File Open/Close/Save etc toolbar options

[ray223]

Hi,

 

Am I missing something or is there no way to setup the UI to display toolbar options for the options in the file menu (like New, Open, Save, Print, Export).

This seems like a pretty standard UI feature for most apps.

 

Thanks,

Ray

[R C-R]

No way that I am aware of to do that. Also, I don't know about Windows but these days it is not at all uncommon for Mac apps to forego using any toolbar space for buttons that duplicate file menu items, particularly those that provide keyboard shortcuts for the standard ones.

[DWright]

Hi ray223,

 

You are unable to customise the menu drop down options the only ones that you can customise are the top and side toolbars.

[toltec]

9 hours ago, R C-R said:

No way that I am aware of to do that. Also, I don't know about Windows but these days it is not at all uncommon for Mac apps to forego using any toolbar space for buttons that duplicate file menu items, particularly those that provide keyboard shortcuts for the standard ones.

 

I blame laptops. 

 

Plenty of space on my 27" monitor for lots of buttons.

 

I guess it's an age thing  

[R C-R]

Just now, toltec said:

I blame laptops. 

Yes, I'm sure designing toolbars to scale well to smaller screen sizes is a big part of it, but there is also a general trend throughout the industry to reduce screen clutter in the belief this gives the UI a more modern, sleeker look that focuses users' attention more on the document & less on the UI.

 

I suppose it does do that but Apple has gone as far as hiding some of the buttons until the pointer is rolled over where they are in the UI, which makes learning to use some of their apps seem a bit too much like learning where secret items are hidden in a game or searching for "Easter eggs" & such. I am not a big fan of that.

[toltec]

17 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I suppose it does do that but Apple has gone as far as hiding some of the buttons until the pointer is rolled over where they are in the UI, which makes learning to use some of their apps seem a bit too much like learning where secret items are hidden in a game or searching for "Easter eggs" & such. I am not a big fan of that.

 

That is one thing that bugs me in Photo, The way the tool groups work.

 

Select a tool from a group and that becomes the default tool displayed on the panel.

 

I have spent many a moment (or two ) desperately searching for a tool, only to find it has been replaced on the panel. And the Inpainting tool icon looks nothing like the Patch tool or the Red Eye tool. 

 

I have customized my tools panel but have to moan about something. Gotta keep the Serif chaps on their toes 

[v_kyr]

Also don't forget that every OS has it's own human interface guidelines and advices to follow here, so an application UI look & feel is overall more OS consistent.

• Apple Human Interface Guidelines
• Microsoft Windows UI Guidelines

Further if you develop portable software you always have to some degree also to take care of every OS UI style guides and priciples you're going to support, similarities and differences etc. which often isn't an easy task at all to make it equally well in all worlds. - If an application here does everything instead in a very proprietary own UI way, it often doesn't find that much user acceptance on certain systems.

[R C-R]

2 minutes ago, toltec said:

I have spent many a moment (or two ) desperately searching for a tool, only to find it has been replaced on the panel.

So have I, & like you I have customized my Tools panel to help with that.

 

I also did something on the previous version before we got the light UI option that might only be possible in the Mac apps: I located the transparent png file in the app's resources folder, the one that contains the triangle 'badge' overlay that indicates a tool is really a tool group. I increased its size by one pixel along its left edge & changed its color to a bright red. That both made it much easier to find the tool group in the panel & easier to click on the triangle because of its slightly increased size.

 

I tested it pretty thoroughly on the 1.5.x versions & could find no problems caused by that hack, but I have not yet tried the same thing on the current 1.6.x versions so I do not know if it would with them (& thus do not recommend it to anybody). But it would be nice if something similar was built into the current versions -- it was at the time a surprisingly effective workaround for this issue.