Button/Window Active Contradiction

[SymbioticDesign]

So, when you only have 2 image windows loaded (normally as opposed to floating one, etc.), it seems pretty unclear which one is the active window.

So, in the UI above, we see that snapping is on. The button is therefore darker, indicating that it is depressed and active. Yet, the active window is not communicating the same message.  Fox1 32a.svg is NOT the active window, it is the Armadillo image that is active at the moment.

This is universal among the Affinity suite.  I find it highly contradictory.

This gets confusing for me.  Especially when I have a couple of books on the same subject that I am working simultaneously in AFPub.  Let's call these books, "Learning your ABC's and Numbers for Boys" and "Learning your ABC's and Numbers for Girls".   They use the same format, but obviously different content.  If I mess-up and put girls stuff in the boys book, and vice-versa, I will ruin them both.

So, there's a lot I'm getting used to, but this is really bugging me, ruining my workflow, creating extra work.

Why the diff?  Can you make it so that I get to select whether the 'tab' is plain or depressed (shaded)?

Thank you.

[SymbioticDesign]

I should probably note that these files don't seem to be in 'tabs', that is, they don't seem to be extensions of the document I am working on, there is no connection I am aware of, they just seem like more buttons.  

[MikeTO]

I believe Affinity's dark mode scheme is similar to Adobe so if you're finding Affinity's use of dark grey to indicated both selected controls and inactive windows, they both work this way. Selected controls should appear depressed which is done by darkening the grey. The inactive windows' title bars should be darker than the active window title bar. This is standard. The difficult thing is in recent years the 3D shading has been minimized so UIs are becoming a bit less obvious.

Light mode is better in some ways - it has light grey, medium grey, and blue so the UI makes a bit more sense while Dark mode has just dark grey and very dark grey. I prefer Dark mode though.

[garrettm30]

I understand the confusion, but I think there is some rational to it if we realize that there is an implied z-axis that is indicated by shade. That is, things that are farther forward are rendered lighter than things in the back. In the case of tabs, the inactive tabs are behind the currently active tab, so the inactive tabs are rendered darker. In the case of the buttons, they are modeled on physical (real-world) buttons where depressed indicates the activated state. Since they are active when they are pushed in, they would again be rendered darker because they are farther away on the implied z-axis.

So that is perhaps the rational. I think MikeTO is correct that the trend to move away from 3D appearance makes this relationship less obvious. It is true we are looking at a 2-dimensional screen, but as long as we consider elements such as windows being in front or behind one another, those terms “front” and “behind” necessarily imply a third dimension, so it is a shame the trend is tearing down the visual representation of that front/behind relationship.

So moving away from my commentary on the general trend and back to Affinity as it exists in the midst of the UIs that are popular today, perhaps the depressed button model is not a good fit for our current trends. In the real world, push buttons are sometimes illuminated with LEDs to indicate they are active, and such a model applied to this tabs versus buttons discussion would mean that lighter would indicate active in both cases. However, I am sure it is not simply a matter of swapping light for dark. The graphics should in some way clearly suggest the model being imitated (whether that model is pushed in vs out or illuminated vs dark). For me, the darker color suggesting a depressed (active) button works fine for me on some buttons, while it is confusing to SymbioticDesign, which suggests to me that the graphics do not make obvious that pushed-in/pushed-out is the model being communicated.

Further, although in my mind this model is perfectly clear for buttons such as the snapping controls, for some reason other buttons are not so clear. I seem to have a total mental block at determining whether preview mode is active or not from the appearance of the button. Sometimes I toggle it back and forth until I figure it out. Mostly I ignore that button and look for the visual clues of all the extra interface to know whether I am in preview mode.