This thread is continued from:
http://community.coreldraw.com/forums/p/19344/100072.aspx#100072
... but is intended to be PP specific. It's a list for Corel bug fixers... one place for them to easily find many bugs... big or small, crash/freezing or just wrong GUI stuff. This is not intended to be a wants list, but obviously sometimes there's overlap... one person's wish is another person's GUI bug. This thread will probably be boring reading for most of us, but hopefully this will efficiently help the bug-finding and bug-fixing process. Hopefully you can be as specific as possible about the circumstances of what you were doing when the problem occured, but I know from personal experience that some of the crash/freeze problems just happen or are around all the time.
I'll start it off with a few itty bitty new ones.
- Make the popup text the same for icons as they're called in the customization/commands dialog
-eg. "Fit in Window" is a zoom command, and it's popup text says "Zoom to fit" - which imho is a good name... fit to window should be changed
-eg. "Initiate cutout tool" is not the cutout tool being started... it's the "cutout lab"
- The zoom 25% command is using the zoom 33 icon.
- when you hold L on a pallete colour to bring up the super cool hue popup colour picker box (which is great), don't force the user to pick a colour with Left-mouse (for foreground in PP) if you accidentally drag the mouse (with L button still down) into the popup... if the user goes out of the popup with L held down, let them release without a choice being registered, and keep the popup open so the user can use L or R to pick.
- this colour picker kinda-bug (sorta) is also a wish/bug for Draw (for fill and outline instead), but I've been told that it's better to separate the threads for better communication.
Here's to a better PP and Graphics Suite X5.
- at different zoom levels, the outside area (overscroll area) changes form light to dark... this is bad because (at least on my reasonably quick computer), when you zoom using the mouse wheel, you get a dark grey and then light grey flicker effect. It's very brief, but adds to the feeling that the software isn't solid. Make the outside area one colour... and make it a changeable option... so the user can choose to work light on dark or vise versa.
- when you crop to colour when you're zoomed in, the refresh doesn't work correctly for the background area (it goes the dark shade)
- *maybe* (as an option) make the brush use XOR on the brush's outline so you can see it over chaotic textures. When I'm drawing on some textures, I can't see the brush.
- the drawing utensils need to be able to have shortcuts set for them. Everything else can... even obscure icons/actions. The basics should definitley be able to link up to a shortcut key... eg. brush, airbrush, pencil, pen, marker, etc. I'm not even talking customized brushes (which also need to be shortcutable)... I'm talking the basic drawing tools. This also includes smear, smudge, and all the other specific "effect" tools. This is a no-brainer. You don't primarily use the program to do "pen and ink"... you're smudging, smearing, cloning, and using the different brush tools... Clone is shortcutable... the others should be too. It's common sense.
- have a way to disable the "masks will not be saved in this format" message when you're working with jpgs and other basic raster formats. It's annoying and completely unnecessary the thousandth time... make it a dialog that can be disabled?
Davoid said: The basics should definitley be able to link up to a shortcut key... eg. brush, airbrush, pencil, pen, marker, etc. I'm not even talking customized brushes (which also need to be shortcutable)... I'm talking the basic drawing tools.
One problem is that I bet 9 out of 10 PP users don't know the effect tools exist. They are missing tons of power.
I totally agree that access to the powerful tools with user-definable shortcuts is critical.
Sometimes I think Corel looks at their software from a new user's perspective, instead of a experienced user's POV who looks at the Corel suite 8-12 hours a day. They should track down the top PP users who are somehow able to create fine art in PP in it's current state, and ask them what drives them crazy.
Pro software will inherently seem complex to newbs due to extensive features. Newbs have no loyalty. Pro users do. Newbs showed up at the PP focus group for the 100.00 and free sandwiches. LOL
Corel's job is to convert newbs into pros, and the only way that's possible is if newbs can make a living by using fast and reliable software. Dumbing down software to appeal to newbs, and irrititating pros by hiding the power they need (and understand) is the wrong path (for pro software) IMO.
One dialog I want to DIE forever is the prompt to retain clipboard contents. I see that 60-100 times, every freaking day....
Jeff Harrison said: access to the powerful tools with user-definable shortcuts is critical. Sometimes I think Corel looks at their software from a new user's perspective, instead of a experienced user's POV who looks at the Corel suite 8-12 hours a day. They should track down the top PP users who are somehow able to create fine art in PP in it's current state, and ask them what drives them crazy.
access to the powerful tools with user-definable shortcuts is critical.
Ahmen. The pro stuff can be hidden at first fine... but it will come back next GS generation... and so should the layout by importing from the previous GS save. This also means that the shortcuts (that *should work*) would also be re-created so I have all my custom brushes, with all the shortcuts, and for effects, etc. I know you definitely get this... it's so weird that what I consider some of the strongest features of this "GRAPHICS SUITE" are treated like fringe features. Having different brushes IMMEDIATELY available is great... and I'd love to be able to get rid of the docker - which takes up valuable space (and may be a cause of crashing).
The main painting/effects tools that make PP so great to use NEED to be shortcuttable!... and all the settings NEED to be saved in the workspace. These are bugs as far as I'm concerned. When I get X6 whenever it comes out... I want to be able to load in ALL my settings from X5. Please fix this.
I've been having a look at X4 on my P4 3.0GHz computer. Certain things are lightning faster than in X5. For example zoom in/out is instantaneous in X4, but is laggy in X5. This is a bug. There's something going on in behind the scenes that's messed up.
Another serious lag I've noticed is when saving the workspace. It takes about 4 seconds in X4... but about 8? or longer in X5.
The colour management diagram in X4 is clearer than in X5 IMO.
Generally, there's less wasted space in the dialogs in X4.
It's like someone new is in charge of the layout and usability and backend processing. Fire them and go back to the faster X4 code... or remove whatever kr@p that's running in the background. Get some better GUI design people. Get some better docker programmers.
About a million years ago I was pointing out (in the original X5 bugs thread) how some of the buttons in the dockers were being obstructed etc. ... and looking in X4, it seems better. Your software has been mangled.
When a programmer changes the way something works (eg. the icons used in a docker), someone with a clipboard should be actively verifying that everything is still okay... for every change. You can't rely on beta testers for these type of things, and it's super uncool to rely on us users.
That silly little tiny bug I found where the zoom 25% was using the 33% icon... it's not broken in X4. Your resources are somehow getting changed when the code is essentially the same (for this part of the code anyway). What the heck? Check for gremlins or discrunted employees. There's no reason the icon should have been changed.
!!! - On purpose, test X5 on a slower machine (1.8GHz) and compare the speed to X4 processing. I bet that will enlighten several areas that need to be switched back to X4 code... or remove anything new that's running in the background in X5.
It's completely reasonable that the whatever that's causing the slow/clunky performance in X5 might be causing problems with threading... and fixing that might prevent all the crashing that some of us unfortunates have been experiencing.
I spent about 2+ hrs sketching in PP X4, and it did eventually crash... BUT in X5, I would have had probably about a crash every 10-30min... almost guaranteed. Sometimes it would last an hour, but that didn't seem typical. Aside from the features of X5 that are not working exactly correctly, the SPEEEEEEED of X5 is broken.
!!! For instance, I shouldn't be able to ****clearly see**** the refresh on a simple 800x600 almost blank image when I zoom in/out/in/out etc. (I'd say it's about a third of a second). X4 doesn't have this problem... it is instantaneous. These findings are the same if I'm using the mouse wheel or using hotkeys to zoom in/out. I'm testing both X4PP and X5PP with the same dockers open and same almost nothing running outside of PP.
When I'm using X5, I'll often see the dockers flicker (refreshing) for no reason. This doesn't seem to happen in X4. Again this is evidence that something bad is happening unnecessarily in the background. Broken record, broken record, brokebasdjkfsdfkj
get rid of overscroll... and just make it like Draw, where you can have the edge of the printable area in the center of the working area regardless of the zoom level.
zooming with overscroll is broken... it doesn't stay on point.