MS4 – Feedback about Usability

• Dec 16, 2022 - 09:27

I would like to share my observations concerning Usability, if that's ok:

  • All scrollable areas (like "Note Input" or "General => Languages") cannot be scrolled using the mouse wheel
  • TAB does not move the input cursor from one input field to the next (e.g. all inputs in "Appearance")

It would be awesome to have a context-sensitive "reset" option in the drop-down menu, e.g. on accidentals which can be moved too easily, or note heads.

MacOS 12.6, M1, 16GB

Thank you for this awesome software!


Comments

I'm not understanding what about note input you are trying to scroll. Are you saying the toolbar doesn't fit in the window? I don't have any issues scrolling dropdown lists like the languages listing.

As per various accessibility guidelines, Tab now moves through groups of settings, with arrow keys moving through individual settings. Also F6 moves through larger groups still.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Thank you for your reply! – I didn't know neither understand that TAB moves through groups. Need to get used to that. Also, I didn't know abut using the arrow keys. They work fine, thanks for pointing that out.

However, when I try to offset notes, neither TAB nor arrow keys work, when I want to move from the x-offset to the y-offset input. I add a video, which shows that it is possible to move backwards to the "reset circle arrow", but it is not possible to reach the y-offset input field.

https://dl.rowild.at/musescore/ms4_no-keyboard-nav-for-notehead-offsets…

I also made 2 videos about the scrolling problem. I made sure that my mouse works fine, so it is not the hardware. As mentioned, I am on a MacBook Pro with a M1 processor. What do you use? Not sure if that makes any difference. Maybe someone else out there, who has a MacBook Pro with M1 could share her/his experience.

https://dl.rowild.at/musescore/ms4-no-scrolling-1.mp4
https://dl.rowild.at/musescore/ms4-no-scrolling-2.mp4

If you have any hints what I should do differently, please let me know! Maybe I am using MuseScore not correctly...

In reply to by rowild

By offset notes, if you mean, you wish to make manual adjustments to their position for some reason, obviously the cursor keys won't work since they are normally for navigation. but you can put a note into edit mode by pressing F2. or use the Properties panel.

If you mean, reaching the offset field in properties, if you say exactly where you are starting, I can explain the exact keyboard sequence to get to Y offset. But also, it would help to explain why you would want to offset the Y offset of a note. X offset can occasionally make sense when dealing with complex music in three or more voices on a staff. Y offset would almost never make sense for notes.

Regarding videos, it's much easier for people to help if you can post to YouTube and put a link here. Then we don't have to first download them then and fill up our drives.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

No, I do NOT mean to use the cursor keys to change the value in any of those offset input fields, but to jump from one to the other. You said cursor keys are used for navigation in MuseScore, for which any other software uses TAB. So that's the problem to focus on.

Also not sure why you need to know why I want to change the y-offset of a note. The function is there, the input field is there, it can be activated by mouse click, but not by the MuseScore's navigational means. It is not about a Why, but about consistency. (Aside from that, there would be enough reasons why to use an offset, but that would be a totally different discussion.)

Also: if you click on a video, it opens in a new browser window and can be played from there. This is normal web behaviour. No need to download it.

In reply to by rowild

The reason I want to know why you are changing the Y offset is to give you the best possible assistance on how to achieve the goal. My aim is always to provide the best help I can, and often that means, pointing out there is a better way to achieve the goal than the way someone was first trying to do it.

Anyhow, I now think I see what you mean - the spin boxes in the Properties panel do indeed seem hard to navigate by keyboard. I recommend opening an issue on GitHub and including precise steps to reproduce the problem.

I can't reproduce any problem with scrolling the languages dropdown, though. Might have to do with your specific mouse driver perhaps.

And yes, I now see that your videos are links, sorry for the confusion. I saw the file extension and thought they were attachments. Another post I was responding to recently also had attachments and they were in a format my computer doesn't understand. Anyhow, for me, it's usually much clearer to read descriptions that to try to understand what's going on in a video.

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