ui font and icon size is really very very tooooooooooo ~~ small !!

[Tokra]

Hi,

I totally agree with Hadriscus!
I use a 4k monitor and certain elements of the UI are practically unreadable. Unfortunately, the UI scaling in the windows doesn't solve the problem, because many elements of Affinity Photo don't take the settings. Most programs now support custom scaling, precisely so that users can tailor the interface to their own needs. This is a very important thing, because if the user cannot see the interface properly, the software will be virtually useless. And if the software is unusable, users will have to look for another software. People who want to work are not interested in ideologies. They want a working and usable software that doesn't get in the way of work.  Unfortunately, at the moment Affinity Photo is unusable on a 4k monitor, because many elements of the UI are simply not good visible.

I've been using Photoshop for 25 years and I was very happy when Affinity came out, because to this day I consider it the only realistic alternative to PS. I would love to switch to Affinity, at least in part, because I like many of its solutions much better than in the PS. However, I don't really like the developer attitude I've read here. The forward-thinking behaviour would be for the developer to offer a solution to the problem, rather than convince the user that it is not needed. Unfortunately, due to the UI scaling problem, I can't use the software, but despite what I've read here, I hope that the developers will finally understand the seriousness of the problem and provide the possibility to customize the UI.

Thank you and best regards!
(+sorry for my english)

[Greatusernameorg]

On 9/16/2020 at 4:57 PM, Mark Ingram said:

 

> should we really be forced into reconfiguring our entire systems

No. You just accept the default, recommended scale that is provided for you, by the system. No configuring required - that's what we're aiming for here. A user should not be required to start our application, find the options, and then tweak the appearance to get it to a satisfactory level. It should just work.

 

Well the default is not working for OP, and from his screenshots its easy to see why, yet he just has to accept that apparently. To set scaling on the OS level breaks a lot of other apps, yet you just say "then take that up with all the other apps"? You know that is not realistic to happen at all, so instead you just have unhappy users. Everyone wins, except your paying users.

 

"A user should not be required to start our application, find the options, and then tweak the appearance to get it to a satisfactory level. It should just work."

1. Maybe they shouldnt be required, but why should they not have the option? These programs arent exactly for novice users, so they can handle to go into settings and choose "Interface - big".

2. Your target audience typically have very high-end high resolution monitors, and they are the ones most prone to have these scaling issues, which you choose to ignore.

3. Users are different and have different preferences. Normal scaling works great for my daily use, and all i want is for only the Affinity programs to be bigger. But nope, Affinity staff tells me to just "accept the default, recommended scale that is provided for me". That is great to read, thank you Affinity?

4. Your biggest competitor is Adobe, and they let you change interface size. 

 

I dont know why you're so against this. It is literally just providing your users with more choices and improving your products, so they have a better experience, which they've paid for. It's as if you let your idealism ruin the experience for your users. Or maybe that you just cannot be bothered?
Reading through this thread has given me a pretty bad impression of the company and doubts about my purchase.
If I or other users have issues or feedback, we can look forward to the staff arguing why they cannot be bothered, and that we should just accept as is.

 

EDIT: My post was posted twice for some reason, but im only allowed to edit, not delete

Edited March 18, 2023 by Greatusernameorg

[Martin Bernbrich]

Hi there

I just found this topic which is already 2 YEARS old. 

Despite the many attempts to get the GUI size sorted using Windows scaling and Text size changes, I am of the opinion that the vendor must provide a reasonable way of adjusting the screen to the liking of the user. The user paid money and we deserve that we are heard. I am having a font size of 2mm (!) which is difficult to read even for eagle-eye folks!

The screens we work with have high resolutions for years now and there was enough time to add this topic to the development cycle. I admit it is not a simple thing, but it is doable and there are some excellent examples (like blender 3D design and animation software) - see also another topic called "High DPI settings on windows? Increase tools font size?".

 

So again: SERIF: please please take this into the next development cycle.

AND: Is there a better place to raise feature requests?

Kind Regards,
   Martin :-)

[Granddaddy]

Affinity staff said in 2016 that the user interface issues would be addressed in future version. Indeed they have, with the result that everything has become worse.

See the discussion that resurfaced recently at
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/189371-high-dpi-settings-on-windows-increase-tools-font-size/

 

[Schölu]

On 9/11/2020 at 9:29 AM, Mark Ingram said:

What is your Windows display scale set to? What resolution is your monitor? We adhere to the display scale that is set in Windows. If you choose 200%, everything will be twice as big, if you choose 300% everything will be three times as big, etc.

Ich soll also allein nur für die Affinity-Apps, mein ganzes System umstellen?
Diese Forderung ist schon ziemlich frech!

 

---

So I'm supposed to change my entire system just for the Affinity apps?
That's a pretty cheeky demand!

[fde101]

17 minutes ago, Schölu said:

So I'm supposed to change my entire system just for the Affinity apps?

No, you should change your entire system for your entire system.

That way everything is consistent, if the apps are responding the way they should be to the scale.

If an app provides an option to adjust its overall scale independently of the OS setting, it is in effect giving the user the ability to make things inconsistent, and that by its nature is a misfeature.

Providing an option to adjust (for example) toolbar size relative to the OS scale makes sense and would be reasonable, but to scale the overall interface differently from the OS setting is a bad idea.  Apps which provide that option rather than following the OS setting, or which do not follow the OS setting correctly, need to be fixed.

The only possible exception would be something that provides an immersive experience, like a video game, which presents an interface unique to that experience which is by its very nature separated from the rest of the system.  In this case the whole point of the application is to let the user become lost in an imaginary world, and it makes sense that the interactions would be tied to that world instead of the real one.

For applications that are grounded in reality, however, it is more important to be consistent with other applications which are similarly grounded in reality.  This includes productivity and creativity apps such as those from Serif.

[Schölu]

Also es ist so. Meine Bildschirmgrösse ist auf Standard eingestellt. Damit funktioniere alle, ich wieder hohle, alle meine Apps korrekt und gut lesbar auf meinem System. Nur bei Affinity sind die Menüs nicht lesbar.

Und jetzt kommt Affinity her und meint, alle anderen sind falsch und hätten die UI nicht korrekt umgesetzt und wir hätten doch gefälligst unser System nach Affinity auszurichten?

Sorry, diese Arroganz übersteigt meine Schmerzgrenze.
Ich bin raus. 

 

----

So it's like this. My screen size is set to standard. This means that all my apps work correctly and are easy to read on my system. Only with Affinity the menus are not readable.

And now Affinity comes along and says that everyone else is wrong and hasn't implemented the UI correctly and that we should align our system to Affinity?

Sorry, this arrogance is beyond my pain threshold.
I'm out.

[Pšenda]

20 hours ago, Schölu said:

This means that all my apps work correctly and are easy to read on my system. Only with Affinity the menus are not readable.

If Afinity displays something against OS standards - displays something differently (smaller, larger) than other applications - especially system applications, then a fix for that specific problem should be requested in the Bug forum. Can you give an example? However, the occurrence of these deviations from the OS standard cannot be "corrected" by allowing applications to adjust the size of their interface locally.

[Schölu]

Vor 4 Stunden, Pšenda sagte:

Wenn Afinity etwas anzeigt, das gegen die Betriebssystemstandards verstößt - etwas anders (kleiner, größer) anzeigt als andere Anwendungen - insbesondere Systemanwendungen, dann sollte eine Lösung für dieses spezielle Problem im Bug-Forum angefordert werden. Können Sie ein Beispiel nennen? Das Auftreten dieser Abweichungen vom Betriebssystemstandard kann jedoch nicht dadurch "korrigiert" werden, dass Anwendungen die Größe ihrer Schnittstelle lokal anpassen können.

Screenshots mit Affinity, Photoshop, Notepad++, Word und Browser.

Die Unterschiede sind Welten.

Wobei auch beim überteuerten Photoshop die Schriften viel zu klein sind, aber doch um Längen besser als Affinity.

Affinity könnte sich hier mit benutzerdefinierten Schriftgrössen ein Alleinstellungsmerkmal sichern. 

 

Meine Motivation, mich so stark für eine Verbesserung von Affinity einzusetzen ist, weil ich Affinity gerne als Alternative für Photoshop nutzen möchte.

Aber die katastrophal schlechte Benutzerfreundlichkeit lässt das schlicht und einfach nicht zu.

 

----

Screenshots with Affinity, Photoshop, Notepad++, Word and Browser.
The differences are worlds apart.
Although the fonts in the overpriced Photoshop are also far too small, they are far better than in Affinity.
Affinity could secure a unique selling point here with user-defined font sizes. 

My motivation for working so hard to improve Affinity is because I would like to use Affinity as an alternative to Photoshop.
But the catastrophically poor user-friendliness simply does not allow this.

[fde101]

There actually is a setting for UI Font Size in the Interfaces section of Preferences / Settings - it is either Default or Large though, not really in-between sizes.

There appears to be in part an issue with the rather stupid way they integrated the menus into the title bar under Windoze.  The font is likely being scaled based on the height of the title bar (its container) and the title bar is simply too small to give you readable text.  The font Photoshop is using in its title bar appears to be the same point size, or extremely nearly so.  This is a non-issue on the Mac where there is a dedicated menu bar which will be the same size for everything.  Text for the menu items appears to be about the same size as well (taking a floating on-screen ruler to the screenshot), maybe some fraction of a point smaller in the Affinity apps, but Photoshop spaces the items a bit further apart which may be helping clarity somewhat by making the menus less crowded.

The text in the preferences window is also about the same size between the Affinity apps and Photoshop (again maybe some fraction of a point smaller in the Affinity apps), but the typeface used in the Photoshop interface is a bit heavier in weight and the contrast between the text and the background is a bit better, making it appear a bit more clear.  If anything the choice of a more readable typeface combined with better contrast in the UI is called for rather than larger text sizes.

[walt.farrell]

4 minutes ago, fde101 said:

There actually is a setting for UI Font Size in the Interfaces section of Preferences / Settings - it is either Default or Large though, not really in-between sizes.

Only in the Affinity versions for macOS.

Most of the complaints about UI being too small are from Windows users, I think.

[Schölu]

Eigentlich sind mir Argumente dafür oder dagegen, gleiche Schriftgrösse oder nicht, usw. völlig egal.
Fakt ist, ich würde Affinity sehr gerne als Alternative zur überteuerten Photoshop mit Abozwang nutzen. 
Doch leider ich kann bei Affinity die Menü-Texte, Menüelemente oder Hilfstexte bestenfalls nur mit einer Lupe in der dritten Hand lesen.
Solange das so ist, ist es mir unmöglich Affinity zu nutzen. Ich bin schliesslich kein Masochist. 

Damit beende ich für meinen Teil die Diskussion hier.

Zumindest so lange, wie Affinity die Nutzer nicht wie Kunden behandelt.

 

---

I don't really care about arguments in favour or against, same font size or not, etc.
The fact is, I would very much like to use Affinity as an alternative to the overpriced Photoshop with its compulsory subscription. 
But unfortunately, with Affinity I can only read the menu texts, menu elements or help texts with a magnifying glass in my third hand at best.
As long as this is the case, it is impossible for me to use Affinity. After all, I'm not a masochist. 
With that, I'll end the discussion here for my part.

At least as long as Affinity doesn't treat users like customers.

[loukash]

36 minutes ago, Schölu said:

so lange, wie Affinity die Nutzer nicht wie Kunden behandelt.

Nichts für Ungut, aber ich bin mir ehrlich gesagt nicht sicher, ob deine "Wutbürger"-Einstellung der Sache in irgendeiner kleinsten Weise dienlich sein könnte.

[Hadriscus]

On 11/17/2023 at 2:58 PM, fde101 said:

If an app provides an option to adjust its overall scale independently of the OS setting, it is in effect giving the user the ability to make things inconsistent, and that by its nature is a misfeature.

This is an ideologically loaded statement. I believe reality calls for differenciation. Sure, OS-level scaling is a sane baseline, but different programs achieve different things and need different defaults. I use Blender on a daily basis (which has a masterclass of a UI-scaling feature, btw) and I keep the interface smallish because of the nature of the work that I do in there : many different interweaved tasks, oh so many buttons, and a necessity to display a lot of data at once in several different editors. On the other hand, my usage of AP these days is for texture authoring from photos (make tileable, color correct, that sort of thing), a pretty straightforward usecase for which I wish to have a comfortable, wide UI.

For illustration, this is the kind of information density I have to deal with when working with Blender (see attachment). I consider myself lucky Blender does scaling independently of the OS... it's actually a multiplier of the OS base scale value, so it's not exactly independant, but anyway. See the AP interface (other attachment) : there's a lot of wiggle room, and I wouldn't be mad if that entire interface was scaled up a little (even if not fractional). But changing that at the OS level means changing everything else, including programs that are fine as-is (in terms of information density). I understand how this all should work, ideally : developers all over the world ()Windows developers included!) making sure their programs work fine with scaling. But reality is a mess of different UI frameworks, discontinued/EOL programs, and blurry upscalings. I won't be adding to this thread anymore

[fde101]

Blender is a great example of a program doing a terrible thing.

It is ignoring all OS conventions and rolling its own user interface, making it inconsistent with EVERY operating system it runs on.

 

The only legitimate reason it could possibly provide for that is to ensure neutral grays for more accurate color judgement.  That is the only reason that I would give it credit for, as most operating systems are lacking in providing for this requirement.  I consider that a flaw of the operating systems which should be addressed so that applications with critical color judgement requirements can inform the OS as part of an application manifest or an API call and the OS would provide an appropriate neutral gray appearance which is otherwise consistent with the rest of the environment.

 

Other reasoning I have encountered is generally misguided.  In particular, many developers cite a desire to keep the application consistent between operating systems.  The problem is that a user of a computer is likely to use multiple applications, and it is more important that they be consistent with each other than that they consistent across operating systems - someone sitting at one computer and trying to use four different applications will find things that work four different ways and trying to juggle them while switching back and forth is not a good thing.

 

Don't get me wrong, I have blender installed all over the place and use it from time to time myself - it is a great program in terms of the functionality it offers - but the situation with the user interface is something that should not be emulated, except by video games and other immersive environments.

 

1 hour ago, Hadriscus said:

many different interweaved tasks, oh so many buttons, and a necessity to display a lot of data at once in several different editors

The use of configurable panels to lay out controls appropriately for the task is definitely a good thing.  This is one area where Apple is making a misguided recommendation to avoid this.  It makes some degree of sense for consumer-level applications to limit options to some degree, as more casual users may easily get lost wondering where something disappeared to when the visibility and positions of panels are easily changed, but for many professional applications they are largely a requirement.

This does not provide an excuse for the controls placed on those panels to defy OS conventions, including scaling.  Other than the neutral gray issue, there is nothing that would prevent normal OS-provided controls from working in place of the highly custom ones Blender provides.

 

1 hour ago, Hadriscus said:

it's actually a multiplier of the OS base scale value

It would be better to design the app in such a way that this is not necessary, but if it is going to provide a global scaling feature, that is certainly the least problematic way to do it.

 

2 hours ago, Hadriscus said:

But reality is a mess of different UI frameworks, discontinued/EOL programs, and blurry upscalings.

Yes, that is how things are.  It is NOT how things should be.  I think we are arguing two sides of a coin: I am indicating how I believe things should be, you are anchored in the messy situation of the unfortunate way things are (but should not be).

Different UI frameworks would be fine as long as they all ultimately followed the conventions established by the underlying OS rather than bypassing them.

[Hadriscus]

1 hour ago, fde101 said:

Yes, that is how things are.  It is NOT how things should be.  I think we are arguing two sides of a coin: I am indicating how I believe things should be, you are anchored in the messy situation of the unfortunate way things are (but should not be).

Hi, thanks for your reply. This is exactly right : I live in a world that is, not a world that should be.

[Martin Bernbrich]

Hello

I just like to point to another topic on the font size topic.

I now think that so much has been said. All parties have good arguments and at the same time I still believe that Affinity has a job to do to make us, the users, happy on high resolution displays.

1) I was mentioning that 2mm as the font size are simply too small - no matter who is "guilty" or anything else.

Look here: 

 

2) If an application adheres to the OS features, then why does it have no effect when the Windows font size is changed??

Look here: 

 

[Greatusernameorg]

People talking about not doing anything about this issue because "consistensy". As if that justifies it or as if it is the golden standard that everything must follow.

Maybe i just have different workflows and want different things from my different apps? Maybe im not alone in feeling that either.

I would like a bigger interface when working in Affinity. What i do not want, is a bigger layout in everything else.

My needs as a user are not completely consistent, so dont try to push that down on us all, as if it is an ideology and the only true one.

Why can we not at least be presented the option and CHOOSING to break the consistency ourselves?
That would improve our experience, but apparently annoy some people, who can just choose not to...