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....
When cloning and using the Shift+Alt trick to maintain the starting point each time... the refresh around the starting point isn't done and you end up with a messy image.
eg.
Frustrating... it's like these features aren't tested.
Hi Davoid,
the Shift+Alt cloning feature works flawlessly on my computers. Having read about so many things that don't work on your computer, I seriously think your computer system has issues.
Best regards,Brian.
Brian said:the Shift+Alt cloning feature works flawlessly on my computers.
Hi B,
I've seen his problem across all systems I've had, even my current hi-end rig:
Hi Jeff,
I guess I owe Davoid an apology then for my comment about his computer: sorry Davoid. This must be very difficult for Corel when it comes to fixing bugs, they occur on some computers and not on others. How on earth would you deal with that situation? They probably find the features work fine on their test computers and so don't know what to fix. I don't use the Shift+Alt cloning feature a lot, but when I do it always works fine. I have had issues a few years back with the clone cursor generally behaving the way it shows in your video and that always went away when I "reset all brushes". It has not happened in a long time though.
Brian said:How on earth would you deal with that situation?
Every user needs to know that in both Draw and PP, CTRL+W manually refreshes the screen. Without that info... life would be brutal IMO, it's become an instinct for me to often need to press that for my projects.
Jeff Harrison said:CTRL+W manually refreshes the screen
I usually just zoom in/out to get a refresh. I have them hooked up to A and D with panning on S. It works pretty quickly for me. I have all the other main things I use shortcutted around the left hand home position. Thanks for the reminder about Ctrl+w.
Open a jpg *** that needs to have it's palette changed to the default *** (this mode is a setting)... then make some changes. Save. It wants you to save as a CPT file (ERROR).
I export as jpg. Try to exit PP, then it asks if I want to save as "whatever.JPG" (notice it says JPG)... so I click YES because I'd rather be able to save it in it's current folder instead of having to do work to get it where it started (as a jpg). When you say YES to save the ***JPG***, it goes to a dialog to the save as CPT (ERROR). It should save as JPG as it asks.
It should save as whatever format you openned. The reasoning is that you are probably just wanting to tweak the current file AT IT'S CURRENT LOCATION... not make a new CPT file.
it says JPG... it should go to a dialog box that allows it to save as JPG... not CPT.
HOWEVER... if you open a JPG and it DOESN'T have to have any colours adjusted... when you go Ctrl-S... it works properly to save as a *** JPG *** by default.
When you're using the eraser and you don't have the background on, the view of the background grid gets distorted. I'm not sure if this is a feature. It seems like the grid should stay perfect.
When you change the background grid colours, it doesn't update (until you reopen the program).
Had another PP crash. It's really weird that the crashing doesn't seem to be related to how long you use the program for. I had many hours of work to do yesterday and it went perfectly. Then after working on many many files today, I openned one and started cloning to fix something, and it was only about 3 seconds in and crash. I wish I could help to nail down what exactly is going on, but there's not much to go on. It just freezes then crashes.
At least I was only 3 seconds in.
This isn't a "bug", but it is irritating. When I bought GS X5, I recieved the DVD... installed it... okay.
I recently upgraded my computer and tried to install X5 from CD... the CD is clearly delaminating. I store all my disks in safe room temperature etc. conditions. It's not a big deal because you can get the trial file off the web, but it's a problem that Corel should know about.
You can clearly see the edge of the separation due to the delamination when you hold it up to the light.
I know this sounds unbelievable... but I've never had so much trouble with a piece of software. I use my computer all the time without anything else breaking (except for the old version of MS's movie maker... that would crash). When Corel sent the disk to start with, they forgot to send the SN... so it took a few days and calls to them to sort that out. Then all the ONGOING crashes and GUI bugs that cause settings to disappear or not be saved... and this wastes tons of time. GETTING ZERO FEEDBACK ON THE BUG REPORTS THAT ARE TRYING TO HELP. And now (a few days ago) trying to reinstall using the DVD I got directly from the company.
Does anyone know how I can send all these bugs to the company? I have saved all the bug screenshots and text in txt files that I would be glad to email them. There are soooo many bugs... I just want to ensure Corel gets them so SP2 can address them. I don't care if they read them here or whatever.
One of the signs of a good company is CUSTOMER FEEDBACK. For instance, I emailed Logitech about one bug in their setpoint software about a year ago and they got back to me with an answer/fix in about 2 days. Some feedback without having to pay to talk to Corel is necessary IMO.
Fill not changing. Just openned PP 3 seconds before.
Here's a screenshot showing orange selected on the right... but neither the fill (what I was trying to do) nor the foreground changed (on the left). The box in the middle is me in the middle of picking the fill colour by double clicking the fill from the left... but you can clearly see it's already orange, BUT it isn't orange on the left.
Does this have something to do with using the mouse and then the stylus? Is that confusing the program? In this case I'm sure I only used the stylus once it openned... but I sometimes go back and forth depending on what I'm working on.