Menu Item disappeared

[Dampsquid]

Change from 1.7.x to 1.8.x somewhere along the line the menu item 'Text > Interactive > Insert Hyperlink' disappeared for already existing hyperlinks.  These can be edited (still) by right clicking and selecting 'interactive' but cannot be edited from the main app menu.  This breaks an automation I have for updating existing hyperlinks in a doc. 😪

[walt.farrell]

Which release, exactly, are you running @Dampsquid, and where did you purchase it?

[Dampsquid]

The screen shots are of 1.7.3 (now restored courtesy TimeMachine) and 1.8.2.  Purchased direct not via app store.  

[thomaso]

To me it appears logically that the menu entry "insert..." isn't available for an already inserted link (though I'd expect it to be greyed out instead of not occurring).

I can't imagine in which way you use an automated update for hyperlinks – but doesn't the Hyperlink Panel give you comfortable access to all hyperlinks in your document at once? – However, possibly there came an UI change in v.1.8.2, which mentioned ...:

Hyperlinks

• Hyperlink Panel wasn't displaying hyperlinks on Master pages
• Renaming hyperlinks in Hyperlink Panel can detach objects

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/110325-affinity-publisher-for-macos-182/

 

[Dampsquid]

@thomaso Of course the logic you describe is without fault. 🤨   If Publisher had changed the menu text to Insert/Edit... there would be no problem.

 Unfortunately the hyperlink panel doesn't help.  In general, having a single pane collecting hyperlinks is useful.  However, from the point of view of updating those hyperlinks it doesn't help - it just helps find them.

Many Mac tools rely on 'reading' the app's menu bar to automate workflows... if the menu item is no longer there, the automation part is no longer possible.  The release notes mention nothing of this change.  It was perhaps deliberate, perhaps the UI designers feel a right click is better (it is for interactive mouse work), but removing something that didn't need removing is, in this case, unhelpful.

I do hope this an oversight / bug and will be put back.  In the meantime a regular task has become more tedious, longer, and more error-prone sadly. So, in the meantime I'll have to stick with 1.7.x.

[thomaso]

Ah, I guess I understand: You aren't missing in the main menu the not-occurring entry "Insert..." but the "Edit..." for already inserted hyperlinks.
I agree, this seems to be an UI mistake (like imho the disappeared "Insert..." which should appear as greyed-out).

The "Interactive" main menu entries appear strange also for the Anchor commands. For both, hyperlinks and anchors, the right-click menu gives options which can't accessed via the main menu. Quite confusing that the UI offers 4 different "Interactive" menus for hyperlinks, instead just 1 with varying colors:

main no link  //  main existing link  //  context no link  //  context existing link:

// // //

 

Hopefully the Affinity developers will fix this menu mixture, at least for macOS, where usually any right-click menu item should also occur in the main menu (with the ability to get a shortcut, too). Compare the Apple Interface Design Guide:

https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/macos/menus/contextual-menus/

  

 

[Gabe]

Hi all,

Thanks for spotting this. I logged it with our developers. 

[Patrick Connor]

We have made fixes/improvements to this area (Text > Interactive > missing options) of the program in the latest release.

The fixes and how to update are described in these forum posts.

• Affinity Publisher 1.8.4 for Windows         ( Microsoft Store and Affinity Store )
• Affinity Publisher 1.8.4 for macOS            ( Mac App Store and Affinity Store )

We would appreciate you checking that this issue has now been resolved for you,

[thomaso]

There is a certain improvement: the newly added menu entry "Hyperlink Properties..." in the main menu Text > Interactive.

But there is also still differences, e.g. a missing entry "Go to Hyperlink Target" in the main menu – it occurs in the context menu only.

Also I experience now, new with v184, difficulties to select an entry in the Hyperlink Panel. It seems never to react on a single click, though it reacts on a double click and opens the property window which then needs to get canceled to achieve simply to select the item. Very seldom it reacts on the arrow up/down keyboard keys to navigate through the entries.

Then, if an item may get selected, I notice difficulties to make the panel's button "Go to Source" being highlighted to function, instead it sometimes remains grayed out when an item was selected successfully. This way the UX confusion gets increased by the inconsistent, coincidental behavior and reaction on clicks.

[Patrick Connor]

@Gabe please report Thomaso's new issues thank you.

[Gabe]

We can't replicate your 2 new issues @thomaso. Can you please create a new post with a screen recording? They seem to be slightly different than the original issue. 

[thomaso]

@Gabe, done. (Interesting, the "Go to Source" button was much less often grayed out today than before as mentioned above.)