Please let me use the Navigator as a 100% pixel preview

[eobet]

Since having two windows with different zoom levels open at the same time is bugged anyway (and also requires you to have ugly floating windows on the Mac), please allow an advanced setting for the Navigator window to actually show a 100% pixel perfect preview.

This would be great for creating icons.

[fde101]

Doesn't that kind of defeat the entire point of it being a navigator?

I would think that should be a separate "preview" panel.

[walt.farrell]

4 hours ago, eobet said:

Since having two windows with different zoom levels open at the same time is bugged anyway (and also requires you to have ugly floating windows on the Mac)

I understand your comment about Mac, I think, but what's the bug with having two windows with different zoom levels? I've done that, and never seen a problem (though I am on Windows).

[dominik]

6 hours ago, eobet said:

Since having two windows with different zoom levels open at the same time is bugged anyway (and also requires you to have ugly floating windows on the Mac), please allow an advanced setting for the Navigator window to actually show a 100% pixel perfect preview.

This would be great for creating icons.

Use 'View > New View' arrange the two windows and set one to 100% with CTRL+1 (is it CMD+1 on the Mac?). This is pretty close to what you are asking.

d.

[Mark Ingram]

Yeah this is exactly the purpose of a "New View" (if there is a bug in this area, then please report it and we'll investigate).

[eobet]

7 hours ago, Mark Ingram said:

Yeah this is exactly the purpose of a "New View" (if there is a bug in this area, then please report it and we'll investigate).

I have, several months and one release ago:

 

 

But I guess I have to live with horrible, 80s style floating windows.

[dominik]

8 hours ago, eobet said:

But I guess I have to live with horrible, 80s style floating windows.

I agree, window placement and arrangement has room for improvement.

d.

[thomaso]

On 10/23/2019 at 3:44 PM, Mark Ingram said:

Yeah this is exactly the purpose of a "New View" (if there is a bug in this area, then please report it and we'll investigate).

There is an issue with 100% (or Actual Size) view when using two monitors with different resolution. Then the 100% view fits only to that screen where the app started (the one with the OS menu bar) but doesn't work as correct size if the Affinity main document window is placed on the other screen.

At first I tried to use the advanced option in Navigators Panel to set 100% but unfortunately this feature is meant to work only for a specific page and position within a document.

Another issue with 100% / Actual Size occurs when using the Pages Panel to navigate through pages: every double-click page selection will make the page appear in the main window but not in the currently selected zoom level, e.g. 100%, but always in "zoom to fit" view instead.

[fde101]

On 10/23/2019 at 5:34 PM, eobet said:

horrible, 80s style floating windows

Way back at the dawn of computers there were big expensive monolithic systems that people had to schedule time to use because they were so expensive to buy and maintain that there was no way for everyone to have one at their desk.  Later terminals would allow multiple users to access the computer seemingly at the same time, but sharing the processing resources of one big computer.   Centralized computing.

Then came micro-computers and suddenly users might have their own computer sitting at their desk.  Distributed computing.

Then came the whole client-server thing where major processing was pushed to a server but each user accessed it through a personal computer much like they would have used terminals to access a mainframe in the past.  Centralized computing.

Then came peer-to-peer solutions which shared data among separate computers without the need for a centralized server.  Distributed computing.

Now we have the whole "cloud" thing going on where big companies are farming out major computing resources and users access them remotely from their various "devices".  Centralized computing.

 

The computing industry in general seems to go through cycles where what was unpopular in one generation becomes the "in" thing in the next.  As people start to realize the limitations of what is currently "popular" they try something else and with the effect of the latest buzzword things swing so far in that direction that it needs to correct itself and things get carried back in the other direction.

 

There is nothing wrong with floating windows, and things that were designed in the 1980s are not inherently bad in the 2010s.  Don't let yourself get suckered into the buzzwords that happen to be popular at the moment without understanding first that there are tradeoffs to all of it and what is popular at the moment might not be the best thing for your particular problem or situation.

 

 

On 10/24/2019 at 2:06 AM, dominik said:

window placement and arrangement has room for improvement

Most things do.  I kind of like what the Haiku OS project is doing with their "Stack & Tile" functionality, for example...  a definite step in the right direction as it provides the flexibility of a multi-window interface while still allowing for windows to be stuck together, even including windows from different applications if that helps with organizing how you are working...

[dominik]

14 minutes ago, fde101 said:

I kind of like what the Haiku OS project is doing with their "Stack & Tile" functionality, for example...  a definite step in the right direction as it provides the flexibility of a multi-window interface while still allowing for windows to be stuck together, even including windows from different applications if that helps with organizing how you are working...

Interesting, never heard of that.

There is this new Windows utility 'Fancy Zones' (the name makes me shiver) as part of Windows Power Toys:
https://www.onmsft.com/how-to/how-to-use-fancyzones-windows-10s-new-tiling-window-manager

I wonder if this could be of use here (obviously I haven't tried it).

d.

[fde101]

2 minutes ago, dominik said:

Windows Power Toys

That takes me back a bit, as there was previously a collection of utilities for older Windows versions having that same name.  Looks like they are starting over with this one though.

Tiling window managers have been around for UNIX platforms for a long time now (Wikipedia lists several of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiling_window_manager).  Interesting to see them coming out with one for Windoze.  This isn't the same thing Haiku is doing, it is a different approach, but interesting nevertheless.