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Fill dialog and tool palette still sport perplexing items


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I'm looking forward to checking out the new features, but disappointed to see no revisions to the Fill dialog.

We still have a tab called "None," which features swatches.

We still have a gradient fill with no angle control.

The eyedropper tool... what was the thought process here?

Furthermore the tool palette still contains some baffling choices. An image-placement tool? How does this make sense?  You use it once, and then it disappears. A one-time function does not belong on a tool palette, because it's not a tool; it's a command or function. We already have a "place image" command.

The gradient tool doesn't make much more sense. You can select it when there are no objects selected, and It adds nothing to the Fill dialog except a gradient-angle control, which could (and should) be displayed when the Fill dialog is invoked anyway.

A friend of mine is looking to replace his old desktop-publishing software, and I've been considering setting him up with Affinity Publisher. But he has a business to run, and wrestling with this kind of non-intuitive UI is a no-go. I'm going to have to audit the Publisher UI for similar design decisions before recommending it, something I wouldn't normally expect to have to do. And Affinity's unwillingness to address these issues isn't exactly encouraging.

If there are use cases that justify the... um... "quirks" I'm citing here, let's hear 'em.

Edited by Stokestack
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9 hours ago, Stokestack said:

We still have a gradient fill with no angle control.

 

9 hours ago, Stokestack said:

The gradient tool doesn't make much more sense. You can select it when there are no objects selected, and It adds nothing to the Fill dialog except a gradient-angle control, which could (and should) be displayed when the Fill dialog is invoked anyway.

 

The Fill Tool (called the gradient tool in Photo - supposedly to reduce confusion when comparing with the Flood Fill tool, but creating new confusion by being named differently in Photo than in the other two apps and due to the fact that it does more than just gradients...) allows you to manipulate the fill directly on a selected object by dragging the individual points in a gradient to specific positions rather than having to play with the angle and guess.  It can also access fill types such as tiled images which are similarly inaccessible from the "normal" fill type popup (and can similarly manipulate those directly on the object).

 

You can select any other tool when there is no object selected, so it would be kind of silly to not be able to do that with this one too.  It is a tool and behaves like a tool.

 

I do agree that there is a LOT of room for improvement both in that popup and in the somewhat questionable choice to use two different names for the fill/gradient tool (though the tool itself is great, outside of the fact that it seems to be the only way to do certain things that should also be accessible through the popup).

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Thanks for the reply.

I agree that the gradient functionality offers a lot of flexibility, but the UI needs some significant but simple cleanup to reveal it. I understand the point of the on-screen gradient control, but it could be invoked when the user invokes the gradient pop-up; it needn't be relegated to a separate "tool" in the palette.

Even more baffling is the omission of various fill types from the Fill pop-up's drop-down list, when they're present in the Fill tool's (which you pointed out).  Once again, there is no apparent reason for the separate Fill tool.

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4 hours ago, Stokestack said:

I understand the point of the on-screen gradient control, but it could be invoked when the user invokes the gradient pop-up

Except that as soon as you tried to interact with it the popup would disappear taking the controls along with it...  assuming that the controls were not hidden behind the popup in the first place.

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4 hours ago, Stokestack said:

Why would the pop-up disappear?

Because that is what popups do when you click on something outside of them.  Try it: select an object, open the fill color popups on the context toolbar, then try to drag one of the handles for the selected object.

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Says who? And, given that there is such a thing, the solution is: Don't make it that, then. It already defies not only standards, but common sense.

Having a tab called "none" that shows swatches isn't "standard" either, is it?

Having a tool that can't be used multiple times, and that invokes a File dialog when you click it on the canvas isn't "standard" either, is it?

How would you clean it up?  I'd start with this:

 

 

gradient suggestion.png

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For what it may be worth, I like your redesign of the popup except for the fact that the eyedropper is missing and it still doesn't have an option to change the angle or offset of the gradient.  It is a big improvement over the existing design either way and those things could be added to your suggested layout without too much hassle.

However the redesign of the popup and elimination of the tool are two different matters.  It is a standard behavior of a popup that when you click outside of the popup, the popup closes.  Even with those controls added to the popup you would still lose the direct manipulation offered by the tool, so I continue to believe that offering both is a good thing.  I was never arguing that either one was perfect - both could easily stand to be improved, the popup in particular, but neither one serves to eliminate the other.

 

10 hours ago, Stokestack said:

Having a tab called "none" that shows swatches isn't "standard" either, is it?

Not only is this non-standard, it is also quite bad, for more reasons than you have outlined.  Switching tabs is supposed to reveal more controls or information, but should not have an effect on the document by itself.  The "None" and "Swatches" tabs in this case are identical except that switching to "None" actually removes the stroke or fill.  Selecting a color from a swatch while on the "None" tab switches to the "Swatches" tab while selecting one from "Recent" leaves it on "None" but still sets the stroke or fill (meaning you would need to switch to a different tab then switch back to remove it).  So no, I don't believe the current tab behaviors are even remotely valid from a user interface perspective.  Again, your suggested redesign of the popup's layout is a big improvement.

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