Forward/Backward nomenclature

[MikeTO]

I wish Affinity would use the Bring/Send nomenclature developed decades ago for Forward/Backward which is used by Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, Corel, and pretty much everybody else. i.e.,

• Bring to Front
• Bring Forward
• Send Backward
• Send to Back

Affinity uses:

• Move to Front
• Move Forward One
• Move Backward One
• Move to Back

This is a very small thing but Bring/Send differentiates the items in the menu making it easier to pick the right one. And consistency with others is good.

Thanks

[carl123]

Disagree...

The word Move is more descriptive of what you are doing

And the word One signifies exactly what the Move will achieve

Affinity have got it right this time and improved on the nomenclature of past decades.

Just because we (old users) are used to Bring and Send does not mean that new generations cannot be presented with new terminology that is better and/or more descriptive of the task(s) in hand. Companies should not have to wait for the likes of Apple or Microsoft to do something first, before they follow their lead, if they think something can be done/described better now.

[walt.farrell]

I have never used applications that use Bring/Send, and as someone who is not used to that terminology, I find it more confusing than what Affinity uses.

[MikeTO]

2 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

I have never used applications that use Bring/Send, and as someone who is not used to that terminology, I find it more confusing than what Affinity uses.

Apps from Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, Quark, AutoCAD, and Omni all use Bring/Send, it's all I've never known. Old standards such as PageMaker, Freehand, Ventura Publisher, and many more used it, too. I don't know how you managed to escape it.

10 hours ago, carl123 said:

The word Move is more descriptive of what you are doing

We'll have to disagree. I think both terms are equally descriptive and having four menu items in a row starting with the same verb impairs usability. As I said, this is very minor - if we're not using keyboard shortcuts we're doing something wrong - but there's a usability reason that Bring/Send was chosen and so many companies use it.

1 hour ago, LondonSquirrel said:

I still have CorelDRAW 9 in a Windows VM. That has:

I stand corrected for Corel.

[carl123]

6 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

and having four menu items in a row starting with the same verb impairs usability

Best they redesign the APhoto File menu also as there are currently 9 items that start with the word New or is it just verbs that are the problem

 

[MikeTO]

1 hour ago, carl123 said:

Best they redesign the APhoto File menu also as there are currently 9 items that start with the word New or is it just verbs that are the problem

I quite agree with you and I think it would have been better to just add these options to the New dialog. Adobe avoided the issue in InDesign by using a submenu but that just aggravates people.

[Pšenda]

23 hours ago, MikeTO said:

I wish Affinity would use the Bring/Send nomenclature developed decades ago for Forward/Backward which is used by Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, Corel, and pretty much everybody else. i.e.,

• Bring to Front
• Bring Forward
• Send Backward
• Send to Back

Yes, this is an absolute standard for applications that control the position of objects in the layer stack, the so-called z-order.
For these cases, the verbs "bring" and "send" are far more suitable than "move", which is more suitable for moving in the area.

Otherwise, it is of course also used by Microsoft in its basic applications where drawing objects (Word, Visio).
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/move-an-object-forward-or-backward-6c786938-a245-4e14-8ce8-98bf5ae54dce
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/move-wordart-a-text-box-or-shape-in-word-9be0a663-60c0-4892-ac9f-e1fa5b4b1d7b

So if someone hasn't come across it, they probably won't be very experienced in this type of application.

 

P.S.

3 hours ago, MikeTO said:

Apps from Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, Quark, AutoCAD, and Omni all use Bring/Send, it's all I've never known. Old standards such as PageMaker, Freehand, Ventura Publisher, and many more used it, too.

If you want to complete the list of applications, it also includes all (that I have ever used) IDE development tools, e.g. Delphi here:

I would easily bet, that it also has the development environment in which Serif develops the Affinity suite.

Edited February 21, 2023 by Pšenda