Style Selection Problem!

[Greenlaw]

Hi Daxel,

Thanks!

But I do agree with Hugging_Bear that what I wrote is patronizing and, intended or not, I'd like to do better than that.

[mmmaarten]

But I do agree with Hugging_Bear that what I wrote is patronizing and, intended or not, I'd like to do better than that.

I admire your professionalism, selfreflection and optimistic nature. I don't want to mix in this, but I do like to take the oppertunity to thank you for all the effort you put into helping others on this forum with clearly a lot of enthusiasm and not holding anything back in supplying tips! Not even when I probably come across as critical at least (I'm not perfect either). For me it's definitely helping a lot to get to learn Moho like this!

[Hoptoad]

When I first started using Moho many years ago, I stayed away from the custom Style features. The fact that custom Styles were accessed by checking the ADVANCED checkbox alerted me that they were probably not terribly important for basic animation, and also probably difficult to learn.

Eventually, when I decided to learn custom Styles, it took a lot of trial and error (and reading forum posts) to figure everything out.

I think Víctor's tutorial (posted above) does an excellent job of explaining the process for making and utilizing custom Styles. The process is truly "advanced", but once you 100% learn the process, the process makes sense and is easy to remember, in my opinion.

[Daxel]

Hi Daxel,

Thanks!

But I do agree with Hugging_Bear that what I wrote is patronizing and, intended or not, I'd like to do better than that.

I know, and I don't want to change that, just giving my two cents (:

Not even when I probably come across as critical at least (I'm not perfect either). For me it's definitely helping a lot to get to learn Moho like this!

No worries, I think any software benefits from constructive criticism. Moho has listened to the community many times and I hope they will continue doing so.

[JoelMayer]

I do agree the styles window can definitely be improved usability wise someday. For being such an intuitive software, the the styles thing is one of the few areas that really trips people up a lot.

The main problems as i see it are 1) that it‘s confusing to realize you‘re now editing a style vs applying it (no indication of editing something, no confirm button, etc… you can just change the name of it but that doesn‘t always communicate clearly) 2) the checkboxes to override fills and lines don‘t have any description whatsoever so most people don‘t even know they are there let alone what they do and 3) It‘s sometimes unclear when styles get applied automatically and seems arbitary. I also think that maybe one day the select shape and points tool should be consolidated into one tool because it's something that confuses a lot of users as well especially when you come from more common vector applications like Illustrator.

I think a bit of a revamp and getting rid of the early 2000‘s default palette with garish colors will work wonders and newcomers will be able to get into the very useful applications of this feature a lot quicker.

It might be blasphemous but sometimes i also wonder if it's not more complex than it really needs to be. A clean, solid indexed colour palette and a nice brush palette and effects panel might work just as well. Sure, you can't set up "Styles" with strokes and fills etc. all at once but neither can you in Harmony i.e. and it never bothered me because i have my brush tips always handy and can change them easily by just selecting a shape and then the brushtip/size and also easily save those as a preset with one click.

That rarely happens anyway tho because i just select the tip i want from the brush window and draw with that from the get go instead of having a separate texture window WITHIN the brush tool. And colors can be used for lines and fills, doesn't really matter. If i change the color, it changes throughout the scene, no matter where it's applied. Color is color.

So maybe a more "conservative" solution akin to most drawing/painting apps, combined with the option for indexing colours would be much more intuitive and faster in the future, just my 2 cents.

In the meantime we have Victor‘s excellent explanation video that we now can point people to.

[mmmaarten]

No worries, I think any software benefits from constructive criticism. Moho has listened to the community many times and I hope they will continue doing so.

Thanks!

I do agree the styles window can definitely be improved usability wise someday. For being such an intuitive software, the the styles thing is one of the few areas that really trips people up a lot.

The main problems as i see it are 1) that it‘s confusing to realize you‘re now editing a style vs applying it (no indication of editing something, no confirm button, etc… you can just change the name of it but that doesn‘t always communicate clearly) 2) the checkboxes to override fills and lines don‘t have any description whatsoever so most people don‘t even know they are there let alone what they do and 3) It‘s sometimes unclear when styles get applied automatically and seems arbitary. I also think that maybe one day the select shape and points tool should be consolidated into one tool because it's something that confuses a lot of users as well especially when you come from more common vector applications like Illustrator.

I think a bit of a revamp and getting rid of the early 2000‘s default palette with garish colors will work wonders and newcomers will be able to get into the very useful applications of this feature a lot quicker.

It might be blasphemous but sometimes i also wonder if it's not more complex than it really needs to be. A clean, solid indexed colour palette and a nice brush palette and effects panel might work just as well. Sure, you can't set up "Styles" with strokes and fills etc. all at once but neither can you in Harmony i.e. and it never bothered me because i have my brush tips always handy and can change them easily by just selecting a shape and then the brushtip/size and also easily save those as a preset with one click.

That rarely happens anyway tho because i just select the tip i want from the brush window and draw with that from the get go instead of having a separate texture window WITHIN the brush tool. And colors can be used for lines and fills, doesn't really matter. If i change the color, it changes throughout the scene, no matter where it's applied. Color is color.

So maybe a more "conservative" solution akin to most drawing/painting apps, combined with the option for indexing colours would be much more intuitive and faster in the future, just my 2 cents.

In the meantime we have Victor‘s excellent explanation video that we now can point people to.

Completely agree!

I think what's missing is the fact that other software split the styles into several smaller panels and made styles not so much in your face, more like an optional thing. That makes things way easier and intuitive in my opinion. Especially because we're already used to it by using other software.

So I would opt to replace the styles panel into the following:

1) Two circles located under the tools panel to quickly set a fill or border color to the selected shape., just like in applications like illustrator/photoshop/affinity. This would also make them swapable and always shows a representation of colors and way to change colors without the need to have any panel open. This makes it also easy to quickly remove a fill and/or stroke.


2) Swatches panel for global swatches (only colors and saved into the current file) to create your own palette of colours per project. These are colors to reference to, so if you use a swatch on a shape and change the color of that swatch, it changes throughout the project everywhere it's used. Just like global swatches in Affinity Designer for instance. That way we keep the nice part of having a way to change colors throughout the project easily and quick. And have the added bonus that we're not limited to just two styles, because we can make as many colors as swatches as we'd like. It would also be nice to be able to export and import swatches from file. And to be able to switch between list mode (where we see a small thumb of the color with a name) and image mode (where we only see a grid of color blocks to pick). And the list could even be searchable and categorisable/groupable.



3) Colors panel
Where we can choose our own color picker and/or sliders system of choice to set color and opacity. And have a way to always have this open while coloring. Just like in applications like Affinity.


4) Strokes panel
Where we can set the stroke width, cap style, join style, align style, order, dashed lines, arrow heads etc. Pressure sensitivity for tablets could also be set here.


5) Brushes panel
Brushes panel to choose a brush. Where we have a list of brushes and where we can instantly see a visual representation of them in the list to pick from without to first need to click somewhere. Add custom brushes and perhaps a way to give them a name to our liking. Perhaps even grouping of brushes. And/or making them searchable.


6) Effects panel (also for textures)
The effects section. A list of effects to turn on or off and when opening an effect we can set all properties of them to configure. One of the effects could be to add a texture and set all properties for it, like repeating, rotation and such.



7) Styles panel to save custom styles (I never used this in any software, but I'm sure many people like to use this? also people using this now in Moho) which is basically a swatches panel that not only saves colors, but also the brush style, effects etc. Same as swatches with global swatches; if you change a style than it's changing the appearance of everywhere it's used.


I think by making these steps smaller and the same as in other applications:
1) people are already are familiar with it and so it feels intuitive and you can use it immediately (why reinvent the wheel for something that's working fine for many years?!)
2) many times you just would like to set colors for fill and stroke. Now you can without having to know all the other stuff.
4) we don't need to worry about brushes and styles and understanding them, because they're not cluttering the interface aymore/making things confusing. They're not there in the circles for fill and stroke and they're not there in the swatches panel. But when we do need them, they're there in the new styles panel.
5) I think this makes things way more intuitive, logical and beginner friendly as a bonus and it still has all the benefits of the benefits there're there now, but IMO way more intuitive and logical.
6) no more confusing overriding and checkboxes that make things overly complicated
7) full control to the user to only open the panels of things they need and pick the learning path they like (right now you need to understand the full styles panel to start working with it really, but if split into parts we only need to understand a little piece first)
8 ) easy learning curve for beginners because you can start small and add more to it if you're up for it and need it. (But there is no need to)
9) easy explainable in manuals and searchable in google and on forum as it's split into easy smaller parts and uses standard naming for things. And people familiar with graphical software already understand things when you call things 'swatches', 'styles' and 'brushes' I'd say.
10) people new to Moho, but familiar with other graphical/animationsoftware, quickly understand the UI and can dive into the more advanced parts and get started more quickly to focus on the things they'd like to create
11) no need for a huge styles panel to be always open (when only using fill and strokes and no swatches we don't even need to have any panel open, when using swatches we only need that panel open, when we need more these are only new tabs, so still aren't that huge)
12) It makes Moho's UI much more scalable for future needs as these are all split into different panels with their own dedicated constrols, displays, menus etc. No need to make one universal styles panel bigger and more cluttered anymore. All extras could be added to the appropriate panel. Making it easy to find and possible to tailor it completely. And no need to scroll through some huge panel.
13) It would perhaps even gain more users as they see it's easy to step in

I'm all for not reinventing the wheel when existing wheels work great and every professional is familiar with it (and muscle memory). I think it has way more benefits that people instantly understand the interface on such crucial points. The same goes for the add-points tool, which works completely different to the pretty much standard pen tool behaviour in other software that we put a lot of effort in getting to master it. The fact that there's even an external script tool to make us use the standard way for pen tools today says it all IMO. Why isn't this the native behaviour of the Add Points tool, and why isn't the Add Points tool just called Pen Tool? I'm all for a rebuild of that tool too to make it work the same as in other graphical software. But that's for another thread.

My 2 cts

[Daxel]

I agree it can be improved, but now that I'm thinking about it I have to admit it's pretty hard to improve one aspect of if without worsening another. It seems to me that UX is a compromise between intuitiveness, usefulness and size.

Because we can separate the style panel into tabs or several panels and that's a good idea to have enough space to make everything clear, but the users used to the current style panel would suffer a loss in usefulness, not being able to see at a glance every property of a selected shape.

The minimalistic approach is another compromise, you reduce size/clutter but again you lose usefulness. This is actually an option already: we have the Advanced checkmark that we can uncheck to make the panel smaller and less useful for those that don't need the extra functionality. You can even go a step further in that direction closing the style panel and using the Select Shape toolbar to see the colors and width.

So I'm more inclined to make subtle changes in comunication (icons, wording...) to improve intuitiveness without changing the panel too much or losing usefulness.

The lock icon for forcing properties could be a good example of something that improves intuitiveness without losing anything. But even this would add a little bit of clutter and size if you just add it next to the checkmark, so I would add it instead of the checkmark, and the lock's arm would be blue (to make clear it is actionable) and we could click on it to open or close it.

Another improvement that I miss often and would help a lot without sacrificing anything is to add tooltips to every option. They would only pop up after leaving the mouse over the option for a moment, but we would have an option in preferences to only trigger the tooltip popup if we are holding a modifier key like Ctrl. I had to open the manual to remember what the Thickness option does? not anymore with tooltips. Even the lock icon is not super clear, it's more like... easier to remember at a glance after you read (in a tooltip) what it does.

I also think that the top of the style panel is the most confusing part of it and we should focus on it. I mean the dropdown menu with Shapes and the one with Styles. People usually think "Okay, you can select the shape and then you can select which style to apply" but no, Styles means select a saved style to edit. But of course if we change "Styles" for "Select a Saved Style to edit" that would make the panel bigger because that would take the entire line needing an extra line for the Shapes dropdown menu. A tooltip would help a lot there, something like "Select a Saved Style to edit its properties or <new style> to save the current properties as a Saved Style". Problem solved. But there should be ways to make it clearer at a glance. I'll keep thinking.

[Víctor Paredes]

Just so you know: Improving the Style window and Styles management is something that we are considering for the future.
We have been discussing many ideas here, but for now, we have a long list of priorities, so it will take some time until we could even start working on this.

Thank you very much for the nice comments about the tutorial. I'm happy it is helping to understand how useful and powerful styles can be.

[JoelMayer]

I think both approaches described here are totally valid. Revamp the entire thing or keep the current workflow and optimize it.

I'm sure the Moho people will come up with a good solution but i also agree with Victor that it's not the most pressing matter atm either. Good to have some ideas here though for future reference.

[Hugging_Bear]

Hi Hugging_Bear,

But I wouldn't call me a beginner to Moho...

...PS: Sorry - but I find your attitude quite patronizing!

Agh! Please accept my apologies, you are absolutely right. I know you've been using Moho for quite some time, and I was being dumb and thoughtless when I wrote that.

I'll write more about Custom Styles later but I wanted to respond to this right away.

Apologies accepted ... I acknowledge your good intentions ... let's leave it at that!

[Daxel]

Just so you know: Improving the Style window and Styles management is something that we are considering for the future.
We have been discussing many ideas here, but for now, we have a long list of priorities, so it will take some time until we could even start working on this.

I'm fine with that, other things are more important and I can't wait to see what improvements the next version brings to those areas.

[Hugging_Bear]

PS: Sorry - but I find your attitude quite patronizing!

Agh! Please accept my apologies, you are absolutely right.

I'm sorry but I have to disagree with both of you lol.

No one else have found Greenlaw's attitude patronizing and he has patiently helped everyone countless times so it must be you having a bad day, I guess.

He started by "If you are a begginer", in conditional, and it was an advice about how to learn the software, one thing at a time, not about production.

It's better to always assume good intention when someone tries to help you, because people tend to avoid helping users that may seem to get offended easily. Not Greenlaw, though.

Sorry my friend, but I'm afraid, you missed the point here. I don't object to be called a beginner. We are all beginners in one aspect or another. But how would you feel, being eager to learn a new thing and being told that you are not ready/capable to learn this new thing. Wouldn't you take that as a frontal assault against your intelligence/maturity? A good mentor knows to encourage and foster a student's eagerness to learn something new. You can see as a good example how a good mentor behaves, by looking to Victor!
Greenlaw has shown character and human grace and statue by admitting his mistake and by apologizing . And I have great respect to that degree of maturity!
PS: I have acknowledged his good intentions.

[Hoptoad]

. . .how would you feel, being eager to learn a new thing and being told that you are not ready/capable to learn this new thing. . .

I thought when you had written, "let's leave it at that," that you were done complaining, but here you go again.

With all due respect, you are derailing a useful thread.

[Daxel]

But how would you feel, being eager to learn a new thing and being told that you are not ready/capable to learn this new thing. Wouldn't you take that as a frontal assault against your intelligence/maturity?

That didn't happen. You were told that if you are a begginer, it is a good idea to learn one thing at a time, which is a very common advice. I was susprised that you took it personally, coming from someone that was taking his free time to help you, so I assumed you had a bad day. But it seems I was wrong.

But let's not keep repeating ourselves, we've already expressed our viewpoints clearly. No hard feelings.

[Hugging_Bear]

My apologies! I realize now that I tried to settle a rather personal matter on a forum which is in it's very nature a public place and as such not the proper place to do that.
Is there an option to send private messages - (those that other members can't see)? And if yes, how can I access it?

PS: How stupid of me ... it's the speech bubble symbol on the left side