More toggle buttons in top row / panel full of indicators
You know, AI has a lot of options that can be turned on and off.
And some of them switched on and off quite often: Snap to Grid, to Point, to Glyph, to Pixel... Guides, Smart Guides, Edges (can be both locked and / or hidden), Artboard Edges, Corner Widgets, Bounding Box...
Of course, all of them can be accessed via View menu, but you just don't see them there! Users need no only SWITCH them, but KNOW what current state is.
Are my guides are turned off or I've deleted them or moved occasionally?
I want to draw a complex thing — is my grid's snap is turned on or I need to do it before I start?
And so on.
What about Use Preview Bounds? Hidden in Preferences.
What about, Transform Pattern Tiles?
Scale Strokes and Effects and Scale Strokes are duplicated in Transform, but that’s it.
So we need indicator switches.
And ideally we should choose ourselves which buttons we want to put there.
You've started understanding it, when added these to Properties panel.
But you take them away from those who don't use this panel.
And yet you have a perfect place for these switches, in fact you already sort of using this place! It's right next to the rocket GPU icon.
Put grid-snaps-widgets-indicators there, so we can always know what our current useful limitations are.
Sure, this would make it seem like it’s an app level thing... at the same time we have Control panel and it’s above documents’ tabs anyway.
Yes, you can make it a separate horizontal panel, but it will eat up the vertical space... you can put it in Control, but it’s full and we can’t make one sections of it to take priority over others.
Still we need it!
AdminEgor Chistyakov
(Admin, Adobe Illustrator)
shared this idea
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PJB
commented
Create a floating menu always active with color signaling on/off to display/activate the options of alignment to the grid, guides, point, pixel. It is useful to see at a glance the active states at any time, especially when elements during work are selected, which the current "properties" panel does not allow.
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Griff
commented
Like Egor said below, I would really appreciate it of the Snap to Grid toggle was visible right next to the Snap to Pixel toggle in the top control bar.
So far, the only toggle that you can customize as an indicator is Snap to Pixel. It'd be awesome if all the toggles in the Properties Panel could be customized to be persistent in the control bar as well.
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Griff
commented
There is a GUI indicator for the guides, snap options, and ruler and grids in the Properties panel. The problem is that those options go away as soon as the user has selected an object.
The key there is that those indicators need to be PERSISTENT, not contextual.
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Again, I repeat, put them at least where two existing indicators are., or even higher, where workspace dropdown is.
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murkalurk2099 commented
A Panel full of INDICATORS. These indicators show whether:
- Smart Guides are on or off on
- Lock Guides is toggled on or off
- Snap to Grid is toggled on or off
- Snap to Pixel is toggled on or off
- Lock Perspective Grid is toggled on or offOpening the View Menu constantly do in order to check which options are toggled on or off is annoying and a waste of time. An on-screen GUI element in the form of another snap-in panel with two-state buttons for each option (one highlighted state for "on", another greyed-out state for "off") would be ideal. Or maybe these indicators could be added to the Control Panel or Properties Panel.
I just noticed as I was writing this, that there is already an indicator of sorts for Snap to Pixel on the Control Bar, but there are none for the rest.
