Matthias Posted August 13, 2014 Share Posted August 13, 2014 As some of you might know I am not happy with the way element selection works and it’s visual feedback (looking at you, Matt). Well, I swallowed this pill (for now at least) but here comes another idea which I think would be helpful, could be possible and should be compatible with the way selection works now. A big fat bounding box surrounding all selected elements should only occur when those elements are grouped. Because that’s what a group is for: To bundle several elements and edit them together. In a group the containing elements could still be highlighted as they are now without grouping. This would help to identify the group’s content. When not grouped however we would see each selected element’s bounding box individually because this is much more eye-catching than the wee little blue path outlines we see now. What should happen when I have selected several non-grouped elements and adjust the rotation “lolly” of one of those elements? Each element would rotate around it’s individual anchor point. That’s the difference between a group and non-grouped elements: behaving uniformly vs. behaving individually. You might reply that so many bounding boxes mean visual clutter but I think they would echo much closer what I am actually doing: adding one element to the other. And here comes the part that might apply whether or not you like my individual bounding boxes: The bounding boxes of grouped and ungrouped elements should look slightly different so that there is an obvious feedback whether I see a group or a single element. For example, a grouped bounding box could show dashed lines or a darker/lighter/different color. On the other hand the lines of an individual element’s bounding box could be drawn with a 50% transparency (not the nine points however). Oh, and while we’re at it: A nice little „x“ could indicate the element’s anchor point, which of course would be moveable … Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted August 13, 2014 Staff Share Posted August 13, 2014 Hi Mattias, Regarding the bounding boxes surrounding single objects in a selection (grouped or not): This approach may result with simple projects with a limited number of objects and in those cases the bounding boxes wouldn't be a burden. But if you think in a complex illustration with hundreds of objects, having the bounding boxes around them would cause so much noise that would be almost impossible to discern one object from the others. In this case having the blue lines to mark the selected objects is much cleaner and helps to understand what's going on. This is one of those cases where i personally think that the advantage of being so literal regarding the type of items we are dealing with doesn't compensate the burden it causes visually. Regarding the visual feedback relative to a selection of single objects or a group of objects: I totally see your point and i agree with it. Having a layer with all objects selected and a group of objects selected should lead to a distint visual feedback because they are different "entities" in nature. And that visual feedback gives us more control on what's going on. Changing the color of the bounding box wouldn't do it because they are tied to layer's colours (if you change the color of a layer, the color of the bounding box, selection outline and controls of the objects belonging to that layer changes accordingly). But i'm sure would be easy to find a way to mark that distinction. Drawplus uses a small "dynamic" group icon (it's used to group/ungroup a selection of objects) near the bottom right corner of the bounding box to show grouped objects for example. Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software | Affinity Quick Reference | Call for Camera Images Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rui_mac Posted August 13, 2014 Share Posted August 13, 2014 Reading this reminded me that we should have a way to define the color of the outline shown in the selection. If I'm creating an "under the ocean" illustration where most objects are predominantly blue, it may become hard to pinpoint what is selected. In those cases, I would rather have warmer color in the selection outline. Or, better yet. Having a color associated with the manually created layers. All objects inside the layer with a color N, would display the selection outline with color N. Any object outside a layer would display the selection outline with the color defined by a preference (the same for all, but customizable). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted August 13, 2014 Staff Share Posted August 13, 2014 rui_mac, That's already available. If you change the color associated with a layer, the color of the selection's outline/bounding box/object controls changes accordingly. That's what i was saying in my previous post. Try it. Righ-click on a layer and change its color. You will see that the object selection color and controls will change to the same color. Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software | Affinity Quick Reference | Call for Camera Images Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rui_mac Posted August 13, 2014 Share Posted August 13, 2014 Damn!!! It works! :-)Thank you, MEB. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
retrograde Posted August 18, 2014 Share Posted August 18, 2014 Getting back to the bounding box suggestion, I'd like to see a simple toggle or preference to turning on or off the bounding box. I know it's currently how you scale and rotate and skew objects but most, or a lot of the time I just need to move or select things and the overall rectangle confuses me visually as to the silhouette of the shape I'm selecting. Illustrator has the pref option to turn it on or off and it works because they also have other ways to scale, rotate and skew items and it's not really needed unless you prefer the bounding box edit method. A simple highlighted shape with maybe filled in solid nodes all along the shapes silhouette would suffice here, then with a quick key press my bounding box can be toggled on or off for editing... Any thoughts or suggestions from the dev team on this workflow would be appreciated. Cheers. Quote http://www.kevincreative.com https://www.behance.net/kevincreative https://dribbble.com/kevincreative https://www.instagram.com/kevincreative/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matthias Posted August 18, 2014 Author Share Posted August 18, 2014 A simple highlighted shape with maybe filled in solid nodes all along the shapes silhouette would suffice here, then with a quick key press my bounding box can be toggled on or off for editing... Yeah. This would provide much more information about the nature of the selected shape than a bounding box. Closely related to this topic is the way selection should work: By touching the actual object but instead of by either touching or completely including the bounding box with the marquee tool. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
retrograde Posted August 18, 2014 Share Posted August 18, 2014 Hi Matthias, I believe the marquee selection behaviour in particular is being improved for the next beta. Looking forward to that! I think a preference toggle might help with the second part of your point. Selection preference to either touch with tool or marquee OR surround with marquee and touch with tool... Quote http://www.kevincreative.com https://www.behance.net/kevincreative https://dribbble.com/kevincreative https://www.instagram.com/kevincreative/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matthias Posted August 18, 2014 Author Share Posted August 18, 2014 Hi retrograde, yeah, MattP already knows this topic very well :-) Looking forward to tomorrow’s beta as this whole selection thing seems like a minor subject at first glance but at least for me it greatly defines the overall feel. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
retrograde Posted August 18, 2014 Share Posted August 18, 2014 I'm in total agreement, plus the constraining adjustment to recognize the shift key for straight line creation or dragging... Quote http://www.kevincreative.com https://www.behance.net/kevincreative https://dribbble.com/kevincreative https://www.instagram.com/kevincreative/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff Ben Posted August 19, 2014 Staff Share Posted August 19, 2014 Constraining should be fixed for the Pen and Node tools. Also, snapping has been completely overhauled to allow the Node tool to snap to other nodes in your curves while dragging (as well as the global snappable objects), and the Pen tool when creating new nodes. The Node/Pen tool will have an additional snapping option on its context toolbar to turn on this functionality. It will be 'on' by default. As usual, snapping can be temporarily disabled with the 'Alt' key. Quote SerifLabs team - Affinity Developer Software engineer - Photographer - Guitarist - Philosopher iMac 27" Retina 5K (Late 2015), 4.0GHz i7, AMD Radeon R9 M395 MacBook (Early 2015), 1.3GHz Core M, Intel HD 5300 iPad Pro 10.5", 256GB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted August 19, 2014 Staff Share Posted August 19, 2014 All this coming in a few minutes with the new beta, right right??? :ph34r: Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software | Affinity Quick Reference | Call for Camera Images Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MattP Posted August 19, 2014 Staff Share Posted August 19, 2014 Calm down, Miguel! ;) Ben is just checking through his changes and then we can hit the big 'build' button and get a new version on the go! :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted August 19, 2014 Staff Share Posted August 19, 2014 Oops, when i said a few minutes i wasn't meaning it really. I was referring to having the snapping available today on the new build... I couldn't avoid to shoot that after reading Ben's post :wacko: Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software | Affinity Quick Reference | Call for Camera Images Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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