Hey everyone,
I keep a running list of things I come across in MGP that appear inconsistent or might work better with a little tweak, or maybe even a feature idea. Most of it is pretty granular, but I keep track of it anyway. If I list something that’s already in play, please correct me. I try to stay up to date on the latest MGP version, but still miss things. Feel free to add your own! This is just meant to be a groupthink. (I’m on a Mac, BTW)
Things I Keep Bumping Into:
• Being able to create User Style Presets, especially for users who do deep-dive design in their grids.
• Solid colors for backgrounds or User backgrounds. I think this might be underway already.
• The ‘Selected Color’ border in the palette menus is very hard to see amongst all of the color chips. A little wider or more obvious would be helpful.
• Adding a double-click command in the macro-builder. I’ve found that different apps respond differently to two single-click commands in a row. It’s inconsistent and I have to futz with pauses.
• A repeat command functionality in the macro builder for macros where a key command or something else has to be done multiple times in a row instead of duplicating the single command over and over.
• Adding the ability to disable a step instead of deleting it in the macro builder would be SUPER helpful for debugging.
• Being able to change views from Date/Time to Alphabetical in asset lists. Depending on what the assets are, one view or the other is more useful. Searching isn’t always a solution because I can’t remember what I named things sometimes and going by date makes it hard to group assets in a logical way if you’re not accessing the assets within a short period of time.
• A little more flexibility in sizing icons. Some need to contain more visual info than others and as a result, the total icon is either too squished or takes over the whole button.
• Not being able to change the text size of a fader title really limits what you can do with it visually.
Inconsistencies:
• When changing a button layout, type formatting changes along with it. If you’ve custom-formatted text, it gets kicked out.
• Some of the Delete Grid dialog boxes don’t contain the name of the grid being deleted. I think that’s a data point that should remain consistent if you’re deciding to delete something.
• There’s no way to close a menu button without choosing something in the menu. I’ve added a blank “Close” macro at the bottom to get around this, but otherwise you’re stuck if you want to cancel out of the menu.
• When you choose a macro like a Cubase function or Keyboard Maestro, the menu opens up in a way that obscures the name of the macro you’ve made that you’re choosing it for. I know it doesn’t seem like a big deal, but if you’re doing a bunch of them it’s very easy to lose track of which is which if you can’t reference the name of your own macro.
• Return To Previous Grid breaks if any changes or editing is done on the grid that you’re returning from.
• 2-step gradient for faders shows as start and middle colors, not start and end.
• 2- and 3-step gradients other than vertical are locked out for faders.
• Show Cap Border Only and Hide Cap Text don’t copy/paste to other faders when doing style copy.
Bugs?
• If you delete an active profile, MGP crashes. I’ve tried it at least twenty times and it happens every time. If you delete one other than the active one, it works fine.
• When using CAPS LOCK on a bluetooth keyboard to enter text on an iPad, the Tab Key stops working. I don’t know if this is an iOS thing or an MGP thing.
• MGP does not recall a chosen Text Background Color in the palettes. This might be why copying buttons using this option don’t retain the color choice when copied to another grid.
• When adding an Activate Application macro to a Menu Button, that macro automatically becomes the default setting for the button, deleting all other macros and changing the title of the button.
• I still get locked out all the time when I’m trying to move buttons or elements from one place to another. I can’t pin it down to any one thing. Seems totally random. The only way to resolve it for sure is to put a dummy element of the same kind in the space where I’m moving items to. Could it be related to using small spacing/padding on grids?
My Own Self-Serving Wishlist:
• Some bulk commands in Content Manager would help a lot, like Export All Buttons or Export All Grids. Assigning a generic delineator for the upload would be fine. I can go in the iCloud folder and do a quick rename of everything to dial it in. The important thing is speeding up the upload process itself. Last time I did a full button upload to make sure everything was current it took over 8 hours because of having to repeat the same process over and over.
• A default upload location should be a preference. Having to choose where something is going every time when 99% of it is going to the same place seems like overkill, which leads me to…
• I still firmly believe there’s no need to manually confirm an upload every time. I don’t use a single other app that requires this. They only pop an alert when something goes wrong. Between eliminating this and making the upload a preference, that’s eliminating two steps from the process, which is significant.
• I think a control for how to split or merge cells would be cool in that if you’re splitting or merging a block of cells, you can pre-determine the size of the cells instead of always starting from the smallest size or merging specific sizes one by one.
That’s it for now! There aren’t any work-stoppers in here, which is pretty darn impressive. While my iPads still occasionally disconnect for unknown reasons, they recover every time. I’ve also been able to tie some occurrences to things happening in other apps.
