Hiding Artboard name

[wvanderzee]

Goodmorning! 

Is it possible to hide the artboard names? I'm working on some small icons and like to evaluate them zoomed out. But the artboard names appears over the icons, so I can't evaluate them properly. Is there a way to hide the artboard names (temporarily)?

Thanks!

Wouter

[Joachim_L]

Rename every artboard by replacing the current name with a space, maybe there are better solutions?

[GarryP]

I would also be interested in hearing if there’s a good solution, for the same reasons as the OP.
Renaming the artboards isn’t workable for me as I use the artboard name in the export filename, and it helps for general organisational purposes.

[Joachim_L]

Another not-so-nice method would be to place a black/white rectangle around the artboards in Light/Dark UI. But yes, suppressing the Artboard name temporarily would be nice.

[R C-R]

Why not just spread out the small artboards in the workspace so their names do not overlap?

[GarryP]

Yes, that’s another reasonable workaround but it’s not ideal as, sometimes, it’s better to have the artboards close to each other, especially if the icons are similar but not entirely the same (having them closer makes it easier to notice the differences). Plus, forcing the user to have to organise their work in a certain way to lessen the problems caused by a facet of the UI isn’t a particularly good thing in general.
I think an extra toggle in the Artboard Context Toolbar for “Show Artboard Names” might do the trick.

[R C-R]

First of all, if there was an option to hide the artboard name in the workspace window, wouldn't there be no way to select an artboard that contained anything in the workspace window?

Second, if the artboards are tiny & the names overlap, wouldn't just zooming in work -- the artboard name text stays the same size regardless of zoom level.

Third, if that does not float your boat, what about creating one or more additional views of the document, so that each workspace window can be sized to show one artboard of interest?

[GarryP]

I’m not sure what you mean by your first question; it doesn’t sound right to me. Do you mean that there will be no way to select an artboard, which has no content, by making a selection from the canvas? Or something else?

When working with icons (one icon per artboard), it’s useful to be able to see them at the size they will be when in use (at 100%). When doing this it’s also useful to be able to group them tightly together to get a good idea of what they will look like when seen together on-screen.
The problem is that, if we do this – view at 100% and tight grouping – any artboard which has another artboard below it is partially obscured by the name of that artboard below it (as shown in the original image).

Zooming in isn’t an option as we wouldn’t be seeing the icons at 100%.
Creating multiple windows of the same document isn’t a good option as the workspace quickly becomes cluttered, the windows are awkward to work with, and the UI starts to give various kinds of other problems that I don’t understand.

If we could set the Navigator to a certain zoom percentage then that would be good enough for most purposes but we can’t, so another option would be to remove (temporarily) the artboard names, as requested above.

Does this explain the problem a bit better?

[R C-R]

6 minutes ago, GarryP said:

I’m not sure what you mean by your first question; it doesn’t sound right to me. Do you mean that there will be no way to select an artboard, which has no content, by making a selection from the canvas? Or something else?

You can select an artboard with no content by clicking anywhere on it in the workspace window, but if it has any content, the only way to that (other than in the Layers panel) is by clicking on the name of the artboard. This is how it works on Macs; I assume it is the same for Windows.

9 minutes ago, GarryP said:

Zooming in isn’t an option as we wouldn’t be seeing the icons at 100%.

OK, but as long as the artboards themselves do not overlap in the workspace window (as in the OP's screenshot), why would it matter if their names did?

13 minutes ago, GarryP said:

If we could set the Navigator to a certain zoom percentage then that would be good enough for most purposes but we can’t ...

It sounds like you may not have discovered the "Advanced" mode of the Navigator panel (or it is not a feature of the Windows version). Beginning about half way down in the Navigator Panel help topic, start with the section named To add, remove and rename a view point to see how it can be used.

[GarryP]

When creating and editing icons, once the artboard exists and is positioned in the correct place, I don’t usually want to move it in case I accidentally make a change I don’t want, so not being able to select the artboard itself when the name isn’t displayed isn’t a problem, it’s actually a benefit.

What do you mean by “overlap in the workspace window”? To try and be clearer, I don’t care if the names overlap themselves, or the canvas, the problem is where the names overlap the contents of the other artboards so you can’t see everything that is on them. Maybe my attached images will help to explain.

I knew about the Advanced Options of the Navigator but the Navigator always shows the whole document and you can’t set the zoom for the display of the Navigator. That’s probably a side-road that we shouldn’t go down at this point and I wish I hadn’t mentioned it now. Can we stick to the original issue?

[Move Along People]

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[wvanderzee]

Wow, that's a lot of reactions. Thanks for the feedback!

I have to look into the option of creating additional views. I'm not familiar with that yet. Maybe it will solve the problem.

[GarryP]

As has been already stated above more than once, I need 100% zoom as that’s how they will be seen on-screen in use. 80%, or any other zoom, is of no use.
I use the name of the artboards in the export process so renaming them isn’t an option for me.

[R C-R]

3 minutes ago, GarryP said:

To try and be clearer, I don’t care if the names overlap themselves, or the canvas, the problem is where the names overlap the contents of the other artboards so you can’t see everything that is on them. Maybe my attached images will help to explain.

At the 'bad' 100% zoom level how much does it actually matter that you can't see everything in some of the artboards clearly? If you are trying to see the differences among them, why not just zoom in farther so you can see that far more clearly?

14 minutes ago, GarryP said:

I knew about the Advanced Options of the Navigator but the Navigator always shows the whole document and you can’t set the zoom for the display of the Navigator. That’s probably a side-road that we shouldn’t go down at this point and I wish I hadn’t mentioned it now. Can we stick to the original issue?

Sure we can stick to the original issue. But since you did mention it, I wanted to mention its capabilities in case others following this topic were not aware of it.

[R C-R]

1 minute ago, GarryP said:

As has been already stated above more than once, I need 100% zoom as that’s how they will be seen on-screen in use.

What use would that be (what app, what screen, what purpose, etc.)?

[GarryP]

I want to be able to look at them all together, all at the same time, and be able to see all of each icon.
Imagine you’re designing a poster. You want to be able to zoom in and check each part individually but you need to zoom back out to see the whole thing from time to time just to check that all the parts work together. It’s the same thing with icon design.

What do you mean “What use would that be?” Are you asking why I would want to view the icons at the size they will actually be used?

[Move Along People]

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[GarryP]

I moved away from using artboards because of this problem, and doing so makes things more awkward. E.g. Export Slices have to be manually created and if I move the icons around I have to re-create the slices. Also, sometimes, their ability to be used as a “clipping rectangle” is useful as I don’t have to create one for myself.
If I could only (temporarily) remove the display name for the artboards, I could go back to using them the way I want to.

[R C-R]

5 minutes ago, GarryP said:

What do you mean “What use would that be?” Are you asking why I would want to view the icons at the size they will actually be used?

I was asking about the end use of the icons, like if they will be used as buttons on web pages (where there is no guarantee that their 'actual size' would be the same in every browser), or as you mentioned as decorations (?) on a poster that might be viewed from different distances.

IOW, the use context & if in that context the actual size is even relevant.

[MEB]

Hi GarryP, wvanderzee,
I suggest you create a new thread in the appropriate Feature Requests & Suggestions section if there isn't one yet.

[R C-R]

5 minutes ago, GarryP said:

I moved away from using artboards because of this problem, and doing so makes things more awkward. E.g. Export Slices have to be manually created and if I move the icons around I have to re-create the slices.

Unless I am missing something, in the Export Persona you can use the Layers panel to create slices from your artboards (if they are not already created automatically for you), & then if you move or resize your artboards later in the Designer Persona, the slices automatically adjust to those changes.

Does this not work for you?

[MEB]

R C-R,
Affinity creates slices automatically for each artboard without the need to do anything. That's what i believe GarryP meant. If you use rectangles you have to generate them from the Layers panel yourself in Export Persona.

[GarryP]

R C-R (1): The end use of the icons, for me – I don’t know about the OP – is for raster application icons which are displayed at a pixel-in-the image is a pixel-on-the-screen size. (This may differ if people are using some kind of scaling options but I want to see it at 1 pixel = 1 pixel just for peace of mind.)

R C-R (2): That would mean I would have to create a ‘parent’ layer for each icon which makes editing a bit more difficult (the icon content extent doesn’t always match the extents of the icon itself, there’s usually a small gap around the insides).

MEB: I think that’s a good idea.

Wvanderzee: Do you want to add a request, or do you want me to?

[wvanderzee]

GarryP: I've done the feature request. If you like to add on it, please do.

[R C-R]

4 minutes ago, GarryP said:

R C-R (2): That would mean I would have to create a ‘parent’ layer for each icon which makes editing a bit more difficult (the icon content extent doesn’t always match the extents of the icon itself, there’s usually a small gap around the insides).

If I understand what you are saying correctly, the parent layer could be the artboard itself. If there is a gap, it is probably because the artboards are not pixel-aligned. Does that make any sense?