Total breakdown of GUI

[davewhughes]

I have lost my entire UI. I see no controls at all. I have tried restarting, rebooting and reinstalling, but no success. Affinity is now totally non functional.

Running on Macbook Pro 2017 10.15.6 

Affinity has been running fine until this.

 

 

[thomaso]

13 hours ago, davewhughes said:

Affinity is now totally non functional.

Totally? No menu bar to enter the "View" menu and its options? No document window?

Possibly pressing the Tab key will help ...

Quote

 

To hide/show all panels:

• From the View menu, click Toggle UI (–>|).

https://affinity.help/publisher/English.lproj/index.html?page=pages/Workspace/customizingWorkspace.html?title=Customising the workspace

 

 

[GarryP]

I posted a suggestion a little while ago to ask if something could be done about the UI disappearing after the TAB key has been pressed:

If you also want something done about this then you could add a comment to my post to help it to get more notice from the developers.

[davewhughes]

3 hours ago, GarryP said:

I posted a suggestion a little while ago to ask if something could be done about the UI disappearing after the TAB key has been pressed:

If you also want something done about this then you could add a comment to my post to help it to get more notice from the developers.

Yep, that was it. Thanks for all your help. It seems I must have hit Tab. I was not aware of this 'feature' so didn't know it had happened. It may be a good idea for the application to start up in default mode with the GUI visible. I even tried reinstalling the software and the hide GUI setting was still active. I can see how this might be useful when in a session, but on restarting or reinstalling the application, I don't think so. Just confusing.

[PaulEC]

13 minutes ago, davewhughes said:

It may be a good idea for the application to start up in default mode

One thing I find quite confusing with the Affinity apps is how Serif decided which settings should "stick" and which shouldn't!  It would certainly make sense to go back to the default layout when the app starts up. I really can't imagine why anyone would want apps to open with a virtually empty UI, but if they do, they only need to hit one key. 

[Joachim_L]

To avoid hiding the UI accidently you can remove the shortcut for it. If you still need to toggle the UI you can do it from the View menu. Maybe this shortcut should be removed as a default setting? Personally I never used to toggle the UI on purpose, in most cases accidently.

[thomaso]

10 hours ago, PaulEC said:

It would certainly make sense to go back to the default layout when the app starts up

Hopefully you don't mean the factory default panel arrangement. That would be very annoying for custom panel settings.

9 hours ago, Joachim_L said:

I never used to toggle the UI on purpose

The feature of hidden UI (or of panels only via "Hide Studio") is absolutely necessary when working with 2 monitors / in Separated window mode, as long Affinity insists to place some dialog windows behind panels (for what purpose?) and thus show them covered by panels.

Then an often use case will be the "Open..." dialog because its window insists to stick to its position on the boot screen and – different to the "New..." dialog window – does not remind a custom set position. Oddly and unfortunately in especially this case the command to toggle UI (or just to hide panels, too) is grayed out and therefore requires to get used before the "Open..." command is selected.

So both options (toggle UI, hide studio) can be quite useful. I suppose this feature needs improvement rather then 'removement', for instance I have set the Tab-key shortcut  to "Hide Studio" only instead of hiding all panels. The improvements I imagine would...

1. place all dialogs in front of panels,
2. add the option to move the UI bars (tool + context) in Non-Separated Window mode,
3. allow to save + recall customised UI arrangements (especially for laptop users switching between 1 and 2 monitors).

 

[PaulEC]

On 9/28/2020 at 3:01 PM, thomaso said:

Hopefully you don't mean the factory default panel arrangement. That would be very annoying for custom panel settings.

Sorry, I should have been clearer, I meant the user's default! (and not hiding panels etc.)

On 9/28/2020 at 3:01 PM, thomaso said:

allow to save + recall customised UI arrangements (especially for laptop users switching between 1 and 2 monitors).

Really good idea!