Layer Blend dropdown mousewheel scroll

[zynexis]

A small but frequently encountered issue that is quite annoying:

A very common way to try various blend options (in both photoshop and Affinity) is to click the dropdown, select an option (so the dropdown menu becomes the active element in focus) and then use the mousewheel to flick through the options while looking at the results

Quite often in affinity Photo (i think after an update) the dropdown box looses focus after selecting a mode in the dropdown list and you can no longer use the mousewheel to flip through the layer blend options.

the dropdown element simply looses focus after an option is selected

to get the dropdown to be active again, you have to click the dropdown box, then click the dropdown box again (open and close it, not selecting any of the options in the menu), then you can see the element gets a blue outline, and the mousewheel works again to flip through

[walt.farrell]

9 hours ago, zynexis said:

the dropdown element simply looses focus after an option is selected

It's not clear to me what your exact workflow is, but for the Blend Mode you only need to click on it once, to get the dropdown list. You can then just scroll, and observe the effect, without clicking to select again. 

[zynexis]

2 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

It's not clear to me what your exact workflow is, but for the Blend Mode you only need to click on it once, to get the dropdown list. You can then just scroll, and observe the effect, without clicking to select again. 

it's not about opening and selecting things in the dropdown list, that works.

if you want to see what i mean do the following:

click the blendmode dropdown
select an option (like Multiply)
now try scroll the mousewheel

the blendmode element has lost focus so you cannot flip through them with mousewheel

click the blendmode dropdown again
click the blendmode dropdown second time (closing the droplist)
now you can flip through with the mousewheel and the element has focus

it's not a big deal to always double click (open/close) the dropdown to get focus back, but it's one of those muscle memory things from photoshop that trips you up quite often

[GarryP]

I can reproduce the issue.

V2.3.0 is working slightly differently than V1.10.6 in that, in V1.10.6, after you have selected a Blend Mode, the Blend Mode field keeps the focus and accepts mouse scrolling, whereas it doesn’t in V2.3.0.

See attached video, V1.10.6 first then switching to V2.3.0.

I couldn’t say whether it’s supposed to happen like it does in 1.10.6 or in V2.3.0.

(Sometimes, only sometimes, with the wind in the right direction, if I right-click the Blend Mode field I can then use the mouse scroll wheel to change the option but I can’t reproduce that on demand.)

[zynexis]

The font selection dropdown has a similar issue also
only the font selection maybe even worse, because you cannot click it twice, it will start selecting the font name for search

[bbrother]

Logic dictates that when you select an option from a drop-down list, it should maintain focus and allow scrolling. Just like it was in V1.

Either way, in my opinion the keep focus option is better because it gives the user more options.
If it is a bug, it should be fixed, and if the change is intentional, it should be undone.

 

EDIT: The same rule (keep focus) should be used for dropdowns across entire app. For UX consistency.😉

[MEB]

Hi @zynexis,
I've reproduced the behaviour here. On macOS it never worked (keep focus) in v1 and v2. On Windows it does in v1 but doesn't in V2. I'm logging this to be looked at. Thanks for reporting it.

[zynexis]

hey @MEB, your're welcome

and yea i also seem to remember it worked previously (on windows)