Feature Request: Set document tab size to "minimal width" or "left aligned"

[BrutallyDumpedByFireworks]

As you can tell by my user name, I've come to Affinity Desginer after a decade-long and intense and meaningful relationship with Adobe Fireworks. ;) I realize I need to get used to the fact that some things work differently now in AD, but if you could include this super small change in a future release, I'd be super happy!

(I searched but seems this has not been proposed before, so here goes...)

Currently, document tabs span over the entire width of the AD application window, i.e. they take up 100% available width. When you open a 2nd document, the the two tabs will share the width equally, so each will have 50% width. Open a third document, and each will have 33% width and so on.

Here's a screenshot pointing this out:

This drives me nuts, haha! I'd so much prefer those tabs to be "left aligned" and only as wide as they need to be to contain their label text (document name, zoom level).

I made a little scribble/mockup how this could look:

This way, you can "grasp" all open documents at a glance, as they are neatly ligned up. With the current solution, where the tabs stretch over the full width, they kind of "get lost in the UI"; also the closing "x" button is far away from the document name, which is somehow counter intuitive.

I realize I'm essentially propsing "Adobe tab style" here... but it seems to me that "left-aligned" tabs are somehow clearer than full width tabs. For backward compatibility, the feature could be introduced as an option in settings (i.e. a checkbox in Edit > Settings > User Interface). A suitable checkbox label might by "left align document tabs" or something like that.

Thanks & cheers, generally v happy with AD, in the process of getting the hang of it... slowly but steadily...

 

[MikeTO]

Hi and welcome to the forums.

FYI, Affinity is adhering to the macOS standard for tabs on both macOS and Windows. Mac tabs are supposed to be full width with the close button on the left as shown below, so for those of us using Macs this feels quite normal.

You're asking for Affinity to use the Windows standard, with narrower tabs and close buttons on the right - that would definitely make sense for the Windows version.

[PaulEC]

I'm on Windows and I'm quite happy with the way the tabs are displayed now. I'm not sure if I'd like tabs of different widths, depending on the length of the file name. (As per the mock-up.)

[BrutallyDumpedByFireworks]

Hi guys, thanks for your replies and input.

Paul: Of course, changes like these are a thing of individual taste. That's why I proposed leaving everything as is (so anyone who's happy with the current style, like you, is not affected), but adding an option in settings. That way, anyone could set it up the way they prefer.

Mike: Good point re OS standard. It might be a feature request for the Windows version only then. However, though, my request came less out of a feeling "this is not how UIs shoud work on my OS", more like: "Woah, this UI differs from the style I've gotten used to in the last few decades with Adobe products". I reckon a fair share of new Affinity users have "Adobe history". And apparently Adobe seems to have forced their own tab/UI system on both OSs? (when I google for "photoshop mac screenshot" images, I get the impression they don't use full width tabs on mac either?) If that's the case, this may even be a thing people from both OS worlds might be interested in, "out of Adobe habit". Just a wild guess, of course.

[fde101]

11 hours ago, MikeTO said:

Affinity is adhering to the macOS standard for tabs on both macOS and Windows.

Yes, and I wish Apple would fix that "standard" as I always thought it was a bad one, personally.  Serif is right to follow the convention, at least on macOS, because it is an established platform convention at this point, but in reality it was never a good convention to have introduced.