Usability concern with new hyperlink feature and text frame default style

[walt.farrell]

I'm not sure whether this is a bug or intended behavior, so I'll start here.

I'm playing around with the new hyperlink implementation in 1.7.0.238 on Windows. First, thanks for getting this new feature implemented so quickly. I'm sure it will please those of us who have missed it.

I did these steps in a new document:

1. Created a few pages.
2. On one page I drew a Text Frame and added some text without specifying any style information in the Context menubar. I repeated that on another page.
3. I selected some text in one of the frames, and marked it as an anchor (Text > Interactive > Insert Anchor).
4. I selected some text in the other frame, and marked it as an "anchor" hyperlink to the text in step 3 (Text > Interactive > Insert Hyperlink), and in the dialog left the Character Style at the default of Hyperlink.

All of the above worked as I expected.

I then created another Text Frame, typed some text, and it came out in the Hyperlink style, in blue. The default style for my new Text Frame was now Hyperlink, and the default fill was blue.

From a usability perspective, I don't think that marking something as a hyperlink should change the default settings for future text or text frames.

[William Overington]

 

 

52 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

.. and the default fill was blue. 

Had you filled anything with blue when you were experimenting?

William

 

[walt.farrell]

No, that fill came in as part of the Hyperlink style that I chose from the Insert Hyperlink dialog.

[fde101]

Yep, it is doing that to me too.

Hyperlinks exist - that is good.

This behavior - that is bad.

[walt.farrell]

AdamW confirmed to me that they noticed this today in their internal testing, too, and they're looking into it.

[Jim_A]

Isn't this a result of the default behaviour of 'sticky' styles? If you apply styles to text and then draw a new text box, the style remains selected.

I can see some situations where sticky styles would be a convenient time saver, but I find it more of a hindrance than a help as I need to manually check that no unwanted styles are selected when making new text frames. This is especially inconvenient when the document has many styles, as you have to scroll down to the bottom of the list to check that no unwanted character styles are being applied.

Perhaps a preference option for 'New text frames have default styling' would solve this.

[walt.farrell]

I haven't tried in this specific case, but simply clicking on the Revert Defaults button (with a Text Frame detected) should clear the styling.

But the question is, should that be necessary and will it cause some other workflow issue.

[Jim_A]

That's useful, thanks. And it does work for the hyperlink styling. The option for new text frames to automatically have default styling would still be useful (or even desirable as the default option).

There is a glitch with the Revert defaults button: After clicking the button, the style selected in the Text Styles list doesn't change to No Style until you start typing.

[AdamW]

21 hours ago, Jim_A said:

Isn't this a result of the default behaviour of 'sticky' styles?

Yes, exactly this. (Internal) discussion is on-going.

[Jim_A]

1 hour ago, AdamW said:

Yes, exactly this. (Internal) discussion is on-going.

Since the internal discussion on styles is ongoing, can I cheekily point you to this thread where there is a discussion about changes to the way that style information is displayed.

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/70947-initial-words-sticking-with-first-font-applied/