Ingresar:     

Forum: Wishes and new features

Tópico: Clipboard Functionality
The other day I was creating some automix playlists when I inadvertently clicked on delete and lost all my work. I was really surprised that Virtual DJ had no undo function which is now standard on most apps/software.

It would really be a life saver if the developers can add an undo/recovery function to the app please. If that is too much to ask, then at the very least, let's have a confirmation dialogue box every time delete is pressed. Thanks for the fantastic work you are doing.
 
Mensajes Wed 07 Jan 26 @ 10:53 pm
If you research other DJ software, Traktor apparently has no undo function. Rekordbox doesn't have a universal undo, and Serato only has a limited undo - so VDJ is not alone in that respect.
 
The lack of Undo is not because nobody thought of adding one. It's because it cannot be added with a way that makes sense and makes things simpler, not more complicated.

VirtualDJ is a real time mixing software. This means that a lot of functions cannot be undone / doesn't make sense to be "undone"
If you hit the wrong "PLAY/PAUSE" button in the middle of a mix and you ruin it (we have all done this), an "undo" feature won't fix the ruined mix, not will travel you back in time.. :P

So, not everything makes sense to have an undo capability.
Which introduces these main issues:
1) Which features do make sense to have an undo capability
2) How do you ensure that "undo" undoes what the user expects it to undo, since it doesn't undo the "last" action ?

Especially Nr2 is a very critical question and a tough problem to solve.
Having some but not all actions being able to be "undone" introduces a case where a person could try to undo something, but he actually undoes something else, and that something else may even not be in front of his eyes.

Finally:
VirtualDJ has some security dialogs, but it's not possible to "ask every time delete is pressed"
It introduces the opposite effect. It gets irritating and you get so accustomed to it, that you always confirm the damn thing without paying attention. Thus it fails to grab your attention even when it has to (like before deleting a file).
A too much "sensitive" / "repeating" / "irritating" warning system usually has the opposite effect of the one it desires to achieve.
In fact it was a contributing factor on a few plane crashes! And if a trained pilot can become so much accustomed to a warning that at the end ignores it and crashes his jet, I'm sure the average user cannot do better.. :)
 
Personally, for me, an automix / sidelist / browser library entry / file delete undo (ctrl+z) / redo (ctrl+y) would be all I'd need and would likely be helpful to others as well. There have been several times when any or all of those undo/redo functions would have come in handy.
 
A little curious though - how did you accidentally remove a file from the playlist/drive?

The reason I ask:

  • If you did that from the context menu, that took some effort (sort of hard to imagine doing that by mistake)
  • If you did that from a keyboard shortcut, maybe just remove the shortcut or make it one that isn't easy to hit immediately?


That's not to say the suggestion isn't a good one, but it does feel like often times the action could be avoided.

For instance, I had the keyboard shortcuts in a state where Backspace would remove a song from a playlist (not sure if it was one of the default shortcuts or not, but I didn't add/don't remember adding hatt myself), and I often accidentally hit that while having focus in the browser whilr thinking the focus in the search bar. Removing that shortcut basically eliminated all of the accidental deletions from the playlist.
Everything else was a conscious effort for me to do the removal.
 
I use the keyboard a lot. If I hit the delete key, it will remove a song from the automix, sidelist or karaoke list. Not the browser library or list shortcuts, though.

Removing the functionality from the delete key is not an option for me because there are times when I WANT to delete an entry from a list.
 
Why not put the delete functionality behind SHIFT+DELETE then (would take a more conscious effort to actually delete but still quick)?

It just seems like the real issue is it's too easy to accidentally delete with the current shortcut (and even with undo, you'll have to take time to do the undo, either with a new shortcut for it, or through the mouse menus), while prevention/making it less likely is the fastest option.
 
DJ VinylTouch wrote :
Why not put the delete functionality behind SHIFT+DELETE then (would take a more conscious effort to actually delete but still quick)?

It just seems like the real issue is it's too easy to accidentally delete with the current shortcut (and even with undo, you'll have to take time to do the undo, either with a new shortcut for it, or through the mouse menus), while prevention/making it less likely is the fastest option.


Willing to try. In the Advanced keyboard editor, what would be the action I would add to the Shift+Delete key? Simply 'delete' doesn't seem to work.
 
I would say if DELETE is doing the job for you now, then head to the Controllers tab, click in the Key field, hit DELETE/BACKSPACE, copy the Action field exactly as you see it, then delete the Action field, then hit SHIFT+BACKSPACE, paste what you copied into the action field, and save that.

I assume the verb is browser_remove. I don't know if there is a filesystem remove verb (and that's probably for good reason).
 
DJ VinylTouch wrote :
I would say if DELETE is doing the job for you now, then head to the Controllers tab, click in the Key field, hit DELETE/BACKSPACE, copy the Action field exactly as you see it, then delete the Action field, then hit SHIFT+BACKSPACE, paste what you copied into the action field, and save that.

I assume the verb is browser_remove. I don't know if there is a filesystem remove verb (and that's probably for good reason).


When I click the 'delete' key, there's nothing in the 'action' box. I can't seem to find where to delete the action of the delete key. Both the delete key and shift+delete delete entries in the automix list.
 
Are you on Mac or Windows?

On Mac I only get removal if I map browser_remove to BACK (what occurs when I hit DELETE on the keyboard).
 
DJ VinylTouch wrote :
Are you on Mac or Windows?

On Mac I only get removal if I map browser_remove to BACK (what occurs when I hit DELETE on the keyboard).


Windows.
 
So I just quickly tried the DELETE button on my Windows machine and yes it does delete (I think that is a bug). BACK (BACKSPACE) does nothing (as expected).

When I map DELETE and SHIFT+DELETE to nothing, then it doesn't delete, so I assume you can just map DELETE to nothing to stop it from doing that, and leave SHIFT+DELETE either without an explicit mapping, or with browser_remove, and that should work.
 
On Windows the delete key indeed removes songs from a list as is standard in Windows applications.
On mac this is CMD+back, as is standard in Mac applications