Lets make Shortcuts more powerful!

[Raptosauru5]

So, I like to work FAST and efficient!

That is why I use shortcuts for everything possible, minimizing aiming and clicking on buttons with a mouse, which is way slower and interrupts the flow.

Now current shortcuts system is GREAT and I very appreciate it in it's current state, but there are couple of things I am missing and I believe users would appreciate.

I would like to list them all here in a single topic for a discussion (sorted by importance):

 

1. Shortcuts in Settings need Search feature to search by both A: Function ("Show Rulers"), B: Keystroke ("Ctrl+R").

2. Shortcuts in Settings should have Mouse Buttons support! To speed up flow and avoiding to reach to the other side of my keyboard with my right hand for brackets [ ], I created a macro for my mouse which will emulate brackets press [ ] when pressing Back and Forward mouse buttons. This works REALLY GOOD when organizing layouts! I think it should be a built-in feature, supporting ANY mouse buttons (there are very advanced mice out there with many extra buttons that could be very useful in Affinity suite. I am not talking about you, Magic Mouse, you carpal tunneler). The point here is that the right hand can stay on the mouse, so most common keystrokes should require left hand on the keyboard only.

3. Shortcuts in Settings could have secondary field for alternative keystroke (like in videogames).

4. Like in Blender (3D software), Right-clicking on buttons could reveal a small menu, which lets you define a shortcut right away, even if this button does not have a shortcut ability.

 

5. Tooltips could display their shortcuts after the tool name (to help new users remember them and to make it easier to find for anyone).

   

 

6. Some important things are missing a shortcut ability. F1, F2, F3 (or so) could be shortcuts for Personas. Symbols Sync button could use a shortcut too.

 

Thanks to amazing Affinity developers for considering these suggestions!

Please feel free to suggest more relevant productivity-improving keystrokes.

 

[loukash]

49 minutes ago, Raptosauru5 said:

1. Shortcuts in Settings need Search feature

+1,000 to that!

52 minutes ago, Raptosauru5 said:

shortcuts for Personas

Works on Mac. For example, I use cmd-opt-1, cmd-opt-2, cmd-opt-3 etc. for personas, and ctrl-cmd-opt-1, ctrl-cmd-opt-2, ctrl-cmd-opt-3 for the Edit In… commands.
F-keys work on Mac, too.

1 hour ago, Raptosauru5 said:

Symbols Sync button could use a shortcut too.

Perhaps. But even more important – and logical according to the Human Interface Guidelines – would be if the Symbol panel button commands would appear in the context menu when a symbol is selected on the canvas. (Same for many other buried panel buttons.)

[Granddaddy]

2 hours ago, Raptosauru5 said:

1. Shortcuts in Settings need Search feature to search by both A: Function ("Show Rulers"), B: Keystroke ("Ctrl+R").

For a bit of history concerning this long neglected deficiency see my post from a year ago
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/171469-preferences-search-should-include-searching-shortcuts/

From 2020 see
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/110065-publisher-for-windows-18-using-preferencessearch/

and from 2018
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/68413-preferences-window-ui-is-frustratingly-designed/

I was told that the non-functional Search box is not a bug because it works as designed
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/171185-search-box-in-preferences-does-nothing/

 

[Raptosauru5]

5 hours ago, loukash said:

Works on Mac. For example, I use cmd-opt-1, cmd-opt-2, cmd-opt-3 etc. for personas

Can you please tell me in which category are the Personas shortcuts? I couldn't find them due to lack of Search feature. Either I missed them or they do not exist on Windows.
 

5 hours ago, loukash said:

...more important would be if the Symbol panel button commands would appear in the context menu when a symbol is selected on the canvas...

I am not sure how to imagine this. If you mean Right-clicking on a symbol and then selecting Sync from a context menu, wouldn't this be the slowest way to do that? Nothing against Human Interface Guidelines, but I never perceived Apple's way of achieving tasks as efficient nor fast.

 

4 hours ago, Granddaddy said:

For a bit of history...

WOW, ok, well, I think this feature is not coming any time soon. Respect for such a great effort!

[walt.farrell]

12 minutes ago, Raptosauru5 said:

Can you please tell me in which category are the Personas shortcuts? I couldn't find them due to lack of Search feature. Either I missed them or they do not exist on Windows.

File, at least on Windows.

[loukash]

On 10/15/2023 at 9:42 PM, Raptosauru5 said:

in which category are the Personas shortcuts?

On 10/15/2023 at 9:42 PM, Raptosauru5 said:

If you mean Right-clicking on a symbol and then selecting Sync from a context menu, wouldn't this be the slowest way to do that?

It depends. Two-finger tap on a trackpad to open a context menu is pretty fast, and inside the menu I can also select commands by typing the first characters. I don't have the Symbols panel open all the time.
I have nothing aginst having shortcuts though.  

(That's what I love e.g. with Apple's Logic Pro: every function can have a shortcut, search either by command or by shortcut, assign either by character typed or by hardware key position, create as many unique shortcut sets as you need, switch them on the fly…)

On 10/15/2023 at 9:42 PM, Raptosauru5 said:

I never perceived Apple's way of achieving tasks as efficient nor fast.

As I said in your other thread earlier today: To each their own. I see it exactly the other way around.

[JakeStaines]

On 10/15/2023 at 1:35 PM, Raptosauru5 said:

3. Shortcuts in Settings could have secondary field for alternative keystroke (like in videogames).

Seconding this one - "like in videogames" and also like in most other software! This is as much an accessibility thing as a convenient feature, though.

I'm old enough to predate readily-available ergonomic peripherals, so I have a bit of RSI that I've been fending off for years. I now use an ergonomic keyboard which has pretty much eliminated the typing stress, but mouse use - even with nice vertical mice - can be a problem after a while. So periodically, I switch mice - I have a left-handed one and a right-handed one, which means that I also switch from the right-handed Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V copy/paste to the left-handed Ctrl-Insert, Ctrl-Shift-Insert copy/paste. Affinity software is the only software I use where the left-handed shortcuts aren't pre-configured as an option, and on top of that it's impossible to configure them without replacing the right-handed shortcuts... which I also use half the time.

I was convinced something was just broken when I first came across the issue; it seemed like something was failing to enter the clipboard or something, it didn't occur to me that the left-handed controls just might not be supported.

[loukash]

15 minutes ago, JakeStaines said:

it's impossible to configure them without replacing the right-handed shortcuts

Save both of your sets separately = create an *.affshortcuts file for each. Then simply load each set as needed.

[fde101]

On 10/15/2023 at 8:35 AM, Raptosauru5 said:

which is way slower

This is highly debatable: https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/30682/are-there-any-recent-studies-of-the-keyboard-vs-mouse-issue

 

People feel like they are working faster when using keyboard shortcuts, but in a great many situations, if objectively measured using an actual clock, using the mouse actually turns out to be faster in practice.  There have been studies in the past which prove this out.  Note that I am not saying it is true across the board - there will obviously be exceptions - but it is definitely true more often than most people realize.

[JakeStaines]

18 minutes ago, loukash said:

Save both of your sets separately = create an *.affshortcuts file for each. Then simply load each set as needed.

Yes, I know I can do that. The point is that it's a pain in the neck, and introduces more friction into the workflow. I switch mouse in a second or two - they're both on my desk and plugged in at the same time - whereas it takes much longer to open a menu, open a settings popup, select the right category, open a file browser, select the appropriate file, OK it, and OK the settings popup. And that also requires me to remember that I have to do it, which is non-trivial since Affinity isn't the only software I use and literally everything else I use supports both sets of copy/paste shortcuts and has done for decades. So what actually happens is that I work for a while after switching mouse, go to do a copy/paste, it doesn't work, I assume that I just missed the copy so I repeat, it still doesn't work, then I remember to go and change the shortcuts again. I tried this first, and if anything it makes things worse - I'm better off just taking my hand off the mouse and using the right-handed shortcuts.

 

I'm sure you posted with good intentions, but please understand that it's actually quite frustrating to post a comment about/suggestion for an accessibility improvement and have a response within minutes telling you to do some cumbersome workaround you already know how to do that doesn't really solve the problem. I'd hope nobody would ask why wheelchair users want a ramp at the entrance when they could just go around to the back of the building, in the garage, up the car ramp, and through the service corridor, but that's frequently the kind of response one gets talking about software accessibility!

 

8 minutes ago, fde101 said:

People feel like they are working faster when using keyboard shortcuts, but in a great many situations, if objectively measured using an actual clock, using the mouse actually turns out to be faster in practice.

It's worth bearing in mind that the study in the question at the top of the page in that link was conducted in the 80s, when most software was driven by heavily-nested keyboard menus and mice just didn't exist on a significant proportion of computers. And also by a company who had just released a computer with a relatively-novel mouse-driven GUI that was the USP of their main product.

The more-recent (and given the degree of change in GUIs over the course of the 90s, more-relevant) studies in the top answer tend to suggest that keyboard shortcuts are quicker for simple operations by practiced users (single-shortcut things like change-tool, copy/paste etc.) and on a par with toolbars for nested commands for practiced users; the mouse is quicker for more-complex commands and for new users. I don't think it's really the case that most people think that nested sequences of menus and commands are faster with a keyboard.

(And obviously this is all going to be very dependent on not just practice but also mode of use. Keyboard shortcuts will have an advantage in software where the users' hands are already on the keyboard all the time, because switching to a different peripheral is also a time cost. Mouse use will have a clear advantage in software the user is unfamiliar with as it has a far greater degree of discoverability. And mouse speed will have a lower ceiling for a lot of users as it requires coordinating hands and eyes to use effectively, whereas a keyboard can be operated entirely from touch.

[loukash]

8 minutes ago, JakeStaines said:

I'm sure you posted with good intentions

Of course I did. But I'm just not very good in telepathy, you know…  

By the way, I have RSI since about 15 years by now. And my ultimate solution is: I don't use a mouse. Ever. It's either my MacBook trackpad with gestures that don't require pressing a trackpad button whatsoever, or a Wacom tablet. (I should use the latter more often but I'm either too lazy to plug it in or not even working at a desk at all.) And when using the trackpad, I often switch from the right to the left hand whenever possible, e.g. two-finger scrolling.

21 minutes ago, JakeStaines said:

it's a pain in the neck, and introduces more friction into the workflow

On Mac, this can be automated with a macro utility like Keyboard Maestro. The Accessibility Inspector (part of Xcode) hints that the elements seem to be accessible via System Events scripting:

Setting up such a macro may sometimes require some trial & error testing and involves combination of AppleScript code with macro presets, especially if an app doesn't support AppleScript natively. (Affinity apps sadly don't.) But once you've made it work, you can launch the macro – and thus changing your shortcuts set – with a single keyboard shortcut. Been there done similar things before, search the forum for "keyboard maestro".

~~~

That all said, I agree that the current methods of changing and applying shortcuts is rather suboptimal, to put it mildly. And not to speak of all the bugs, some of which will be supposedly fixed in the upcoming v2.3. There's still a lot of room for improvement on Serif's part.

[knb]

On 10/22/2023 at 1:21 PM, JakeStaines said:

Seconding this one - "like in videogames" and also like in most other software! This is as much an accessibility thing as a convenient feature, though.

I'm old enough to predate readily-available ergonomic peripherals, so I have a bit of RSI that I've been fending off for years. I now use an ergonomic keyboard which has pretty much eliminated the typing stress, but mouse use - even with nice vertical mice - can be a problem after a while. So periodically, I switch mice - I have a left-handed one and a right-handed one, which means that I also switch from the right-handed Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V copy/paste to the left-handed Ctrl-Insert, Ctrl-Shift-Insert copy/paste. Affinity software is the only software I use where the left-handed shortcuts aren't pre-configured as an option, and on top of that it's impossible to configure them without replacing the right-handed shortcuts... which I also use half the time.

I was convinced something was just broken when I first came across the issue; it seemed like something was failing to enter the clipboard or something, it didn't occur to me that the left-handed controls just might not be supported.

Plus 1 for Ctrl-Insert, Shift-Insert and Shift-Delete for Copy, Paste and Cut respectively, at the very least when editing text.