Vertical versus Horizontal Workspace – Flip!

[pbass]

Ever notice that your workspace/interface needs are quite different when you're working in 

1) Portrait orientation 

   versus

2) Landscape orientation?

 

It's already quite constraining that computer screens are landscape-shaped – who ever told Steve Jobs and Bill Gates that computers should prioritize left-right over up-down?? 

Blame the fact that CRT displays evolved from Television tubes. :^(  But damn them for making LCD screens even more h-o-r-i-z-o-n-t-a-l!

 

But if you're designing a vertical layout or (lord have mercy on you!) an actual vertical portrait, you're reduced to cursing the gods of prevailing horizontality.

 

We portraitists have to make the best of it, and get every vertical obstruction off to the side of the screen.

 

Affinity, you can HELP!

Please give us the option of switching the Toolbar into a vertical bar! (I know you'd have to figure something out for the doc tabs & parameter readouts, but you'll sort it out in your usual clever way.)

 

A gift from heaven would be a toggle/switch command to flip from your usual interface layout, to one customized for portrait/vertical documents – with a vertical Toolbar.

 

(I'm aware of Separated Mode and Toggle Full Screen – very helpful. But I need the toolbar and the info read-out, and don't want to be constantly Tab-Toggling interface On & Off, or Tool Bar Opt-Cmd-T.)

 

Thanks for your serious consideration!

 

- pbass

[pbass]

I just realized that the horizontal Context Toolbar (the info read-out one) is separate from the Toolbar. 

When I "Full Screen", toggle off Tool Bar (Opt-Cmd-T), and push the Context Toolbar to the very top, then when I toggle Toolbar back on, it's automatically above the Context one – i.e., off screen. :^(

 

I'd love to get that Context bar off to the side too. Doesn't matter if it's on the w-i-d-e side; at least it's not taking precious vertical space.

 

Thanks,

 

- pbass

[anon1]

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[pbass]

I really like the idea to be able to have the toolbar in a vertical position and also the small bottom and top "bar" totally out of the way. Especially for the MacBook screens!

 

Yes, especially! It's surprising how many serious media folks work on a 15" MBP.

[anon1]

I think the easiest way would be to just have alt+cmd+t also deactivate the bottom bar with the shortcut hints (which takes up about 1cm and the bezel of the MacBook screen is already enough) and also when using cmd +0 it should fit the image closer to the edges. 

 

So alt+cmd+t is sort of a vert-space-expand-mode.

 

I´m not a friend of the separated mode so I can´t speak for that but for the normal mode this would be totally fine IMO. 

And not too much effort for the devs.

[Guest]

Best thing you can do is to have an external display for a laptop, rotate it to display in portrait and adjust the graphics settings.

 

I did this in my last job as I was always designing A3 posters in portrait and got sick and tried of scrolling. Admittedly though, I was lumbered with a Windows XP machine using PowerPoint as a one-size fits all tool - less than ideal!

[anon1]

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[pbass]

Hey folks,

 

Thanks for all the tips and opinions.

 

I would still encourage the devs to be conscious that vertical/portrait images (on our modern movie-shaped screens) require _all possible_ vertical space to be left for the doc, and _all_ controls to be off to the sides. That's the ideal, imho.

 

For some of us, vertical images are half – or more! – of our work. 

There are useful work-arounds (as mentioned above); and toggling the UI in and out of the way is one of them. 

But designing in the option of a Portrait UI layout from the ground up would solve everything.

 

Thanks for thinking about this!

 

regards,

 

- pbass

[anon1]

So what you're additionally requesting is that the toolbar with the tool settings (brush dice etc.) sould be put into another vertical panel?

[pbass]

So what you're additionally requesting is that the toolbar with the tool settings (brush dice etc.) sould be put into another vertical panel?

Yes, exactly – the _option_ of toggling to vertical panel(s) for the Toolbar and the Context bar.

But keep the option of the current UI, which suits horizontal/landscape images. 

[pbass]

It occurs to me that people who work with their faces close to a big screen like a 27" iMac won't see what the big deal is – toolbars are thin.

But many of us make do with smaller screens – even MacBooks. Then the horizontal toolbars (set to a legible UI prefs zoom level), rob significant, already-scarce vertical space.