searchable commands

[Scoob]

I am an infrequent user of Affinity but I love having such a powerful tool.  I wanted to do a simple cropping of a picture.  It took forever for me to find the select tool.  I was never able to find the crop command.  I ended up creating a new file and pasting the selected area.  If you had a capability of searching commands, I would have found it.  This kind of thing of common in programmer text editors like vscode or atom.  It would be wonderful here as well.  If I've missed it, let me know! thanks!

[Komatös]

Hi @Scoob

In Affinity Photo the crop tool has this icon  or press c on keyboard, and Affinity Designer has this icon   

[_Th]

Very much needed!

Using this built-in feature in VS Code or Figma results in a massive increase in productivity. It would help users find hidden or harder-to-find tools, operations and settings, especially those of us who prefer the speed of the keyboard vs. the mouse. Honestly, one of my biggest frustrations with the Affinity suite is the number of things that cannot be accomplished with the keyboard.

I think Serif would boost user satisfaction immensely by implementing this in v2.

[_Th]

If for any reason you haven't used this in Figma or VS Code (or similar), it works like Spotlight on Mac. (I use Windows, but love this about Macs.) In VS Code, you type Control-Shift-P; in Figma it's Control-/. You get a 'modal' popup to search just about any setting, command, operation, etc. Huge time saver. Did I mention that already?

[fde101]

If you are on a Mac, you can search in the help menu, as @_Th hinted at.

If not, there is searchable online help here: https://affinity.help

[Scoob]

Thanks everyone for the information (and support!)  I did not know that Searchlight could search help menus but as I am also a Windows user, that does not help me.  I am a VSCode user (and Emacs and Vim) which all have command lines.  I find that tools with large numbers of commands (like Affinity) really benefit from this kind of user interface option. I would theorize that since these tools support Undo/Redo, they likely follow the "Command Pattern" (from the Gang of Four for you programmers) so it should not be horrible to offer a search capability because the commands within the system are implemented as more than just functions.  

[PaulEC]

20 hours ago, Scoob said:

It took forever for me to find the select tool.  I was never able to find the crop command. 

If you hover your mouse over the tools you get a popup telling you what it is. If you move the mouse down the icons you can easily find the one you want.

[_Th]

22 hours ago, fde101 said:

If you are on a Mac, you can search in the help menu, as @_Th hinted at.

If not, there is searchable online help here: https://affinity.help

I actually wasn't referring to searching through Help; sorry if I was unclear. I think the "Searchable" part of this topic's title might be misleading, but I believe @Scoob and I are saying the same thing: It's not simply trying to find a tool or option, although that's immensely helpful too.

Instead, it's activating a 'search' field in which you can type the setting/action you want, and hitting enter/return to actually perform it.

VS Code calls this a Command Palette; Figma refers to it as Quick Actions. (Better explanation: https://help.figma.com/hc/en-us/articles/360040328653-Use-shortcuts-and-quick-actions#Quick_actions).

Those of us who, for speed and efficiency, prefer keyboard shortcuts instead of the mouse, would benefit tremendously from this. Once you've gotten used to this option, it is almost painful not to have it.

I really want Serif to have increasing success with and sales of the Affinity suite, yet one thing I think is a major hindrance is that parts of the workflow are cumbersome or, at a minimum, non-intuitive compared to the established workflow of Adobe and others. I believe a well-implemented VS Code-type Command Palette would go a long way to solving this.

[Scoob]

 

Deeply agree.  Thanks for writing this up @_Th !

[Komatös]

Here is a "Key card" with shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts (V2) .pdf

Change in the link Designer with Photo and/or Publisher for the other programmes shortcuts lists.

Edited December 15, 2022 by Komatös

[Scoob]

Very cool - thanks!

[fde101]

4 hours ago, _Th said:

Instead, it's activating a 'search' field in which you can type the setting/action you want, and hitting enter/return to actually perform it.

Yes, I am familiar with these features, I have a few applications which offer them (and I find them so rarely useful that whenever I want to use one of them I need to look up the shortcut to access them, in which time I could have simply searched for the command I was trying to find to begin with), but as this is not currently offered in the Affinity apps, searching help is available in the meantime and could have quickly identified the crop tool for the OP.