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Please put "Studio" in their own menu


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Hi,

 

given the amount of items in the "View" menu, I think it would be a great help, if the "Studio" got it's on main menu entry rather than being a sub-item of the "View" menu.

It does make logical sense, having it in the ,View' menu, but it would be much easier and faster accessing the panels through it's own window, especially considering how crowded the "View" menu already is and how many items the "Studio" contains.

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Even better than that would be a dialog box with a checkbox for each Studio panel, so that multiple panels can be turned ON or OFF in one step.

Affinity Photo 2, Affinity Publisher 2, Affinity Designer 2 (latest retail versions) - desktop & iPad
Culling - FastRawViewer; Raw Developer - Capture One Pro; Asset Management - Photo Supreme
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Oh yes!  You're right.  A Dialog checkbox  is what we need.  It is so aggravating to have to Scroll down, Select one, Go back to View, Scroll down, Select another, Repeat, Repeat, Repeat, ad nauseam. 

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We already have "Tools" and "Toolbar."  If the Studio were to be renamed, "Panels" were be more appropriate since that is what they are called in Help and all the videos.  I don't see any need for renaming.  Most users quickly learn the preferred terminology of an app.

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I haven't used Affinity as much as other people so I don't know where would be the best place to put something like this but I think the current menu items should be retained as it makes them easier to find when being instructed.

However, an additional icon could be added to the main toolbar in a similar way to the "Arrange" function - without having to OK the changes (which I frequently forget to do) - giving the user a simple check-boxed list of panels.

Click the icon to get the list, click on panels to hide/show, click away to hide the list.

P.S. The names "Studio" for the whole of the UI and "Panels" for parts of the UI are fine with me. As with others I see no reason for renaming these.

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Just relocate the Studio flyout list to the Window menu (as in other programs). Rename it Panels or Palettes.

 

JET

 

I'm not overly fond of Studio tabs or panels being called "palettes". That term is generally used to refer to collections of fill swatches, so there is potential for confusion if the same term is used for something else.

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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I'm not overly fond of Studio tabs or panels being called "palettes".

 

 

No real argument with that, Arthur. Panels is fine. So is Tabs. I'm kind of old-school in that, in the early days, palettes was the defacto generic term (in the sense that a color palette stores a selection of colors; a stroke palette stores a selection of pen nibs, etc.)

 

I just don't care for needless software-specific "branding" of long established and commonly understood constructs, just to make them sound unique."Studio" is very Adobe-esque in that regard. ("LiveTrace" indeed. It's yet another glorified amateurish autotrace command.) "Studio" implies a whole environment, like a room, so it has to be joined with "Tabs" to at least give the user a clue.

 

And what the heck is a "persona," in a graphics metaphor anyway? "Studio" would be more appropriate for that.

 

But I'm not really sweating the small stuff. ;-)

 

Nor do I have a dog in this fight. (Well, not a big one, anyway. Maybe a miniature Schnauzer.) I was just mainly pointing out that the Window menu is pretty vacant, and it's a commonly used place for listing control palettes..uh...panels. So that's an already available place for those anguishing over the tedium of digging under the over-populated View menu. Frankly, I couldn't be productive without organizing controls over a second monitor anyway, an engrained habit since the days when there actually were significant functional advantages to Mac OS. ;-)

 

JET

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At first I agreed with JET about putting the Studio menu items in the Windows menu but not if they're in a fly-out sub-menu. Putting them in a sub-menu just replicates the problem that the original poster (and others) brought up - unless they can also be selected in another, quicker, way. Putting the Studio menu items themselves directly in the Windows menu might be better but that menu would then start to be a bit unwieldy.

Currently each panel has a little "drag control" (I don't know the correct term) in the top-left-hand corner that lets the user drag the panels around. Could a menu/pop-up be activated - by right-clicking this control (not currently utilised) - which lists panels for the user to select? No extra screen space would be needed and less "mousing" would be necessary. It's just a thought.

Personally I like the idea of Personas. They help to keep the UI clean by only showing the tools and panels needed for what I am doing at the time. Without them, the toolbar would have lots of greyed-out icons that don't apply to what I was currently doing and I would have to keep opening and closing different panels. Some applications might call them "Workspaces" (e.g. most SDKs have an "edit workspace" and a "debug workspace") but I'm fine with Personas.

If you think of the whole UI as the Studio - I.e. the room where you do your work - and the Personas as "hats" - e.g. you wear your "export hat" when you want to create output - then it all kind of works, for me anyway.

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