UX of Manual Meta Review: possible simple way to make it better

[frav]

Hello, I've been using dBpoweramp CD Ripper regularly enough that I am ripping CDs with either no metadata in databases or defective data most weeks. When I click on the Tag icon to bring up the DbPoweramp CD Ripper: Manual Meta Review dialog box, it takes up almost all of my 2560x1440 screen, while using only a small portion of that for the data entry interface. It would be better if this dialog was small enough to see another window at the same time.

I can think of three ways to go for that: hardcode a reasonable width and let the height be based on screen dimensions, or, just inherit the main window dimensions at the time the tag button is pressed, or, allow that window to be resizeable. Any of those would work better for a typical use case where I have a track listing open in a web browser window.

This is on Windows 10 22H2, and it looks like I'm running 17.7, looking at https://secure.dbpoweramp.com/getreg...num=*redacted*

Just now purchased R2023-6-26; issue still exists.

Thanks for considering this request.

Sean

[mana]

Re: UX of Manual Meta Review: possible simple way to make it better

Just now purchased R2023-6-26; issue still exists.

Thanks for considering this request.

Sean

Same issue here, though it's worse as my screen is 5120x1440. Have you found a workaround?

Thanks for posting, I was about to upgrade just to fix that issue, until I saw your note that it didn't change...

[davidhbrown]

Re: UX of Manual Meta Review: possible simple way to make it better

+1, using R2023-11-01 on Windows 11 Pro, 23H2

I suspect your subject line might be too polite to catch the developer's attention :-(

This is particularly annoying when having to enter metadata (including composer) that is available online, just not from Discogs/Musicbrainz and I can't have the two windows side-by-side to more easily copy and paste.

It has often baffled me why programmers/UX designers feel compelled to write their own window manager instead of using the one built into the operating system. Maybe they're using some cross-platform UI toolkit; I guess I understand that, but you invariably lose functionality like resizing, snapping, dark mode. Still, the review metadata window functions as a modal dialog. Modal dialogs used for anything except to pause before unrecoverable actions are almost invariably an indication of a poor design decision.

The workaround I'm using is not generally available... I moved dBpoweramp CD Ripper to a secondary monitor which is 4k portrait and opened the review window there, then dragged it over to the main 4k landscape monitor where it isn't too ridiculously wide, though it does extend far below the area... make sure not to simply close the dialog from the [X] and lose your work! Have to move it back where you can see the [OK] button at the bottom.

At least it checks the dimensions of the current monitor rather than only at startup... or getting the combined dimension of the entire workspace. I actually have three monitors and I could imagine this mostly empty dialog trying to span all of them. So, I will content myself that it could be worse. Still annoying.