File Opening - Multiple Tabs & File Order

[g01d10x]

Greetings fellow Affini-types

I'd like to ask a question about the functionality of both Designer and Photo ..

I frequently use both of these programs to create frames that I later make into animations. As such, creating each file in the scene, I name them sequentially like "Filename 1", "Filename 2" and so on.

When revisiting the files to edit later, I like to grab a bunch of the files and double click them all to open them as a set.

The current, and rather odd functionality that I'd like to avoid is this: If I open up 6 files, named "xx 7.png", "xx 8.png", "xx 9.png", "xx 10.png", "xx 11.png", "xx 12.png", the order that the tabs open up is a complete jumble, for example just now I opened the same list of files, and the order Designer opened them was: "10, 8, 12, 11, 9, 7". With only 6 files, this is not a huge task to correct, but when opening 25 or 30 files at a time, and also doing this several times per hour, it's really cumbersome to have to go and reshuffle the tabs around so I can step through them easily in a sequential fashion.

I would like to ask if this is possible in the current release of Designer and Photo, and if so, how?

If this isn't currently possible, I'd like to request that this is added as a new improvement, as it would make my particular work flows much more efficient.

I use multiple tabs within Safari windows in a similar fashion, and would suggest that Affinity could possibly twin Safari's Tab behaviour to make it easier to navigate between the currently open tabs. Safari's key-command "Command+Shift+(RightArrow)" and "Command+Shift+(LeftArrow)" makes a nice addition as a method to skip right or left across the tabs as well. These sequences fall easily at hand with a laptop keyboard and is familiar to Safari users.

I think the above would make a dandy addition to these two truly world-class pieces of software.

Please let me know if anyone can help.

[Old Bruce]

1 hour ago, g01d10x said:

Please let me know if anyone can help.

Affinity is aware of this and they are thinking about how to implement it, apparently the order the files are opened has nothing to do with the application as it now stands. Rather it is a function of the OS so they will have to write some sort of tab sorting function and I am not too sure if that will work as expected. Here is hoping I am wrong, this doesn't affect my work but this has been mentioned on the forums often enough that I see it would be a boon to many people.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, g01d10x said:

I use multiple tabs within Safari windows in a similar fashion, and would suggest that Affinity could possibly twin Safari's Tab behaviour to make it easier to navigate between the currently open tabs. Safari's key-command "Command+Shift+(RightArrow)" and "Command+Shift+(LeftArrow)" makes a nice addition as a method to skip right or left across the tabs as well.

CMD + Shift + the cursor keys already are used with the Move tool to 'nudge' selected items. But in the Miscellaneous section of Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts there is a "Switch to Next View" item you can set for this:
 

[g01d10x]

Thanks folks for the feedback .. I've checked out the 'Switch to Next View' key shortcut and it's helpful in part, but would be nice to have the option to go back the other direction through the stack. I just tried the 'Command-Shift-Arrow' to move stuff around on a designer document, and it seems to function the same as 'Shift-Arrow' does .. could anyone confirm that ?

I wondered how it works to open multiple files at the same time so tried a bunch of .png files that I had exported, on the Mac, 'Preview' opens them sequentially, so somehow this must have been done before .. maybe there's an Apple API for it to make things easier ?

Anyhow .. thanks to the community ! Really enjoying the product after about 2 years into Affinity ... top shelf indeed !

[R C-R]

3 minutes ago, g01d10x said:

I just tried the 'Command-Shift-Arrow' to move stuff around on a designer document, and it seems to function the same as 'Shift-Arrow' does .. could anyone confirm that ?

It works the same for me on my Macs, but IIRC the Windows equivalent using the CRTL key instead of the CMD key changes the nudge distance.

13 minutes ago, g01d10x said:

I wondered how it works to open multiple files at the same time so tried a bunch of .png files that I had exported, on the Mac, 'Preview' opens them sequentially, so somehow this must have been done before .. maybe there's an Apple API for it to make things easier ?

I am using Preview version 10, as supplied with High Sierra, & when I tried that on my iMac, I get different a different order depending on if I drag & drop the PNG's onto the Preview.app Dock icon vs. using Finder's "Open with..." contextual menu, & depending on Preview's Preferences > Images > "When opening files" setting. Plus, the order does not seem to relate to which file I select first, or to the file name, & (I think) varies depending on which if any of the files I had recently opened -- which suggests the Mac OS is using whatever image data might still be stored in inactive memory to open those files first before going to the drive to get the other image data.

Basically, the order seems not be random but what could be described as "opportunistic"or "first come, first served" -- IOW, how quickly a file is ready to be displayed determines its position in the tab (for Affinity) or sidebar (for Preview).