to get back my beloved Properties window from Siblius 6, I have reassigned the keyboard shortcut for the Inspector in Sibelius 7 from
shift-cmd-I to alt-cmd-P (Mac).
But I notice, that the „text“ bit is quite reduced in the Inspector. F.e. I will only find the „underline“ text style there.
If I want to change the size or apply another text style I would have to go to the text tab and work from there.
This seems quite complicated compared to, what I was used from the earlier Sibelius versions.
Why is that, is it the new text formatting options, which get into the way?
Thank you for clarification.
They should put text properties back in the inspector.
I for one don't like the auto-resize behavior in the new inspector. It's visually distracting when you are trying to work. You get this flickering in the corner of your eye. The old just-gray-it-out behavior was better. At least give us an option.
I can't tell you how much I dislike the reverse video display of the new inspector. Reverse video text on computers went out with the 80s. Hate it, hate it, hate it. What we had before was perfectly attractive and useful. The new version is ugly and harder to look at (as you have to refocus your eyes from looking at black-on-white from your score, to white-on-gray for the inspector).
We followed the example of other similar inspector UI in Apple's apps like iPhoto etc. when designing the Inspector. But thanks for the comments about the colour scheme. We'll certainly think about changing it.
The justification for that is that underlined text is used extremely sparingly in music, and so it's an uncommon option, whereas the options in the Text > Format group on the ribbon are the common ones.
in iPhoto one works mostly with coloured images. That's why the black UI seems to work well there, it does not distract from the area you are working on.
In music notation one is dealing with Black and White most of the time (not even greyscale), so it's a different animal.
Given that the Inspector appears near the selection, and given that music is generally whiter than it is black, we felt it was a good way to have a high-contrast interface for these contextually-relevant controls.
> Given that the Inspector appears near the selection, and given that music is generally whiter than it is black, we felt it was a good way to have a high-contrast interface for these contextually-relevant controls.
But not for the Keypad, the Navigator, the Transport bar....?
(But PLEASE don't make them eye-shocking as well!)
Would it be THAT difficult to reinstate full information about a selected object in the Inspector, as was in the Properties window? You could have some of it in the Ribbon as well. Please don't close your mind to this possibility!
And that idea for a pop-up Ribbon, like the Windows task bar, is an excellent one. It could be a selectable option.
I'd like to support calls for the Inspector to show everything there is about the selection that is editable, after all the title of the Inspector popup window is (in the case of a note) "Edit Note". While I support the rationale of having only one path to a particular function in principle, it seems this can never fully be the case, because we have keyboard shortcuts, and in the File menu some functions like "Open" are duplicated in the File Tab of the Ribbon.
Text for example has its Properties now split across 3 locations (the Ribbon, the Inspector and the Status Bar), whereas Note Properties are not editable in the Ribbon or in the Status Bar (nothing is currently editable in the Status Bar), and Pitch is editable only by manipulation in the staff itself.
I also would like the Inspector to toggle open/close on keyboard shortcut cmd+shift+I, because it currently requires a reach for the mouse to close it every time (even when unpinned). W closes the entire score, so is not usable as a shortcut to close the Inspector and no shortcut in Preferences>Keyboard Shortcuts>Home is available that I am aware of to close the Inspector.
As regards the rationale of having the Inspector contrasting by colour to its environment (which well suits my own uses), and I am aware this post is now deviating from relevance to the Inspector issue, I would like the Ribbon Tabs when selected, to contrast far more than they do at present for the same reason. If not considered too garish, the purple highlight currently reserved exclusively for the File tab would do the job admirably.
Derek,
I also have to agree on this one.
For me the tabs are hard to read (too dark!).
So I find myself selecting the parts by going to the plus symbol on the top right side to select the parts in a menu style manner (which makes us wonder, how „bad“ the earlier versions actually were...)
I'm not really finding it too dark, more that to my 59yo eyes, the selected Tab looks too similar in its highlighted colour to all the unselected ones, whereas File is dead clear in Purple. I'd prefer any selected Tab to be purple, and for File to be not highlighted if the File Tab is not selected. I really can't figure why File is always purple anyway, and am hoping it's just oversight, and that we'll soon have only one purple tab, and that will be whichever tab is currently selected.
Attaching image of how the Ribbon looks on my setup.
oh, I didn’t know one could set up the Ribbon yet.
Did you hack the application or how did you manage to get certain areas condensed?
or may be I should have a look into the manual.
All dragging and right-clicking into the Ribbon did not give any response. So it does not seem configurable to me.
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Sibelius 6.2.0 on Mac OSX 10.6.8
I think it's just a matter of resizing the window itself, rather than trying to adjust the Ribbon. Sibelius automatically reorganises all the Ribbon's bits and bobs so they always remain accessible irrespective of window geometry.
ok., I figured out, it has to to with the width os the open window but:
Why do these two areas expand and not other ones?
By now I know the shortkey for a slur (S) and a hairpin (H), so why does this section unnecessarily expand? It doesn’t really make sense (unless it will have to be configurable in the future). On the other hand a Menu, which one just opens at that little moment, you’d need it would make more sense. This is something we already had, some of these things one could change but not improve, as they seemed perfect in the first place...
I bought Sibelius 2018.7 two months ago, and now I am doing some arranging course where I need an Inspector window. I know that it opens with cmd-shift-I, but in my case it doesn't function.