postmadesign Posted October 12, 2018 Share Posted October 12, 2018 I am really liking publisher so far, and can imagine working with it professionally in the future. I am using indesign cs5.5 at the moment and one thing I would like to see in publisher which is in this program is collapsible panels. I like to have some panels open all the time, like character, paragraph, pages and color. This already fills my workspace pretty much, but I would like other options quickly available too, but not take up space all the time, f.i. the text frame option, the text styles and stroke options. Having some way to group a couple and minimize them would be very helpful. fiëé, Michail and nicolasfolliot 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
postmadesign Posted October 12, 2018 Author Share Posted October 12, 2018 This is not so much an issue in Designer and Photo, as the panels there usually have less options and take up less space. But in Publisher, the character and paragraph panel take up almost a complete column, or I have to scroll very much, which is not great for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Harris Posted October 12, 2018 Share Posted October 12, 2018 You can collapse individual sections of the Paragraph and Character panels by clicking on the triangles at the right of each section's title. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
postmadesign Posted October 12, 2018 Author Share Posted October 12, 2018 Yes, I am aware of this, and this is quite useful in itself. But my problem is there is not much visual hierarchy in the tabs, so it can be hard to find what I am looking for in these long list. See attached the screenshot where I have character & paragraph panels on top of each other: it becomes quite hard to find what I need, let alone, where the one panel begins or ends. This has to do with the low contrast as a whole (be it dark or light ui). So as it is now, i prefer to put character & paragraph tabbed together, and pick whatever on I need. I hope you can address the issue with the low contrast UI (which is a separate topic) as I think this is an area Affinity can still improve a lot. stmartin, nicolasfolliot and dcrosby 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dcrosby Posted October 12, 2018 Share Posted October 12, 2018 1 hour ago, postmadesign said: Yes, I am aware of this, and this is quite useful in itself. But my problem is there is not much visual hierarchy in the tabs, so it can be hard to find what I am looking for in these long list. See attached the screenshot where I have character & paragraph panels on top of each other: it becomes quite hard to find what I need, let alone, where the one panel begins or ends. This has to do with the low contrast as a whole (be it dark or light ui). So as it is now, i prefer to put character & paragraph tabbed together, and pick whatever on I need. I hope you can address the issue with the low contrast UI (which is a separate topic) as I think this is an area Affinity can still improve a lot. Huge problem. Makes working in Affinity frustrating much of the time. fiëé 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MickRose Posted October 12, 2018 Share Posted October 12, 2018 I agree completely with that. I really like the way Publisher is progressing but the user interface needs a fair bit of work to make it less cluttered. The InDesign interface is just right IMO. Rich313 1 Quote Windows 10 Pro, I5 3.3G PC 16G RAM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fixx Posted October 13, 2018 Share Posted October 13, 2018 20 hours ago, postmadesign said: But my problem is there is not much visual hierarchy in the tabs, so it can be hard to find what I am looking for in these long list. Which is why I prefer to do panels with kbd shortcuts. I will not go hunting panels and tabs with a mouse. postmadesign 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
postmadesign Posted October 13, 2018 Author Share Posted October 13, 2018 Well, for some setting certainly I use a lot of shortcuts as well, for instance for text resize and spacing. However panels, or parts of them, I don't use every time are not always easy to remember. I really like the approach in indesign where I can have many panels accessible with one click, and only one visible at the time. Perhaps splitting panels like character and paragraph up in a series of more specific panels might be easier to handle? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eluengo Posted October 15, 2018 Share Posted October 15, 2018 I customized which panels from View>Studio menu I want to have in my workspace (as u see in the screen capture) Every panel opens with one clic and closes with double clic. And all is tidy and ordered. But I also think it would be interesting that those panels contract to single icons, like those in the left tools panel.... (yes, I know, it's not the standard user interface for Affinity products {and too similar to Adobe products}, but is only an idea....) jlhopes and RNKLN 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cadwr Posted October 16, 2018 Share Posted October 16, 2018 I like what I see so far, but I agree that the UI maybe needs a tweak or two.. You can drag the left & right panels out, but not drag to make them narrower to increase the size of the workspace. Yes, you can tab the workspace to full screen, but this does not help if you want to select tools. I also find it frustrating that if you want to customise toolbars / studio etc, it appears that when you check or uncheck one item, the customise menu disappears. It would be better if you could ctrl/click the items so that you could alter several settings, without having to go back through the View menu. I liked the ability in PagePlus to add more items to the toolbar - particularly Show Multipage / Select All / delete Page / . Also, when you add pages to the workspace, they appear vertically. I think the workspace would be better used if new pages were positioned side by side. I hope this helps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GeoffM33 Posted October 17, 2018 Share Posted October 17, 2018 I've tried Eluengo's idea for setting up the studio panels and it works OK for a work-round for now, BUT what I am getting is when I click on a tab to access the panel, the whole palette expands to more than a third of my screen and won't go back with clicking. I have to manually drag it back to size. Have I done something weird or is this a bug? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cadwr Posted October 17, 2018 Share Posted October 17, 2018 yes. I experienced the same thing. Litle things like this can slow the workflow Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maggie Posted October 26, 2018 Share Posted October 26, 2018 Yes, please! Need to be able to collapse panels easily and quickly into an icon that takes up very little space. I'm working on my dinky little macbook pro. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ABD Posted February 5, 2019 Share Posted February 5, 2019 +1 for collapsible panels in all apps Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johann Seidel Posted January 30, 2020 Share Posted January 30, 2020 Is there any chance that this can be implemented? Collapsing studio panels to icons like in Adobe Indesign. Some of the panels (like text frame or Paragraph) contain so many options that it would be preferable to work with one panel at a time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Bohn Posted January 30, 2020 Share Posted January 30, 2020 Agreed on the collapsable panels into an easy 1-click icon. Also agreed on the contrast. I find it very hard to see where one panel ends and the next begins. It just slows me down because I can easily lose my place when glancing between my artwork and the panel I need. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pixy Posted March 17, 2020 Share Posted March 17, 2020 Is there any update on this topic? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walt.farrell Posted March 17, 2020 Share Posted March 17, 2020 I don't think anyone mentioned it yet, but if you double-click on a panel's name that entire row of panels will collapse into a single line in the studio. Perhaps that would help some users if they don't know about that existing function. Alfred and garrettm30 2 Quote -- Walt Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases PC: Desktop: Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Laptop: Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU. Laptop 2: Windows 11 Pro 24H2, 16GB memory, Snapdragon(R) X Elite - X1E80100 - Qualcomm(R) Oryon(TM) 12 Core CPU 4.01 GHz, Qualcomm(R) Adreno(TM) X1-85 GPU iPad: iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 18.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard Mac: 2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sequoia 15.0.1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pixy Posted March 17, 2020 Share Posted March 17, 2020 3 minutes ago, walt.farrell said: I don't think anyone mentioned it yet, but if you double-click on a panel's name that entire row of panels will collapse into a single line in the studio. Perhaps that would help some users if they don't know about that existing function. Thanks for the tip. This helps a bit in how I can organize my workspace. 🙂 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walt.farrell Posted March 17, 2020 Share Posted March 17, 2020 You're welcome, pixy Quote -- Walt Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases PC: Desktop: Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Laptop: Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU. Laptop 2: Windows 11 Pro 24H2, 16GB memory, Snapdragon(R) X Elite - X1E80100 - Qualcomm(R) Oryon(TM) 12 Core CPU 4.01 GHz, Qualcomm(R) Adreno(TM) X1-85 GPU iPad: iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 18.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard Mac: 2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sequoia 15.0.1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jjk Posted March 17, 2020 Share Posted March 17, 2020 On 1/31/2020 at 12:47 AM, Jeremy Bohn said: Agreed on the collapsable panels into an easy 1-click icon. Also agreed on the contrast. I find it very hard to see where one panel ends and the next begins. It just slows me down because I can easily lose my place when glancing between my artwork and the panel I need. Totally agree. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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