New Control Bar

[Petar Petrenko]

Publisher needs a new Toolbar as this one in the attachment ASAP, to replace the existing one. It should be with 4 rows and can be added to Designer and Photo, too.

[RNKLN]

I pray this won't happen. 😀

[PaulEC]

1 hour ago, NNN said:

Publisher needs a new Toolbar as this one in the attachment ASAP, to replace the existing one. It should be with 4 rows and can be added to Designer and Photo, too.

It might be useful if you could explain why Publisher "needs" this, rather than just saying that you want it!

 

[MikeTO]

I don't think we need a 2-row Context Bar like Quark or InDesign, times have changed, but I do agree that the Context Bar and Toolbar above it could be improved.

When DTP started and screens were tiny, changing any attribute required using a menu command and interacting with a dialog. When screens grew the 2-row formatting panel was introduced to save round trips to the menus. It had to be horizontal because while vertical real estate was still precious, horizontal real estate couldn't be sacrificed without losing the ability to see a page's width at actual size.

There is now sufficient horizontal space for vertical panels even on laptop screens and vertical is much more useful. With a horizontal layout you have to toggle between Character and Paragraph views but you can see both vertically if you choose. Applying Body Text is 1 click with the Text Styles panel versus click+scroll+click with a horizontal layout's Paragraph Style list. From a usability prospective, vertical panels win hands down.

Horizontal panels do have advantages and Serif had a chance to start fresh with Affinity and not just copy a two decade old design approach. I think the 1-row Context Bar is a great idea but it's hard to satisfy everybody without the ability to customize it. I don't need constant access to Columns and Gutter and would rather see No Break added, but you might never use that and want Kerning. Perhaps Serif will add customization in the future.

I don't understand the division of controls between the Toolbar and the Context Bar. In this screenshot I have two objects selected and the Context Bar includes six common alignment options but not the two distribute options. The Toolbar includes a single control to provide access to the same alignment options as well as distribute and some more obscure options. I think alignment should only be in the Context Bar and it should include distribute.

It's worse when editing text - much of the space in the Toolbar is allocated to object manipulation - I don't need align, arrange, flip, rotate, etc when editing text. And the Synchronize Defaults and Revert Defaults controls are features I use at most once a year.

I just avoid this by hiding the Toolbar entirely. I've tried hiding the Context Bar, too, but it feels weird not to have something to grab onto at the top of the window.

[loukash]

20 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

I think alignment should only be in the Context Bar

No, because then it would be only available when using the Move tool.
Whereas via the main bar you can distribute objects based on your Layers panel selection, while many of the other tools are selected.
That's a feature, not a bug.

In that sense, having it duplicated in the context toolbar is slightly more redundant, in my opinion, even though I don't really care about that.

That said…

20 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

I just avoid this by hiding the Toolbar entirely.

That's what I do most of the times on El Capitan as well. But on Catalina, the main toolbar has become this silly MacOS "unified" toolbar, so turning it off hides the doc name and the traffic light buttons as well. (Bad UI design. Yes, Apple, I'm looking at YOU for even allowing this UI nonsense!)

[Petar Petrenko]

1 hour ago, PaulEC said:

It might be useful if you could explain why Publisher "needs" this, rather than just saying that you want it!

1. Content of the Controlbar changes when you select a tool in the Tools palette. For example, When you select Text frame tool Paragraph and Character palettes are displayed on this Controlbar. When you select Brush tool, Paragraph and Character palettes are closed and you now have the Brush palette open, and so on.
2. It reduces the number of palettes that are opened all the time even if you don't need them at the moment.
3. It is expecially useful on laptops where every open palette occupies the screen and reduces the working area.
4. It speeds the workflow because you know where to look instead of visual hunting where you put the specific palette among others.

[MikeTO]

3 minutes ago, loukash said:

No, because then it would be only available when using the Move tool.
Whereas via the main bar you can distribute objects based on your Layers panel selection, while many of the other tools are selected.
That's a feature, not a bug.

In that sense, having it duplicated in the context toolbar is slightly more redundant, in my opinion, even though I don't really care about that.

IMO most people don't want to align objects when editing text and if they do there are other ways to accomplish it since it's not a priority. In an illustration app more time is spent manipulating objects than text so allocating the majority of horizontal toolbar space to objection manipulation is good. In a page layout app with multi-page documents, more time is spent manipulating text than objects so it's not as good of approach. You can't just reverse the approach and put text formatting controls into a static toolbar or you'll waste space. I think the paradigm of a static toolbar paired with a dynamic context bar is less optimal for a page layout app than illustration app and Publisher just inherited it from Designer. I think Serif was right to break with the Quark/ID design approach and try something fresh but perhaps there is room for improvement.

3 minutes ago, loukash said:

That's what I do most of the times on El Capitan as well. But on Catalina, the main toolbar has become this silly MacOS "unified" toolbar, so turning it off hides the doc name and the traffic light buttons as well. (Bad UI design. Yes, Apple, I'm looking at YOU for even allowing this UI nonsense!)

Same on Ventura but I can live without the traffic lights and doc name.

[loukash]

1 hour ago, MikeTO said:

most people don't want to align objects when editing text

1. Who said I'm talking just about editing text in Publisher, and…
2. how many participants actually responded to your scientific and representative survey on this topic…?  

In other words, you're aware that you may also want to align and distribute nodes, and that the alignment buttons are not in the context bar when using Node/Pen/Pencil/Artboard tools?

[MikeTO]

57 minutes ago, loukash said:

1. Who said I'm talking just about editing text in Publisher, and…
2. how many participants actually responded to your scientific and representative survey on this topic…?  

In other words, you're aware that you may also want to align and distribute nodes, and that the alignment buttons are not in the context bar when using Node/Pen/Pencil/Artboard tools?

I know the alignment controls aren't in the context bar when using certain tools because they're in the Toolbar. My point is it should be contextually aware and that allocating much of the static toolbar space to functions that somebody formatting text doesn't need isn't optimal.

We'll just have to disagree on this which is okay.