General UI Layout: Vertical Space Usage

[pbass]

General UI Layout: Vertical Space Usage

 

There's something that drives me _bananas_ about PS Elements; but it's also a concern about almost every graphics & photo app in existence:

 

Most User Interfaces squander valuable vertical screen real estate, heedlessly and unnecessarily.

 

Here's the situation:

 

- Modern screens are much wider than tall.

- Many people spend at least some of their productive time working on a little laptop screen.

- Even with Retina displays, it's often necessary to limit screen res, for UI legibility. 

- Documents, layouts and graphics are just as likely to be portrait orientation, as landscape.

 

So obviously vertical space is way more likely to be a problem than horizontal.

When you're working on a portrait style page or a tall object, every last vertical pixel is precious.

 

(Worst case scenario: Editing a portrait in PS Elements, you're lucky to have 30% of screen pixels for your image!! Absurd.)

 

This is probably more of a request for the upcoming Affinity Photo app;

but it sure would be useful to have in Designer, too:

 

It would be über useful to have at least the option of getting all interface elements off to the sides to allocate all vertical resources to the document/page.

2 different UI layout presets, maybe? – 1 for landscape, 1 for portrait?

 

Thanks for your consideration!

[Gear maker]

That's one of several reasons I like working in AD's separated mode.  The right side of the screen I can use top to bottom.

[pbass]

That's one of several reasons I like working in AD's separated mode.  The right side of the screen I can use top to bottom.

 

Awesome, I hadn't yet discovered separated view! Nor had I realized you can hide the Tool Bar. Great improvement!

 

Even with the toolbar hidden, the "parameter ribbon" for each tool (er, that's what I'm calling it) still extends horizontally across 3/4 of my Macbook Pro screen. I'd love it if that thing could go vertical.