laneallen Posted August 25, 2015 Share Posted August 25, 2015 As a long time vector graphics user, the one main issue I have with Designer is the selection/bounding/transformation box. For me, it is the most obtrusive aspect of Designer, and causes the most frustrations. When trying to make multiple selections, the bounding box makes it extremely difficult to select surrounding objects up to almost 1-2 pixels. The bounding box also becomes extremely difficult when dealing with text; try double clicking text at anything at, or below, a 24pt font and you'll start to understand the issues. When working on designs, I want to see the design as much as possible with less obstructions, especially when tweaking. I want to hide that bounding box altogether and focus on the design of whatever I'm doing. This is a simplified example, but which do you feel allows you to focus on the design rather than the UI? Please allow us to just show the outline of selections then hotkey Option (or something easy) for rotation and Alt for scale. This would solve a lot of issues of selecting other objects nearby without the problems of getting transformation queues from the bounding box. This is the one feature, above anything else, that would make Designer hands down the most enjoyable for me. LilleG, Gear maker, aitte and 3 others 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A_B_C Posted August 25, 2015 Share Posted August 25, 2015 Try double clicking text at anything at, or below, a 24pt font and you'll start to understand the issues. You are right … sigh … I dearly hope that there will be a better solution in the future … Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aitte Posted August 25, 2015 Share Posted August 25, 2015 I agree 100%... The time that I hate it the most is when I want to align objects within the image and get a good overview of the composition. The massive, blue box with its handles is really distracting when doing that. In Photoshop, I liked that it didn't have any bounding box when moved with the keyboard. You could select the layer, hit V for move, then use shift+arrow keys to move it around without seeing any bounding box. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
laneallen Posted August 25, 2015 Author Share Posted August 25, 2015 Also worth mentioning that anything behind the rotation bar on the transformation box (the top extrusion) is dead space and impossible to select anything behind it, adding to the clunky aspect of this box. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
laneallen Posted August 25, 2015 Author Share Posted August 25, 2015 get a good overview of the composition. The massive, blue box with its handles is really distracting when doing that. This is exactly how I feel. As people working visually, we are constantly reviewing the composition to get a overview of what we are trying to accomplish, and the hand holding of the transformation box breaks this process (imo). aitte 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sldx Posted August 26, 2015 Share Posted August 26, 2015 For viewing and moving purposes, holding space hides mostly everything, including bounding box. For selecting stuff... not so much. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
laneallen Posted August 27, 2015 Author Share Posted August 27, 2015 For viewing and moving purposes, holding space hides mostly everything, including bounding box. For selecting stuff... not so much. That is the point of this suggestion, selecting and doing stuff with a design. My current work around for all of this is to group (or even create a new layer if I get into issues with the bounding box that encompasses normal groups) hard to target items, but that just lends to the clunky aspect of this selection box. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
laneallen Posted September 27, 2015 Author Share Posted September 27, 2015 Here is another use case for the ability to hide this transformation box. When working on a design with fonts, and you're trying to get an idea of composition, the box really is visually disruptive. A start would be at least hide the box when going through fonts – since it's hard to even judge spacing. A smaller font size would even be worse to manage or see. fuli42 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aitte Posted September 27, 2015 Share Posted September 27, 2015 I recently did a logo design where I wanted to zoom out to a postage stamp sized view to try different fonts and offsets between objects to make the logo work at small sizes. The blue box with its round balls were larger than the font! I couldn't see anything! The box is really distracting when trying fonts. I had to hold down space permanently and the box kept coming back whenever i clicked a gui element like a dropdown list. Suddenly, Affinity Designer bugged out and the blue box permanently vanished. I thought I was in heaven. I could see everything clearly and my blood pressure went down 50 points. Unfortunately the awful blue box was back after the next restart. I crid evrytim :( laneallen 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aitte Posted September 27, 2015 Share Posted September 27, 2015 Please add an option in the assistant menu, for "show handles around selected object", to disable this. And make it possible to scale/rotate objects just by hovering in the vicinity of where the ball would have been if it was visible. Or better yet, something like "ctrl+drag" = scale, ctrl+alt+drag = rotate, so that we can permanently work without the blue outlines. laneallen and fuli42 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
laneallen Posted September 27, 2015 Author Share Posted September 27, 2015 Adjust, spacebar, adjust, spacebar, zoom, move to different location, spacebar, zoom out, spacebar, adjust, spacebar... aitte, Gear maker, A_B_C and 1 other 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aitte Posted January 11, 2016 Share Posted January 11, 2016 Everyone at Affinity should look at your attached thumbnail, @laneallen. "Adjust, spacebar, adjust, spacebar, zoom, move to different location, spacebar, zoom out, spacebar, adjust, spacebar..." represents my workflow too. It's silly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted January 12, 2016 Staff Share Posted January 12, 2016 Hi laneallen, I agree that the control box handles can get in the way in certain circumstances. Have you tried to reduce their size in the Preferences? Although not a solution it may help to ease things out until this can be looked at. aitte 1 Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software | Affinity Quick Reference Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aitte Posted January 17, 2016 Share Posted January 17, 2016 @MEB: Cool, I didn't know about that option. It's Preferences > Tools > Tool UI Size. Putting it on Smallest is helpful. What I hope for is being able to disable the tool helpers completely, but easily enable them again. Via a view-menu dropdown option, or in the "Assistant" window. And have it bound to the keyboard too. Something like Shift+Spacebar to toggle the entire square frame + all the little balls permanently on/off so that we see no guides whatsoever. I realize that newbies may accidentally hit that, though. I also hope for something like this: " ctrl+drag = scale, ctrl+alt+drag = rotate, so that we can permanently work without the blue outlines. " Thanks for the temporary workaround MEB. It makes the problem better at least. laneallen 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rsi.studio Posted July 22, 2016 Share Posted July 22, 2016 I recently put a little Japanese/English 2 page catalogue together in Affinity Photo and the final results printed out great B) Nevertheless, It was most useful to come across MEB's tip to reduce the control box handle size & I'd agree that this thread's request for a keyboard combo > hide/show the control box would definitely advance the layout capability within AfPhoto (& AfDesigner if not already there). I agree that the control box handles can get in the way in certain circumstances. Have you tried to reduce their size in the Preferences? Although not a solution it may help to ease things out until this can be looked at. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ronnyb Posted July 24, 2016 Share Posted July 24, 2016 Pressing and holding down the space bar temporarily hides all UI handles Alfred and yougotkeith 2 Quote 2021 16” Macbook Pro w/ M1 Max 10c cpu /24c gpu, 32 GB RAM, 1TB SSD, Ventura 13.6 2018 11" iPad Pro w/ A12X cpu/gpu, 256 GB, iPadOS 17 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yougotkeith Posted December 6, 2017 Share Posted December 6, 2017 @ronnyb I'm glad you mentioned that. It's been keeping me sane when I need to align something pixel to pixel. I can nudge, hit spacebar to see, then nudge again, and so on. So thx:) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ronnyb Posted December 9, 2017 Share Posted December 9, 2017 On 12/6/2017 at 0:10 PM, yougotkeith said: @ronnyb I'm glad you mentioned that. It's been keeping me sane when I need to align something pixel to pixel. I can nudge, hit spacebar to see, then nudge again, and so on. So thx:) Glad u found that useful... you can also just hold down spacebar WHILE you nudge... Quote 2021 16” Macbook Pro w/ M1 Max 10c cpu /24c gpu, 32 GB RAM, 1TB SSD, Ventura 13.6 2018 11" iPad Pro w/ A12X cpu/gpu, 256 GB, iPadOS 17 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kaeptn Posted September 5, 2020 Share Posted September 5, 2020 I don't understand why there is still no option for hiding it. It's the main thing that drives me crazy enough to pass on affinity completely. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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