Menus on Windows

[thistle]

I am evaluating Affinity Photo V2 on a MacBook Air M1 (13.3") and on a XPS 17". Both have a fantastic display, the XPS has 10-bit color depth and a much larger screen. 

I think the menus on Windows are a little weird and (for me) very uncomfortable to use.

1st. Their height is short. It is quite hard to stay within their height with the mouse.

2nd. They expand toward the left (why?). The zoom menu is too long due to the Reset Roration shortcut. It is very hard to travel along the zoom row to reach the submenu.

The Mac interface has menu expanding toward the right, with a normal height (maybe this is caused by Windows on high DPI display?)

 

[walt.farrell]

I'm a bit confused, thistle.

You say you're evaluating Photo 2 on a MacBook Air, but then you seem to be talking about how it works on Windows?

[Corgi]

8 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

I'm a bit confused, thistle.

You say you're evaluating Photo 2 on a MacBook Air, but then you seem to be talking about how it works on Windows?

He's evaluating it on both platforms. A Mac and a Dell.

[thistle]

22 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

I'm a bit confused, thistle.

You say you're evaluating Photo 2 on a MacBook Air, but then you seem to be talking about how it works on Windows?

Yes, I bet you are confused. I was not very clear, my fault.

I am evaluating AP both on Windows and Mac and noticed this difference in the menu management. The way menus appear on the Mac is similar to all the other applications. In Windows I noticed that the height of the menu "rows" is very very small, thus making it difficult to stay within their bounds when you need to reach a submenu. Furthermore, submenus appear toward the left, quite uncomfortable because non-standard.

This is on Mac:

The "Zoom" menu item is taller and shorter (much easier to stay within when reaching the various zoom in-out etc).

I meant to provide a feedback.

[hifred]

I agree that the Windows Menus (which use less line spacing) look crammed, in comparison with the Mac.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, thistle said:

2nd. They expand toward the left (why?). The zoom menu is too long due to the Reset Roration shortcut. It is very hard to travel along the zoom row to reach the submenu.

And

And

 

[thistle]

Thank you! Actually I made a search but could not find anything.

In my case, I am not using a pen or a tablet, but the notebook has a touch screen. Unfortunately, menus keep opening to the left even if I disable the touch screen.

However, when the touch screen is activated, Affinity Photo V2 is the only app whose menus open to the left. Not even Windows itself opens menu to the left.

Clearly, there is something wrong with Affinity Photo: do they check the correct flag?

 

 

[thistle]

Found a solution. Option 3 here:

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/68038-set-menus-open-aligned-left-right-windows-10-a.html

Open the Registry Editor, navigate to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows
set the value to 0 (zero)

Restart the PC.

Finally I see:

But Affinity developers should really revise their checks on this aspect because Affinity Photo is the ONLY application that was opening menus to the left. Now ALL the apps are opening menus to the right, meaning that Microsoft do not check that flag (or they check it in combination with other flags, for example when a pen is really present).