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The 500th thread about GUI …


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I personally like the UI and have no issues with it, but everyone's different :)

 

There is already a thread discussing the UI here. In the meantime I can only suggest that you increase the UI gamma in Preferences > User Interface.

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Leigh, this post really struck a chord in me and I'm sure others as well. The user community has been begging for lighter/brighter UI mode for over a year; it's really quite ridiculous that it has taken THIS long and still nothing... 

 

Why is this so hard to implement? Is it REALLY that difficult to add more contrast to the highlight color of selected tools? I mean, c'mon guys, we just wanna be able to SEE AND USE OUR INTERFACE CLEARLY...

 

It's getting difficult to keep being an Affinity champion when even the most basic things are ignored in betas... Do you want to lose your early adopters and fans?

 

 

I personally like the UI and have no issues with it, but everyone's different :)

 

There is already a thread discussing the UI here. In the meantime I can only suggest that you increaase the UI gamma in Preferences > User Interface.

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

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I'm with Leigh i love the UI and while I get some people may want something different I think it's mostly overblown about how "bad" it is

 

If you have perfect vision, or even very good vision, then you have no means of determining how "bad" it is for those of us with older less-effective vision.  I, for one, cannot tell which of the tools in the first post is the active one and I've made all the adjustments in Preferences that we are allowed to make to compensate.  

 

And like Ronnyb, I don't understand why Affinity is so reluctant to accommodate us by offering the option of a light or dark UI.  We can't change our vision; they can, if they are willing, offer us something we desperately need.  

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William, no discussions needed, the GUI is bad! And the statement "for me it is well!" Is not helpful at all. Do you really want a very large amount of potential users to be locked out? Or are you satisfied, if the GUI matches your individual preferences? What an egocentric point of view!

And I said it before in a different thread: This GUI will never(!) be accepted by EC workplace regulations. Bye, bye professionality!

But it is up to Affinity. If they love this GUI, they have to renounce customers, and I think, they know it!

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Well, though I am a bit reluctant to chime in here, I would also believe, that the user interface should get a little love when Publisher is out. And not only from a functional (light vs. dark), but also from an aesthetic perspective …

  • In my opinion, it would be not detrimental, if the developers cast some chill on the interface. Sure, we can use a monochromatic iconography, but what if one is not too much into monochromatic icons? The only option is to have the current, very colourful icons then … which are, in my opinion, a bit too jazzy for a professional design application …
  • I also believe, that the panel elements would reward some little fine-tuning. When you look at the layers panel, you will notice, that the tab background currently has a slightly different colour than the panel background, the label type could have a little more space around, numeric inputs and menus have different heights, the buttons are spaced somewhat undecidedly (at least to my eyes).

No offense … I am well aware, that all this sounds overly critical, but you will know, that I am full of sympathy for the Affinity project. I just believe that these truly great apps should get the very best clothing one could think of …  :)

post-1198-0-77370700-1447884373_thumb.png

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Our developers are already aware that some users would like an option for a Lighter/Brighter UI and MEB has added it to the list of Common Feature Requests here. TonyB has mentioned in the past that we've not ruled out adding another UI mode but their priorities are to work through the list of promised features. 

 

The Affinity developers have made many changes and improvements to our apps as a result of user feedback and I see no reason why they won't look into this further when they have the time to do so.

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Just make the damn highlight color have more contrast than the foreground color. This is not about redoing the UI. Just fix the damn contrast already, it's been over a year people are asking for this simple fix!!!! Enough with excuses. Just make the highlight color darker or brighter, its not that hard. It's been over A YEAR!!!!

 

 

 

What should I say, what the picture doesn’t say?

GUI-specialist at work!

 

 

Our developers are already aware that some users would like an option for a Lighter/Brighter UI and MEB has added it to the list of Common Feature Requests here. TonyB has mentioned in the past that we've not ruled out adding another UI mode but their priorities are to work through the list of promised features. 

 

The Affinity developers have made many changes and improvements to our apps as a result of user feedback and I see no reason why they won't look into this further when they have the time to do so.

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

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I'm afraid I'm with the "more contrast/colour/a little bigger please" camps too.

And I hope they get around to it soon.
Till then I take some comfort in the fact that the bright young developers of today will themselves have older eyes one day and will be posting the same complaints and requests as ours for action to be taken about the UI in some other app. And if there memory still serves them they will think back to now and say " Oh, they were right, this dose matter"

macOS 10.15.7  15" Macbook Pro, 2017  |  4 Core i7 3.1GHz CPU  |  Radeon Pro 555 2GB GPU + Integrated Intel HD Graphics 630 1.536GB  |  16GB RAM  |  Wacom Intuos4 M

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Don't always talk about "older eyes" or something like that. Just look at the screenshot of the first posting. You only see a difference if you have a deep, deep look. Even Leigh didn't catch it at once.

This has nothing to do with good or bad eyes, this simply is poor design.

 

I said "Not sure what you're asking, sorry. Can you provide more info?" because your screenshot didn't look any different to what I normally see when using the app I.E when a tool is selected I see the "active" grey background around the icon without any issues.

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when a tool is selected I see the "active" grey background around the icon without any issues.

I also see it, personally I think its ok... :D

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Good solution Peter...

 

The layers tab, goes blue to show you which one is active, so give the selected icon the same colour shadow or halo!

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

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I also think the overall GUI is a bit too dark for my taste - although I have gotten used to dark GUIs, seeing I work with a lot of video applications.

 

In my opinion it is quite simple: offer the user a dark and a light interface, and allow for at least a number of in-between steps to cater for individual preferences. For accessibility reasons the current rigid GUI colours are just a bad idea. Applications like Photoshop, Photoline, Illustrator, Blender, Cinema4d, and so on, and so forth, all support varying levels of GUI brightness and colour control - because it is an extremely important part of accessibility.

 

I was surprised to see that the Affinity developers did not build this into the GUI code right from the start - it really is a quite fundamental requirement in GUI design.

 

I presume the Affinity GUI colours are maintained in a separate configuration file, correct? If so, perhaps manual adjustments can be made.

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Well, I played around with the interface of Designer yesterday evening (please bear with me, I am not a UI designer), and I believe it would suffice, for the moment (until we get our brighter version … ;)), if the background brightness of the panels and the toolbar was slightly increased, while the “highlights” (active state indicators) remained as dark as they currently are … you could go still a little further than my examples below.

 

Of course, I don’t know how difficult that would be … and I am well aware that the problems start, as soon as the icons have to be redesigned because of the brightness changes. But it’s all about increasing the contrast a little. And the interface gamma setting in the preferences doesn’t help here, since the contrast tends to get decreased at higher settings …  :unsure:

post-1198-0-13423400-1448034535_thumb.png

post-1198-0-47843400-1448039631_thumb.png

post-1198-0-85104200-1448039736_thumb.png

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Even your suggestions make us look around and search. It definitely shouldn’t be necessary to search within the GUI. A millisecond glance should be enough to see, whats going on to be bot interrupted in ongoing work.

Just look at the attached example of macphuns Aurora. They did a great job concerning GUI.

post-1030-0-38246500-1448038001_thumb.png

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