How accepting would Affinity be to changing some of the standard UI/UX paradigms which are from Adobe in the 90's (outdated) ?

[.eb]

Hello,  I love Affinity tools... otherwise I would not spend the time making these suggestions.

Adobe defined most of the graphic program UI/UX paradigms in the 90's.  Adobe is outdated.
- Below we have two examples and I could provide 100 examples (almost all point back to Adobe Paradigms).

I would like to beg on my knees that the Affinity team considers changes.
If Affinity is open to the idea, I would make a thread of suggestions like these.. that I can add to as I encounter considerations.

I believe Affinity is close to being able to take certain markets and I believe simple changes like these will help sweep the people over here.
Because in the long run, we want less click-drilling and less visual filtering.
--
EDIT: The images below don't cover reference to PPI/etc. as I tried to keep this simple for now.. however it is nice that the thread mentioned this as it allowed me to keep this post less cluttered.  Thx  @v_kyr
 

EXAMPLE ONE

This becomes tiring in medium to long work sessions. It's outdated Adobe-think.

EXAMPLE TWO (792px x 788px)
(This was rushed.. forgive me for it being imperfect.)
AKA: 4k Res is common in the 27-32"(or ultrawide) screens.. hence the comparison section on right side, top half.

 

 

 

 

 

[Old Bruce]

1 minute ago, .eb said:

EXAMPLE ONE

 

4 minutes ago, .eb said:

 

So if I am understanding you correctly the Stroke and the Fill will both be somehow available for accepting a change in colour. I guess I have to first click on the fill in order to have its colour change but not have the Stroke's colour change. Or do I have to use the click and drag the Fill onto the colour wheel, or use the pipette and clcik on a colour then click on the Fill....

 

[Paul Mudditt]

I get where you are coming from but it is not just Affinity and Adobe that have problems with 4K displays. There is a reason why apple uses 5K displays as with 4K everything is too small, and looks really poor even and when scaled 3840 x 2160 scales to 1920 x 1080 which gives hardly any real estate, whereas 5K scaled 5120 x 2880 scales down to a very usable 2560 x 1440.  I learnt this the hard way and sold on my 4K monitor and replaced by two 2K 2560x1440 displays which I find way more usable than a 4K display.

[v_kyr]

1 hour ago, Paul Mudditt said:

I learnt this the hard way ...

Let's give and add some common Mac related reference here ...

• Mac external displays for designers and developers
• Mac external displays for designers and developers, part 2

[Paul Mudditt]

9 hours ago, v_kyr said:

Let's give and add some common Mac related reference here ...

• Mac external displays for designers and developers
• Mac external displays for designers and developers, part 2

I have seen this chart before but never really studied it, it is very good, did you create it?  It highlights how bad 4K displays are UNLESS they are 34” or larger (non-retina) or 21.5” or smaller (retina)

[v_kyr]

1 hour ago, Paul Mudditt said:

I have seen this chart before but never really studied it, it is very good, did you create it?

No I didn't created it, just saw and memoried that some longer time ago when I was recherching about third party monitors for Macs, their resolution and any possible macOS related display scaling issues (sharpness, blurrying, shimmer ... etc.) here.

[fde101]

I somewhat agree with example one, though it is a minor sort of thing.  Example two, however, I disagree with.  The idea that the app should bypass well-defined OS conventions for scaling its interface is not a good place to be going, and wasting toolbar space over something changed as rarely as handle size is an even worse idea, unless it is a customizable toolbar (which the one pictured is not) and it can be added optionally.

[.eb]

@fde101
HI...fed101.. lol.. nice name,
Hmm.. That part was about 'not needing the OS to adjust the scaling' .. you can remove any and all remarks about the OS if it helps to make sense of the specifics.

I see that I need to step up my explanations.
Sorry for the cryptic/confusing read.  - I tend to write developer-direct-speak.. I forget that I need to approach things differently.
 

[.eb]

22 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

 

So if I am understanding you correctly the Stroke and the Fill will both be somehow available for accepting a change in colour. I guess I have to first click on the fill in order to have its colour change but not have the Stroke's colour change. Or do I have to use the click and drag the Fill onto the colour wheel, or use the pipette and clcik on a colour then click on the Fill....

 

Hi Bruce,
This:   ensure fill color selector/register is activated/in front of stroke UI component , then remove or change color.  
Becomes this:  remove either color for fill / stroke without extra clicks to set primary/active UI component.

[.eb]

22 hours ago, Paul Mudditt said:

I get where you are coming from but it is not just Affinity and Adobe that have problems with 4K displays. There is a reason why apple uses 5K displays as with 4K everything is too small, and looks really poor even and when scaled 3840 x 2160 scales to 1920 x 1080 which gives hardly any real estate, whereas 5K scaled 5120 x 2880 scales down to a very usable 2560 x 1440.  I learnt this the hard way and sold on my 4K monitor and replaced by two 2K 2560x1440 displays which I find way more usable than a 4K display.

Hi Paul,
(I love the available "screen estate" of 4k.)
Whether by ultra high res on large screens or just High DPI/PPI .. improving usability is the focus obviously.
Since you've been through this frustration.. would you take a moment and consider what you would suggest to resolve such aspects ?

I would like to use 4k more often for several reasons, but even with Handles set to large the process is just too ..hmm..intricate .. to grab handles/anchors.

I hope this thread turns into a discussion of improvement-direction..
We all know these types of irksome-aspects exist... if we can help Affinity find great resolves.. then we all benefit.

 

[MoonaticDestiny]

example 1 is actually bad design. nothing about it is improved. its just more clutter and more button. its fine the way it is right now. you just need 1 button to remove color. you dont need 2 of the same buttons to remove color. you dont need 2 buttons that do the same action. so no to the first example. please provide the 100 examples. thank you. 

[fde101]

24 minutes ago, MoonaticDestiny said:

example 1 is actually bad design. nothing about it is improved

That depends on what you are optimizing for.  For a smaller display as was typical in the early days of PhotoShop and other similar software, and is still typical when working on a laptop, the existing design is better.

For a modern desktop as most more serious users would be working on, his suggestion for example 1 eliminates a click to switch between the outline and the fill.  With the traditional/existing design, if the fill is selected, you need to click on the outline in order to make it active, then you can click again to change the color, use the separate button to remove the color, etc...  with this suggested redesign the implication is that both fill and stroke are immediately accessible without that extra click to switch between them.  It uses slightly more screen real-estate but can save time as a result, and with larger monitors as are more common now, the use of extra space should not be an issue for quite as many users.

I could see adopting this when there is enough room for it to fit on the screen, and falling back on the existing approach when there is not.

[Paul Mudditt]

2 hours ago, .eb said:

Hi Paul,
(I love the available "screen estate" of 4k.)
Whether by ultra high res on large screens or just High DPI/PPI .. improving usability is the focus obviously.
Since you've been through this frustration.. would you take a moment and consider what you would suggest to resolve such aspects ?

I would like to use 4k more often for several reasons, but even with Handles set to large the process is just too ..hmm..intricate .. to grab handles/anchors.

I hope this thread turns into a discussion of improvement-direction..
We all know these types of irksome-aspects exist... if we can help Affinity find great resolves.. then we all benefit.

 

The counter-intuitive solution for me was to change from using a 4K monitor to a 2K monitor and gain much more ‘screen real estate’ to work. ideally I would have gone for a $$$ 5K display (as apple did) and get the same 2K real estate but using retina mode so smoother characters and lines, but at my age my eyes can’t tell the difference anyway so not worth the extra money for me.

My conclusion :- 2K is way superior to a 4K but not as good as 5K on a 27” monitor.

[v_kyr]

3 hours ago, Paul Mudditt said:

My conclusion :- 2K is way superior to a 4K but not as good as 5K on a 27” monitor.

It always depends also what's the main usage field here.

For example for developing purposes having a lot of screen real estate is always welcome, some 34" QHD (3440x1440) or 38" QHD+ (3.840 x 1.600) resolution curved monitor offers the needed space for adding enough IDE + app windows side by side in a still readable manner (...except maybe at 1600 vertical resolution where things get tiny). BUT a overall problem here for usage on Macs is, that due to down scaling from a Mac's higher native resolution, they may show texts etc. slightly blurred, aka not as sharp as possible. Also these cover at best ~99% of the sRGB and ~95% of the DCI-P3 Gammuts.

For designers & photo editors higher resolution 4K (3860 x 2160) and especially 5K (5120 x 2880) monitors are often more predestinated, as they show up the by Macs  natively offered resolution in a more detailed sharp and crisp manner. Further they mostly support higher brightness/contrasts and ~98% of the DCI-P3 Gammut. But at full resolution here again things (like text, icons etc.) will get pretty tiny for aged eyes.

[.eb]

6 hours ago, MoonaticDestiny said:

example 1 is actually bad design. nothing about it is improved. its just more clutter and more button. its fine the way it is right now. you just need 1 button to remove color. you dont need 2 of the same buttons to remove color. you dont need 2 buttons that do the same action. so no to the first example. please provide the 100 examples. thank you. 

it is not "bad design" in a tool interface.

// I edited to remove my New Yorker style of reply. Sorry about that, sometimes I forget to not be a New Yorker.

[deeds]

try Blender and Ableton Live.

 

Their UI scaleability is from the future, as far as the 1990's are concerned.

[fde101]

6 minutes ago, Bryan Rieger said:

We certainly don't need two, one right above the other.

One is for stroke, one for fill.  The point of it is that if they are separated from each other, then you are no longer switching between the two, eliminated the extra click needed when doing that.  If you are no longer switching, then the application won't know which one to apply that "none" swatch to unless there is a separate one for each.

 

7 minutes ago, Bryan Rieger said:

I generally prefer the OS handling screen size as it helps to normalize it across all of the apps I use.

Bingo.  That s the point I was trying to make earlier.  If an application provides independent controls for this and ignores the ones provided by the OS, it is in effect ignoring the user's preferences (as established within the controls provided by the OS), and even if it operates as on "offset" from those preferences, it is still no longer matching up with other applications on the system, which is generally a bad thing.

[Pšenda]

22 hours ago, fde101 said:

his suggestion for example 1 eliminates a click to switch between the outline and the fill.

But only for "turning off" the color! How often do you turn off the colors to make this optimization really worthwhile? I usually "adjust" the color when drawing/writing, I only turn it off exceptionally (compared to the color setting). For me -1.

P.S. Just to add - I would find it much more useful, given the frequency of setting the color versus turning it off, to be able to drag colors from the swatch panel directly to the Fill/Stroke circle, so I wouldn't even have to switch them. And adding the Apply to Stroke/Fill color items to the context menu for colors in the Swatch panel.

Edited August 29, 2023 by Pšenda

[Pšenda]

On 8/28/2023 at 10:32 AM, fde101 said:

The idea that the app should bypass well-defined OS conventions for scaling its interface is not a good place to be going,

I absolutely agree. At least on Windows, I'm perfectly fine with OS scaling based on monitor size and resolution. Especially when connecting (and then disconnecting) a large monitor to a laptop, when the display for "all" applications is adjusted in one place. I can't imagine why anyone would want to set up each app separately - and then completely reset them all again after connecting/disconnecting another monitor.

[Pšenda]

1 hour ago, fde101 said:

it is in effect ignoring the user's preferences (as established within the controls provided by the OS), and even if it operates as on "offset" from those preferences, it is still no longer matching up with other applications on the system, which is generally a bad thing.

Unfortunately, this is how it is with Windows - see requests and complaints that the Affinity application does not respect the rules of the OS. For example, rounded corners (whatever we think of them), shadows under windows to emphasize their stacking, the ability to tile windows on the desktop, etc.. which is a common standard for other applications on Windows 11.

[myclay]

4 hours ago, Pšenda said:

I can't imagine why anyone would want to set up each app separately

I do, best are programs which have a UI scaling slider.
Sometimes the UI designs are vastly different and a catch all be all just can´t do justice on homogenizing the UI size throughout a multi program pipeline.
 

[fde101]

32 minutes ago, myclay said:

Sometimes the UI designs are vastly different

If they are different to the point that this can impact them, they should be working on solving this problem too.

(And yes, I know that won't actually happen any time soon - but that doesn't change the fact that it is the ideal).

[Pšenda]

1 hour ago, myclay said:

I do, best are programs which have a UI scaling slider.

So do you find it best to have to set up all the applications you use every time you connect and disconnect the monitor? Well, I don't - I don't really consider doing this four times a day to be the best solution.

[myclay]

  

7 hours ago, fde101 said:

If they are different to the point that this can impact them, they should be working on solving this problem too.

(And yes, I know that won't actually happen any time soon - but that doesn't change the fact that it is the ideal).

unless humanity is in a hivemind, I can´t expect that developers who don´t know of each other could solve how big their fonts and icons are when I use their programs regularly side by side.
As I tried to write, having UI sliders per program is great so I can individually change the UI.
Some advanced programs allow UI scaling within their program on a granular level, each individual part of their programs can be scaled.
You just hover via your mouse over an UI area and use CTRL + Middle mouse pressed while doing an up/down movement with your mouse.
That ability is cool and would for Affinity Photo make sense for windows like Library,Layers,Brushes etc.
 

6 hours ago, Pšenda said:

So do you find it best to have to set up all the applications you use every time you connect and disconnect the monitor? Well, I don't - I don't really consider doing this four times a day to be the best solution.

The bold in italic marked is confusing, how often do you do that? I rarely if ever connect/disconnect my monitors.
Why would I even willingly connect disconnect my stationary monitors? Only scenario where doing so makes sense is when recording a clip with an external capture card.

A good program saves settings ,UI changes etc in a small file and reads that in while starting up.

Some programs which I dearly love and use regularly have an integrated and OS independent UI slider.
Just think about individual scaling in a browser, sometimes you want to scale a site or couple sites individually, same with programs.

Os wide scaling can make sense when you jump between 1080p, 4K,8k etc. but otherwise?  it´s imo bad practice to force one size fits all.
The forum sometimes gets threads opened by people which are wondering why their programs have issues due to OS wide UI scaling.
Additionally when in a productive environment, you absolutely do not want OS wide scaling.
OS wide scaling can take quite some time to do its thing and potentially crashes GPU intensive programs.

[fde101]

3 hours ago, myclay said:

I can´t expect that developers who don´t know of each other could solve how big their fonts and icons are when I use their programs regularly side by side.

These standards are established by the underlying operating system when there is a graphical interface.  A macOS application should follow macOS standards for fonts and for icon sizes.  A Windows application should follow Windows standards for fonts and for icon sizes.  Match the platform, match other applications on the platform.

It makes sense that design applications would differ from others when it comes to color, as the use of neutral colors surrounding the workpiece is essential to avoid distorting the perception of the colors in the design itself, but there is zero value in failing to adhere to documented and established conventions of the platform when it comes to things like font and icon size.

 

3 hours ago, myclay said:

how often do you do that? I rarely if ever connect/disconnect my monitors.

Laptop users do this somewhat frequently.  For example, I carry one between home and the office for my "day job" and at the office I have a second monitor on my desk that I use, while when working at home I only use the one built-in to the laptop.  I could easily arrange for a second monitor to use at home as well, but it would not be the same monitor I have at the office...