WISH: Layermenu overhaul (Design)

[Tobias Kern]

Hi Affinity-Team,

Greetings and wish you a Happy New Year.

I worked since many years with the Adobe Suite and i switched in 2021 to Affinity.

One of my biggest problems with Affinity is the design of the layermenu!

If i compare the Adobe layermenu with the Affinity layermenu,
i think Adobe has overall the better and more logic UI-design.

Here are my thoughts:

- Adobe menu looks for more cleaned up and it is better to read and more understandable.

- Why is menu for visible / hide on the right side in Affinity? It should be on the left side!

- For visible / hide it would be better to have an "eye" as symbol instead of a checkmark

- You only can lock layers in top right (a symbol appears), if you unlock layers the
  symbol disappears!? Please make a extra column for lock / unlock.
  Best place would be after visible / hide menu on the right side.

- The Adobe menu offers a option to easily move objects from layer to layer.
  Please such a functionality for the Affinity menu.

- Visually it is not so good to see which layer is active at the moment in the Affinity menu.
  Adobe offers a pen-symbol for this.

- The overview of the hierarchie and the layercolor is also visually better / readable with the Adobe menu.
 

The priority for the layermenu should be (my 2-cents):

1. active layer
2. visible / hide
3. lock / unlock
4. layer color
5. layer name with hierarchie
6. option to move objects from layer to layer

Switching on/off layers or lock/unlock them is done more often,
then rename layers, so the menus for these switches should have
a higher priority!

 

I think, no one has to reinvent the wheel, why not copy well functioning menu designs!

 

Greeting from Germany
Tobi

[Pšenda]

On 1/10/2022 at 5:31 PM, Tobias Kern said:

- You only can lock layers in top right (a symbol appears), if you unlock layers the
  symbol disappears!? Please make a extra column for lock / unlock.

-1.

 

 

On 1/10/2022 at 5:31 PM, Tobias Kern said:

- For visible / hide it would be better to have an "eye" as symbol instead of a checkmark

-1

 

 

On 1/10/2022 at 5:31 PM, Tobias Kern said:

- Why is menu for visible / hide on the right side in Affinity? It should be on the left side!

-1
For me, viewing and controlling the layer / group hierarchy, viewing the layer preview, and its name / description are far more important.

 

 

On 1/10/2022 at 5:31 PM, Tobias Kern said:

- Visually it is not so good to see which layer is active at the moment in the Affinity menu.

Really?

 

 

On 1/10/2022 at 5:31 PM, Tobias Kern said:

If i compare the Adobe layermenu with the Affinity layermenu,
i think Adobe has overall the better and more logic UI-design.

I don't think there is any standard for judging "better" and "more logical" (otherwise all applications would have exactly the same UI). You're just used to something, so anything else seems worse and illogical.
Just a small recommendation - if you approach ASuite as if it were a complete clone and a duplicate of Adobe, you will be disappointed. ASuite is not, and I hope, will not clone any other applications. So if something suits you perfectly, because it's better and more logical, use it, and don't wait to see if the worse and illogical application happens to be redesigned.