Recently i started a personal project which involves creating a Max 4 Live device with dynamic interface and after finding a few limitations i decided to ask Federico ( who has the channel "Amazing Max Stuff" on youtube ) about how he would go about solving this problem.
Federico "amazingly" replied to my message in no time and just a few days after published a video showing how to do it using javascript.
You can watch his video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uO6Ft4WuUQ&ab_channel=AmazingMaxStuff
After watching his video and learning about max msp's js function: "getvalueof" and "setvalueof" i thought it would be a good idea to retribute some of the love Federico have put into the community by creating a video which will hopefully help fellow javascripters improve their patches.
Without further ado let's jump into the project and see how we could improve the javascript part.
-> At 2:35 federico says "We going to create a class"
In reality there is ( or at least there was ) no "class" in javascript [...]
According to this page ( which is outdated. anyone knows a more up to date version of this page? ) http://max-javascript-reference.tim-schenk.de/symbols/#gsc.tab=0
Max MSP runs javascript version 1.6 which according to this page was released in 2005 https://lia.disi.unibo.it/materiale/JS/developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/New_in_JavaScript/1-6.html
-> Javascript best practices "don't use new"
As pointed out on the w3schools website it's not a good practice to use "new" in javascript: https://www.w3schools.com/js/js_best_practices.asp
Using "new" in javascript will create unecessary complications we don't really want to deal with.
By removing this "class" idea we can start working in a more oiled way that will make things like the "this." operator disappear and our mind as js developer expand.
Thinking of code as single independent functions is the way to go ( more on that another time )
-> add 80 characters ruler
-> Default value for parameters
-> storing data on a variable state an using the length of the array as index
-> refactoring variables and functions by pressing F2 on VSCode
-> "patcher" is global! patcher everywhere! https://docs.cycling74.com/max8/vignettes/jsglobal
so basically we can call "patcher" anywhere in the code if we don't use the "this." when calling "patcher".
-> If you add live.* objects via this.patcher they won't be automatable as in: if you right click it won't show the context menu while objects created manually will have the context menu "Show Automation" etcs..
Please contact [email protected] and [email protected] and ask for such feature would be great to get it solved so we can truly have dynamic interfaces on Max4Live !
Federico's video on dynamic interfaces: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uO6Ft4WuUQ&ab_channel=AmazingMaxStuff
github repository with the source code: https://github.com/hems/m4l-dynamic-interface-js
My 2014 Javascript in Max/MSP presentation: http://hems.io/max.js/
JavaScript Live API Tutorials http://compusition.com/writings/js-live-api
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My latest 12" on Titrate: https://hems.bandcamp.com/album/chaotic-affair
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Personal website: https://hems.io
max, msp, max-msp, javascript, js, ableton, live, ableton-live, max4live, max-for-live, audio, programming, sound, dsp, ui