When you say the floating selection toolbox, do you mean the edit bar that appears below annotations when they are selected? That's not really something I believe should be movable or need to be movable, because it's position needs to be updated every time a new annotation is selected, including if that annotation is moved. Making it something that can be moved means complicated behavior where it's moved position is only temporary until the list of selected annotations changes or something like that. If you want to have some kind of option to hide that bar while annotations are selected, that you would then have to switch off if you want to see the edit bar, I can support that, but that seems rather tedious. Or I could add an option to anchor it somewhere on the screen, like below the selection icon in the toolbar, or in a corner. Or I could consider some way of making the edit bar collapsable/expandable. Perhaps if it's collapsed, an icon shows up somewhere else like the undo/redo bar at the bottom right to expand it, or in the overflow menu of the toolbar. I'm up for suggestions, but I don't really want to make that bar draggable. As a side note, is there a reason you can't just tap away from the annotation to deselect it, then tap it again if you need to select it to adjust it? I realize that could be tedious as well if you have a large number of annotations, but I just wanted to ask to be sure.
I can't really support both the old and new approaches (at least not well). The reason is, in the old design, you could have annotations selected, and then change the settings in the windows and it would apply those changes to the selected annotations (and the tool windows would be updated to reflect the settings of the selected annotations). In the new design, if you tap the selection tool, then select a stamp, the only way you could modify the stamp settings is if you left the stamp window up or if you use the radial menu. Stamps are probably the only one with a separate window that stays up to let you modify settings. If you wanted to modify a freeform annotation, using the radial menu would be the only way, because you can't view the pen dropdown without first tapping to select the pen tool (which deselects all annotations). It seems easy enough to select a stamp, tap edit and then adjust the size with the slider, as you can see the changes to the size in real time (although there is an issue with the edit window and the edit bar not updating their position after the stamp size changes, so I willl have to fix that). If users really prefer the idea of selecting an existing stamp, then using the stamp window to modify the settings for that stamp versus going through the edit window, I will consider that, but it kind of goes against the design for every other tool, and that kind of inconsistency can get a little confusing for users.
As far as abandoning changes, I'm not going to add support for canceling out, because it adds a ton of complexity with not being able to write anything to the database (because then I can't easily roll back the changes unless I leave the database in a transaction without ever ending the transaction which would mean data could be lost if the device turned off unexpectedly), and also requires a lot more complexity with having to deal with copies of everything, because the original song object can't be modified until the user saves. I'm fine with adding support for a "undo all changes" option that would basically be the equivalent of hitting undo over and over. You could then trigger that before exiting. Some actions can't be reversed though, such as creating layers and adding snippets (although I'm looking into design changes to potentially support undo with snippets), which was part of the drive for me to no longer support a cancel option, because it everything gets messy and complicated otherwise.
Mike
I can't really support both the old and new approaches (at least not well). The reason is, in the old design, you could have annotations selected, and then change the settings in the windows and it would apply those changes to the selected annotations (and the tool windows would be updated to reflect the settings of the selected annotations). In the new design, if you tap the selection tool, then select a stamp, the only way you could modify the stamp settings is if you left the stamp window up or if you use the radial menu. Stamps are probably the only one with a separate window that stays up to let you modify settings. If you wanted to modify a freeform annotation, using the radial menu would be the only way, because you can't view the pen dropdown without first tapping to select the pen tool (which deselects all annotations). It seems easy enough to select a stamp, tap edit and then adjust the size with the slider, as you can see the changes to the size in real time (although there is an issue with the edit window and the edit bar not updating their position after the stamp size changes, so I willl have to fix that). If users really prefer the idea of selecting an existing stamp, then using the stamp window to modify the settings for that stamp versus going through the edit window, I will consider that, but it kind of goes against the design for every other tool, and that kind of inconsistency can get a little confusing for users.
As far as abandoning changes, I'm not going to add support for canceling out, because it adds a ton of complexity with not being able to write anything to the database (because then I can't easily roll back the changes unless I leave the database in a transaction without ever ending the transaction which would mean data could be lost if the device turned off unexpectedly), and also requires a lot more complexity with having to deal with copies of everything, because the original song object can't be modified until the user saves. I'm fine with adding support for a "undo all changes" option that would basically be the equivalent of hitting undo over and over. You could then trigger that before exiting. Some actions can't be reversed though, such as creating layers and adding snippets (although I'm looking into design changes to potentially support undo with snippets), which was part of the drive for me to no longer support a cancel option, because it everything gets messy and complicated otherwise.
Mike