[AD 1.6β11] Text squished and blurry

[VIPStephan]

I don’t know if this has been in previous betas but just now I noticed that, when importing an AI file, the modal window shows a line of text uncommonly squished. I compared it with version 1.5 and it seems like this was a measure to fit the text on the line without being cut off.

I find the decreased letter spacing to be very much the opposite of what is desirable. Isn’t there a better way to go about this? Like, increasing the width of the window or column inside the window? It seems like elements (containers) have static fixed dimensions and any text in any language needs to be crammed in there. Are there really no better layout options like flexible heights/widths and line breaks if the need arises? I’m a web developer and am used to how this is handled with CSS on websites.

Also, I have the feeling that texts are generally blurry at times which might be aliasing issues. I don’t have this impression when working with Adobe Fireworks. Can anything be done there to improve readability?

[Oval]

 

On 13/10/2017 at 10:08 AM, VIPStephan said:

cut off    uncommonly squished

 

and without use of a design grid

 

[Chris B]

Hey VIPStephan,

 

You will see this throughout the app in multiple languages and we do our best to make them look as legible as possible. I think the problem with having dialog boxes that resize to the content can cause other layout and formatting issues. If we make the standard dialog box bigger, it might make other areas look odd with too much negative space. Plus we have multiple UI layouts over the platforms as well as Light UI. It's a huge task to get right.

 

We actively try and improve it where we can, when reported by users so things might change over time. I'll pass your feedback on though.

 

Are you using a retina display? I generally only see slightly blurry text when it is greyed out under another option, such as 'Hardware Acceleration' in Preferences.

[VIPStephan]

35 minutes ago, Chris B said:

Are you using a retina display? I generally only see slightly blurry text when it is greyed out under another option, such as 'Hardware Acceleration' in Preferences.

No retina display here. I think the blurriness mainly concerns letters like ‘i’ and ‘l’ that are just a straight line (or generally characters with straight vertical lines, like ‘p’) and might be placed in between two pixels so they bleed into both pixels. But since my vision isn’t the best already I feel extra impaired by looking at “naturally” blurry text.

Look at the images Oval and me posted and you’ll notice the issues (and they seem to be different in light and dark modes, which is understandable). Combinations like ‘il’ or the different look of the ‘t’s in “texto”. And things like this go throughout the UI. These may seem like minor issues but they add subtle annoyance while reading and using the UI. And as said, I don’t have this feeling while using Adobe’s UIs.

Perhaps it’s the general font size in the UI? I know there is a “large font size” preference but that makes the text too large for the UI elements (which retain their size), in my opinion. Looks like the font is Arial with standard size 11px and large size 13px? Perhaps a size of 11,5px or 12px for the standard size could mitigate these issues already? Or, I would be more inclined to use the larger font size if it would go hand in hand with proper alignment/sizing of the general UI elements (tabs etc.).

When working with Text in Adobe Fireworks there are settings for anti-aliasing (smooth, strong, crisp, or none – and custom settings). Perhaps fiddling with anti-aliasing would already help AD’s UI text?

[Chris B]

There's no denying they can be a bit tricky to read but like I said, we'll keep making improvements where possible. This feedback is being passed over as there's a few other areas I've picked up on that need looking at.

 

I use the Large Font UI Size but like you said, the panels that retain their size get the text abbreviated but there has to be that happy medium. Using a Retina display makes a tremendous difference too but I appreciate not everybody has that.

[Oval]

23 hours ago, Chris B said:

If we make the standard dialog box bigger, it might make other areas look odd with too much negative space.

 

No. If Serif would use much more space (a great graphical tool!) for structuring, then bigger dialog boxes would not look odd but well designed!

 

It is not a problem of the size of that dialog boxes. The lot of space was not used for design here.

 

 

 

 

[Chris B]

16 hours ago, Oval said:

 

No. If Serif would use much more space (a great graphical tool!) for structuring, then bigger dialog boxes would not look odd but well designed!

Perhaps, but like I said, all feedback is passed back to development and I'm sure they are already aware some areas suffer from this. Dev already know about the condensed text and hopefully eventually we can get around to addressing these areas. Thanks.