Lock and Unlock icon on a layer

[Majed Alshammarii]

When you try to lock or unlock you need to right-click a layer and select Lock. I want Affinity supporter to add an icon for that next to the layer. Hide and Unhide need some update with an eye icon not a check mark. Icons should be meaningful. 

[walt.farrell]

9 hours ago, Majed Alshammarii said:

When you try to lock or unlock you need to right-click a layer and select Lock.  I want Affinity supporter to add an icon for that next to the layer.

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums, Majed.

You don't need to right-click. You could click the lock icon in the header of the Layers panel.

Just wanted to make sure you knew of that alternative that already exists

[Fritz_H]

12 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums, Majed.

You don't need to right-click. You could click the lock icon in the header of the Layers panel.

Just wanted to make sure you knew of that alternative that already exists

@walt.farrell

This is one of the usability-issues of the Affinity-Products:

Layers have binary (?)  properties: visible or active (yes/no)   and  locked (yes/no).

It´s not logical to have the switch for one binary property (visibility) shown directly at every Layer
while the switch for the other property of equal "quality" (locked-status) is shown somewhere else.

Sorry: bad design.

Notes: the other Layer-properties (Opacity, Blendmode..) are not binary (on/off) therefore it´s "ok" to bundle these options at another place
although having all layer-Properties directly attached to the Layer-Icon would be even better:



Screen too small? get a bigger one or a second one.
also: the software could switch dynamically between the style shown in my mockup and the way its done right now...

kind regards
Fritz

[RNKLN]

Bad design would be to fill the layer section with a lot of icons so that it becomes a real mess. 
 

Also bad design is having to drag a layer to a new layer icon to duplicate it or having to drag it to the thrash icon to delete it. 
 

Of course this is all an opinion, but so (in my opinion) is the above. 
 

All software developers make choices. Some you will like, some you won’t. 

[Kuttyjoe]

4 hours ago, Fritz_H said:

@walt.farrell

This is one of the usability-issues of the Affinity-Products:

Layers have binary (?)  properties: visible or active (yes/no)   and  locked (yes/no).

It´s not logical to have the switch for one binary property (visibility) shown directly at every Layer
while the switch for the other property of equal "quality" (locked-status) is shown somewhere else.

Sorry: bad design.

Notes: the other Layer-properties (Opacity, Blendmode..) are not binary (on/off) therefore it´s "ok" to bundle these options at another place
although having all layer-Properties directly attached to the Layer-Icon would be even better:



Screen too small? get a bigger one or a second one.
also: the software could switch dynamically between the style shown in my mockup and the way its done right now...

kind regards
Fritz

I agree with what you're saying here.  My instinct is to look for the lock directly on the layer I'm working on.  When I must travel elsewhere, I've always found that a little bit weird.  However, in other software there are up to 5 different options for locking related to each layer.  I believe it would be impossible to place them all on each layer so some other way of doing it is necessary.  Placing all of the locking functions in a single toolbar is probably the next best solution.  Other than that, allowing keyboard shortcuts for each locking type would also be useful.  This software only has 1 locking feature for now.  If this software grows and becomes like Photoshop or Clip Studio where you can lock things like transparent pixels, image pixels, movement, etc separately, then it would run into the problem of where to locate all of the icons for the various locks.  I believe that Serif is just following Adobe's lead on this one and looking ahead to when this software is more developed and has more features.

[Fritz_H]

19 hours ago, RNKLN said:

A)  Also bad design is having to drag a layer to a new layer icon to duplicate it or having to drag it to the thrash icon to delete it. 
B)  All software developers make choices. Some you will like, some you won’t. 

@ A) You mean the Photoshop-method? 
Possibly this was implemented to make it easier for users with a Wacom-Tablet since "right mouse button" is inconvenient for them with a pen.
BTW: Photo also supports deleting a layer by dragging it to the trash icon - but without any visual feedback that this will trigger some action...
BTW: there is no (optional) warning when deleting a layer.

@ B)  big mistake!! never ever allow developers to decide about UI-Design! Thats the job of UI-Experts guided by Usability-Experts. 

Fritz

[RNKLN]

Haha. I’m not suggesting it’s the guy who does the coding also’s doing the design; it’s Serif (in this case). 

[Old Bruce]

On 4/6/2020 at 7:49 AM, RNKLN said:

Also bad design is having to drag a layer to a new layer icon to duplicate it or having to drag it to the thrash icon to delete it. 

Select the layer and hit Command + J to duplicate. Select the layer and hit Delete to delete it. (Probably Control + J on Windows)

[fde101]

1 hour ago, Old Bruce said:

Select the layer and hit Command + J to duplicate. Select the layer and hit Delete to delete it. (Probably Control + J on Windows)

Both of those options are also in the context menu if you right-click the layer in the Layers panel.  Several options there.

[RNKLN]

2 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

Select the layer and hit Command + J to duplicate. Select the layer and hit Delete to delete it.

This is exactly what i do all the time in Affinity products (i was indeed referring to Adobe products, which i haven't used myself, but i have seen a few tutorials). But, now that you mention it, i have noticed that hitting Delete doesn't always work in Designer, for some reason, despite having the [backspace] key being assigned to the Delete command.

[BubbleBla]

Two step action just to lock the layer is time waste 😷. Why not put the lock  icon to layer itself like someone mention here. Btw this is Krita layer layout. Much faster to work with: 

[loukash]

1 hour ago, BubbleBla said:

Much faster to work with

Assign keyboard shortcuts to lock/unlock and you're even faster than that.

[BubbleBla]

2 hours ago, loukash said:

Assign keyboard shortcuts to lock/unlock and you're even faster than that.

Already done that sir. Ctrl+L = Lock. Shift+L=Unlock. But i'm so sorry, it is not fast enough for me 😔. i just want to move my right hand side freely to lock or unlock the layer without have to check other key.

[loukash]

1 minute ago, BubbleBla said:

Ctrl+L = Lock. Shift+L=Unlock. But i'm so sorry, it is not fast enough for me

Fair enough, not everyone is such a keyboard shortcut aficionado as I am. Especially as I'm working since 15 years exclusively on laptops, so the keyboard is always literally at hand.

(For the record, yesterday I spent the best part of the day finally modifying all Affinity Suite shortcuts to match my needs and my highly customized Swiss German/Czech hybrid keyboard layout; shameless plug regarding the latter: https://software.sil.org/ukelele)

[BubbleBla]

35 minutes ago, loukash said:

Fair enough, not everyone is such a keyboard shortcut aficionado as I am. Especially as I'm working since 15 years exclusively on laptops, so the keyboard is always literally at hand.

(For the record, yesterday I spent the best part of the day finally modifying all Affinity Suite shortcuts to match my needs and my highly customized Swiss German/Czech hybrid keyboard layout; shameless plug regarding the latter: https://software.sil.org/ukelele)

Owh i see. I think, you might be using the software mostly for design purposed right?. While I'm using it for painting and i paint a lot. I'm using it on display tablet. in my case, all button and functionality on screen is really helpful. Btw thanks for sharing your experience sir 😎👍

[loukash]

30 minutes ago, BubbleBla said:

I'm using it for painting and i paint a lot. I'm using it on display tablet. in my case, all button and functionality on screen is really helpful.

Oh yeah, that makes quite a difference indeed! Before switching to laptop, I was using the Wacom Intuos A5 almost exclusively as a mouse replacement as well, also for painting and drawing in Photoshop or in… uh, forgot the app name. That was with a PowerMac G4, initially on Mac OS 9. Actually I still have the tablet but my – still fully functional – model is unsupported on MacOS El Capitan (I'm looking at you, greedy Wacom!), and I couldn't make the user-hacked drivers work simultaneously with the equally "obsolete" and hacked driver of the more compact Wacom Graphire 3 A6. So occasionally I'm still pluging the latter in. But as for actual illustration work, in recent years I actually returned back to my beloved real world Jaxon oil pastels. Nonetheless, a few years ago I created an illustration in APhoto simulating my oil pastel style, and even got paid for it, haha. But, that experiment only confirmed to me that I need to have the real wax thing literally on my fingers.