Clif, actually, some users on Mac hate this behavior, when a value gets scrolled unintentionally when they hove over the fields.
Here is the entry about it:
http://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657/suggestions/32712589

ACTUALLY, there IS a way to adjust in Illustrator. However, I still think there could be some adjustments to Illustrator and Photoshop to bring the exact same input methods to both for more seamlessness.

If you hover over the number in the Charter panel in Illustrator, you can use the scroll wheel on a mouse or scroll ring on a trackball to adjust the number below the cursor WITHOUT selecting it. This function doesn't work in Photoshop currently, unless you select the number with the cursor first.
Yet still, it would be nice to bring the adjustment mechanism from Photoshop, of hovering over the icon, over to Illustrator.

As an avid user who goes back and forth between PSD and AE, having this feature would be a game changer in maximizing efficiency. It would also make the programs feel more seamless instead of different programs being forced to work together.

Whenever I hop from AE or PS to AI, and instinctively try to 'scrub' a value, my reaction is always "oh, yeah AI is total rubbish compared to the rest* of the Adobe ecosystem" and I just subconsciously register it as yet another reason to avoid AI like the plague. Fundamentally, AI is not a bad app - assuming it was on version 2 or 3, and we could expect these numerous silly bugs to be ironed out be, say, version 4. But this thing has been "developed" for 37 years! It should be utterly perfect by now!

My only assumption is that Adobe is just leaving AI to slowly rot, banking on the fact that everyone will continue to use it solely because everyone uses it. I guess in a few years Adobe will just make an offer that Affinity can't refuse, and maybe rebrand their software as Adobe products and throw Illustrator onto the scrapheap along with FreeHand, Atmosphere, Authorware, Brackets (text editor), BrowserLab, Business Catalyst, Contribute, Device Central, Director, Edge, Encore, Fireworks, Flash, Flash Builder, Flash Catalyst, Flash Player, FlashPaper, Font Folio, FreeHand, Fuse CC, GoLive, ImageReady, LiveCycle, Macromedia HomeSite, Media Player, Muse, OnLocation, PageMaker, PageMill, Persuasion, PhotoDeluxe, Presenter, Scene7, Scout, Shockwave, Shockwave Player, Soundbooth, Story, Streamline, Adobe Type Manager, Ultra and Visual Communicator.

*Apart from Acrobat, that is obviously abysmal too.

Wow, so my suggestion (assumed I wasn't the only one notice the lack of this, but didn't come across it when searching here) got merged with the ask from TWENTY SEVENTEEN?! Based on the original post this was a function we had back then that got removed and then never put back in. The version in Photoshop works great. Typical that SEVEN years later we still are waiting for something simple...

Would like to see the scrubby adjustment function come to the Character panel adjustments in Illustrator.

For instance, in Photoshop, when you place the cursor over any of the icons in the Character panel (ie Kerning, Tracking, Font Size etc.) and move left and right the number will adjust within the text field.

This doesn’t currently work that way in Illustrator on Mac or on PC, extra steps are needed to select the text number and adjust it. Since Photoshop and Illustrator share the same tool window design it should be an easy feature to bring over to Illustrator. The functionality works in other Adobe products that have a different UI for Character tools like After Effects.

Screen record examples attaching showing how the same action in Photoshop and Illustrator don’t produce the same result.

Once you get use to using this adjustment in Photoshop you realize how much more efficient its implementation is and Illustrator could gain faster functionality as well by bringing it in.

In the apps I use this WORKS in:
Photoshop
After Effects
Premiere Pro

In the apps I use this DOESN’T WORK in:
Illustrator
InDesign

In AE and Photoshop, I "scrub" (drag with the mouse) values (eg. font size) all the time to adjust them, and it seems remiss of AI and InDesign to not have this feature. Please allow us to scrub values! It feels so primitive to have to repeatedly click on arrows, or select from a list, or type stuff in.

I just came on to suggest the same idea, it's a bit infuriating that you can't do this in Illustrator. It's possible in After Effects, Photoshop, and I use it a lot in Maya too - where holding down different mouse buttons and dragging affects the speed/increments of the change in value, this is really handy.

Could we see this implemented in Illustator any time soon, @Adobe?

In After Effects and Premiere when you drag a value (like transparency, stroke width, etc.), or in Photoshop its name, you are able to change like if you were dragging a virtual slider.

But in Illustrator you still have to click on the arrow next to the number in order to show the slider which you can than drag.

Since they have a similar UI your brain always wants to do the same.

It is a small thing but it would be just great to unify them and to update Illustrator to those other apps with a bit more modern UI.

Thank you for listening!

Scrubby Sliders in Photoshop were an amazing QOL improvement. Would be great if added to Illustrator resulting in UI that matched the rest of the suite.

I would pay to have these added - oh wait, I am already paying.

Hi, I am also used of scrubby sliders in Ps, Ae, Pr, and the rest of the ecosystem.
It is capital to know one is learning one unified way to interact with the entire suite.

Illustrator definitely needs this! I'm not sure how or why the dev team missed this when building it, as the rest of the Adobe suite does this. As somebody else in the thread mentioned, consistency!

As for the last Eyedropper question, there is a way to do it.
Press Enter when the tool is active (or double-click the tool button) to open the tool’s options. Then disable those attributes you do not want to pick and apply.
Do not forget to set them back once you are finished (easy to forget!)

Seb, one request per entry, please. UserVoice does not allow splitting :)

Both your request exist on forums, please vote for these instead:

'UI scrubbing values'
https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/31977841-ui-scrubbing-values

'Sampling colors outside of Illustrator (eyedropper)'
https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/35215630-sampling-colors-outside-of-illustrator-eyedropper

Could Adobe please alter the UI so that all and any number boxes are made so that we can lower or raise the number via dragging on it with the mouse? For example, I think all of the numbers in the UI in After Effects work in this way. Perhaps holding shift whilst doing this would snap them to useful increments, too.

Eyedropper improvements: This seems like an obvious thing to have in the UI (I think Photoshop behaves in this way), but when we double click on a colour/stroke pot to bring the Color Picker box, we don't seem to be able to use a colour picker outside of this box to grab colours from inside the UI/document or from elsewhere on our screen from different apps. Could you please make this work how it does in Photoshop?

Also, it is quite handy when using the Eyedropper that it'll copy the stroke/fill style of whatever you want to sample, but is there a way where if we've got the fill set to a correct colour, but then we want to only change the stroke colour, that the eyedropper doesn't change both colour pots?

Change leading and kerning with mouse cursor for artistic and paragraph text, maybe by additional control points for text frames. This feature was quite conveniently implemented in Macromedia Freehand over 20 years ago.

I need this too bad

Scrubbies on the type menus for point size leading etc

Change leading and kerning with mouse cursor for artistic and paragraph text, maybe by additional control points for text frames. This feature was quite conveniently implemented in Macromedia Freehand over 20 years ago.

Opacity slider... its been like this thing for over 10 years... Photoshop Team figured it out... About time for illustrator to get it.

why does it take two clicks to adjust this?