hundreds of projects on their systems and the window for seeing them is STUCK at 10 projects?
When the Select Project window is open, that's all you get. It's the sum total of the UI. You don't need space for ANYTHING else on the screen.
Why not take advantage of the screen real estate? Here's an idea:
What about instead of having a single scrolling window to view Private, Shared and External and having the one little "user profile Folder selection" at the top you actually have three scrolling windows that are at least double the length (if not draggable to full screen length). You can show us the projects in ALL THREE types of projects side by side and at the top of each of them, show us what the source folder is where the projects are located.
It's completely pointless, but in Resolve, the user settings actually show you a picture of the user. Or at least an avatar. Something to call your attention to the current user.
The Select Project UI window is very small and almost ALL of it is wasted space. There are three radio buttons and a New Project button that take up a huge amount of space. The most important part (the previous project list) is relegated to what I'm guessing is about 1/8th of the UI. Not only is 10 projects too short, but the NAMES are almost always truncated. The lengths of Project names are restricted, but on TOP of that, the Project window - the most important place to actually VIEW the name - truncates them even FURTHER. Even if they didn't make the window bigger, by better using the space, they could at least show you the complete names of the projects. I think you can only see 28 characters of the Project names? Why? What's the maximum project name character count? Why not have a window that actually shows THAT MANY CHARACTERS?
Can anybody else think of useful information that could show up in the Select Project Window? This is the FIRST thing you see on launching. What would be good? Why does the window have to be so small?
There used to be a way to group projects so that you didn't see EVERY project in a given list (shared). Why not be able to only show projects active in the last three months or something like that? I used to have subfolders, so when I opened the Select Project window, it would only show me certain projects - like per client. You can still do this if you customize the target folder pathway, but what about allowing subfolders INSIDE "shared?"
Maybe - like Adobe - make room for a daily tip to come up in the window.
Maybe have a cool RSS feed of Avid information come up - like cool Avid articles on the website or maybe - like Adobe - it could let you know when a new version is available.
On my screen, the Select Project window is maybe 1/16th the size of the entire screen. Even if you only used a quarter of the screen, think about how much cool stuff you could put in it. Heck Avid, quadruple the space and sell 1/4 of it to plugin and third party vendors who could offer trial deals.
COME ON PEOPLE! RISE UP! "MY SELECT PROJECT WINDOW IS TOO SMALL AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!"
WHAT DO WE WANT?
A BIGGER SELECT PROJECT WINDOW!!!
WHEN DO WE WANT IT?
NOW!
(that's not realistic)
WHEN DO WE WANT IT?
IN THE NEXT PRODUCT CYCLE!
(that has no sense of drama)
WHEN DO WE WANT IT?
NOW!
Steve Hullfish
"Avid Uncut" (now that the new book is done, I clearly have too much time on my hands...)
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