Request: collapsible panels

[postmadesign]

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.

[postmadesign]

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.

[Dave Harris]

You can collapse individual sections of the Paragraph and Character panels by clicking on the triangles at the right of each section's title.

[postmadesign]

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.

[dcrosby]

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.

[MickRose]

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.

[Fixx]

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]

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?

[eluengo]

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....)

[cadwr]

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.

[GeoffM33]

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?

[cadwr]

yes. I experienced the same thing. Litle things like this can slow the workflow

[Maggie]

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. 
 

[ABD]

+1 for collapsible panels in all apps 

[Johann Seidel]

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.

[Jeremy Bohn]

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.

[pixy]

Is there any update on this topic?

[walt.farrell]

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.

[pixy]

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. 🙂

[walt.farrell]

You're welcome, pixy

[jjk]

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.