Effects dialog is not focused

[orangefizz]

I hate it when I click on noise or blur or something, and I type a value that I think I want to start with, but instead it just changes the opacity of the layer. This makes zero sense to me. If I just asked for an effect, that's where my keyboard entries should register, not the layer properties.

[Pšenda]

16 hours ago, orangefizz said:

when I click on noise or blur or something

What exactly do you mean "when I click"? What exactly are you clicking on and what value should be entered?

 

16 hours ago, orangefizz said:

but instead it just changes the opacity of the layer.

This is the most annoying and harmful function for me (the change of opacity is not indicated in the Layers panel, so it is very laborious to detect and find an accidentally damaged layer), which, unfortunately, cannot even be turned off.

[orangefizz]

Meaning: when I select an effect from the effects menu, the popup dialog should have the cursor now focused in the value field, not in the layer opacity field.

[MikeTO]

When a dialog box opens its first text field should have focus. The effects windows are a grey area though. The first text field in a panel should not be given focus when it opens because panels are not dialogs, they are non-modal and you might not want to interact with them immediately. They aren't normal windows and have custom close buttons rather than the standard red one of a window.

The effects windows aren't dialogs and they're not panels, they're just windows. You can close them by clicking the red button but they'll also close on their own when you start doing something else. This is quite different from Photoshop which opens them as dialogs and then allows you to edit them via the Properties panel.

Treating these windows like panels in terms of focus isn't necessarily wrong but it's inconvenient and reduces accessibility. As you pointed out, if you open one you probably want to interact with them. So I agree with you, it would be great if Affinity gave the first text field focus when an effects window is opened.

[orangefizz]

OK there are a lot of context-specific words here but the gist is: if a user clicked something in a menu that opens changeable values/options, it follows that the next logical focus should be relevant to those options—ie. in that window/dialog/panel.

Certainly just as important is the usability of the slider which, for me at the moment, is functionally unusable. And even after finding an acceptable value with the slider, just releasing the mouse button often causes it to snap to an adjacent value which can be anywhere from 5%-15% distant (eg: grow/shrink or feather selection). This needs attention.

[MikeTO]

I was agreeing with you.

I was just longwinded. 🙂

[orangefizz]

Oh I know haha. I was just clarifying for the devs... 👍