A little bug collection

[hifred]

Hi Developers,
thanks a lot for the Windows Beta! I have only worked briefly with it, as my daily Vector editing needs are actually quite limited. I probably could give more feedback on Photo. The app looks very good overall, but in this post I'll concentrate on things which deserve improvement. Here's a quick list of errors, oversights and wishes, as well of things I consider poorly implemented.

Monochrome buttons: Thank god this option exists – you forgot some buttons though. Also all sorts of dockable window still show coloured icons (colour pickers in swatches panel, colour panel) as well as Document Setup (padlock), Exporters (padlock/image type icons). I quite likely have forgotten some program areas. Please check again and desaturate all of the remaining items, it looks ugly otherwise.

 

 

New Document dialog
This should be solved differently. Looks ugly.
Shorter primary description, full version on hover or scrolling text would be options which come to my mind.

 

 

 

Unnecessary window clutter:
This might be Apple logic but stacking modal windows is not what I can consider contemporary GUI practice. Advanced options in Exporters or in any other tool by all means should get appended to the already open window, accordion style. User preferences here should get remembered. If one always wants to see the full set of options so be it. Good implementations are found in all Adobe DTP applications.

 

 

 

Adjustments (and other places)
I miss a quicker way to reset slider values, such as a double click on the Slider Knob (Adobe) or deliberate "over-dragging" sliders to each direction (again Adobe). Mousing for a dedicated reset button is slow and unnecessary imo.

 

Layer Effects:
Interactive Viewport controls missing, such as dragging in the vp for the Shadow direction.

 

Rulers:

I miss Right click on Ruler to access relevant settings and options for precisely placing and moving Guides, including Modifier key use for snapping. To me this stuff feels too indirect (but I admittedly feel so in a lot of graphics programs). I see that there's a dedicated Guides Editor but that's again indirect and overkill for most situations. I would rather expect to  RMB click a Guideline and to get all relevant options offered in situ (including delete). Right now RMB does nothing... I miss the Alt+Click direction swap as offed in Adobe apps as well.

 

Pan and Zoom with Pen Tablets / Pen Displays:

Being a Zbrush user and therefore perfectly acquainted with unconventional keyboard mappings I still have to call the Ctrl+Spacebar mapping for interactive Zoom pretty odd (press Spacebar first, then press Ctrl) and also quite unreliable. There's some filtering issues going on, if the timing isn't perfectly right one rather gets a zoom rectangle (which I find useless) instead of interactive Zoom.

This really has to work flawlessly, otherwise editing with a Cintiq is no joy. Zoom behavior also feels quite jittery here. Some subtle damping (inertia) might be helpful – Adobe does this a lot better. One thing which also bugs me too is drag Pen left and right to zoom, this is totally non-standard. All relevant apps (including 3D apps) use up and down. Please reconsider this or at least offer remapping options for these functions.

 

The Pen issued Pan behavior also doesn't match my expectations yet – Adobe's flick-pan again with a dash of inertia injected looks and feels a lot more elegant.

[Chris_K]

Hi hifred

 

Thanks for the feedback, I've taken the bugs from you post and have logged them. In terms of you layer effects issue, you can already position a shadow by dragging in the main workspace. This can be done by clicking on the offset tool on the effects panel. 

 

Cheers

[hifred]

Thanks Chris,
I guess we are both right. I was referring to the modal window which pops up when clicking the fx icon in the layer editor. When using this interface one has no offset tool at disposal in Beta 19. If one instead uses the effects panel there's indeed that button. So I guess one can also log this omission.

For future implementations I wished that as soon as an effect has focus a multifunctional widget was shown (without having to press a button first), which lets users set all available parameters, not just the offset, as an alternative interface to sliders. Some PS plugins use such things, let me know if an image

was helpful. Edit: Just found a nice example on the Astute-Graphics website (showing their Stylism Plugin for Illustrator – which essentially improves interactive editing of Layer-Styles).

 

 

Such pick and edit in situ tools could also make sense in other areas, such as colour editing. Picking a red tone and dragging in various directions while holding down again various modifier keys changes Hue, Saturation etc. of that particular channel. Photoshop offers such for quite a few versions already.

 

Please don't take offense but my impression of the GUI is that it's very well made but with an in tendency conservative approach (which may be part of your application's success, as many people will feel instantly familiar). I quite personally would like to have as much as possible control available at mouse (pen) point and don't like to move my cursor 20cm to the main menu bar again and again just to pick some button here. Instead, I preferred more dynamic context menus (currently I get the same generic options offered, regardless of object selection – and even with nothing selected, which makes no sense). I found great if one could get rid of submenus in context menus and instead offered several of them (filtered by Modifiers+RMB) or Pie Menus. At least for the Photo app Nodes sure were very desirable too – Blender has a very nice implementation.

 

Ok, enough for today :o)

[hifred]

 

The Preferences Dialog shows a bold Home-Page with large buttons. As soon as one has clicked one of these options
one is left with a very minimal navigation. In case one wants to change to another page...

• one can either figure out that the middle section which shows the name of the current page is in fact an oldschool dropdown
  menu (these's hardly any visual cue and no MouseOver Info). Changing to another page in this case takes one click.
   
• Or one can opt to return to that Home Page by pressing a quite uncommon icon - the dotted Hamburger (again no MouseOver Info).
  Using this option takes you two clicks to change from page to page.
   

I fail discovering the slightest advantage over traditional Tabs, I think this solution is in fact far inferior.
 

• The overview of Preferences sections available is hidden most of the time. In case users don't find a setting where they first
  assumed it to be they usually start searching for alternative locations. In Affinity one can't do so without getting into action.
   
• Offering a Preferences Home Page and hiding other Pages is needlessly clicky. Tabs offer the same overview quality without
  making an additional Start Page necessary. This overview remains visible all of the time, which is very helpful.
   
• Having two separate controls to change between sections (one for the visually oriented person and one for readers who
  prefer things sober) is frankly totally absurd.
   
• Your dialog gives access to a very manageable set of options – deep 3D programs for instance not rarely offer ten times
  the volume of settings (with tabs or tree). What's your point in deviating from proven interfaces?

[Chris_K]

Hi Hilfed

 

As the majority of your points are improvements you would like to see in the app rather than bugs with the current workings and they affect both platforms, I'm going to move this thread into our feature request section where they will be considered more for future releases

 

Cheers

[hifred]

Thanks Chris!

[hifred]

A few more wishes for pen-based work with a Cintiq (or any other pressure-based device):

Resizing pens / changing hardness in Affinity currently works by actually touching the touch sensitive
surface and dragging while holding pen buttons and modifier keys. That works somehow, but always at
the risk of either accidently painting a few dots or calling the colour sampler instead, which conflicts
with the Alt-Key. Not ideal, really.

There's a far better and secure way to allow users access to this sort of interactive controls: Hover click/drag.

 

Currently, afaik this feature is entirely unsupported in Affinity. The idea is that one lifts the pen slightly above
the touch-sensitive surface and drags while holding keys and/or  pen-buttons. That way one can zoom, pan,
resize pens or change their hardness, without running at risk of accidently painting or pushing around stuff on screen.

I doubt that not having Hover Click available is caused by drivers or setting on my side as the feature works in
Photoshop, Zbrush, 3DCoat...This fellow user seems to have the same problem.