Some UX enhancements (Mac), some suggestions

[Lojza]

This applies for release b3 (essential edition). It's just a brainstorming - experience from one simple project. I haven't tested Spriter thoroughly. Maybe some of it are just misunderstanding, so take it rather as an inspiration ;)

On Mac

1) Make zoom with Alt + two fingers drag (as in Photoshop). Leave two fingers drag for dragging the viewport around, not for zooming.

2) Make zooming slower (dragging two fingers on trackpad makes way too fast shifts of zoom level).

3) When setting playback speed manually (entering the number), let the spin-up & spin-down buttons increment by +10 % or -10 % (not just by 1 %).

4) Enable keyframe deletion by pressing Backspace (on Mac, there is no Delete key, you have to press Fn + Backspace simultaneously).

5) In the detailed timeline, draw the entities keyframes (small circles) BETWEEN the lines, not ON the lines that underline the entity name.

6) The playback speed slider should clearly indicate what means the negative values, 0%, 100% and 100+% means. It is not quite obvious and user has to examine. A decent indicator along the line (some color for negative values, different color for 0 - 100 %, 100 % emphasized, and different color for 100+% might do it).

General feature suggestions:

1) Implement shadows for entities (each entity could have configurable shape-aware shadow - same effect as in "Drop shadow" in Photoshop).

2) Enable moving along concrete trajectory between keyframes (i. e. an entity should move along a circle or a specified curve between two keyframes).

3) It would be cool to have a small floating window with animation running, whereas the user could change specific sprites, bones, keyframes... and the animation subwindow would update accordingly (something like "live preview").

4) I really would welcome Mac-specific features full-screen support, automatic update notifications, standard toolbar look & feel & behavior and, of course, nicer toolbar icons :)

General bugs (maybe some specific to Mac):

1) Re-ordering of elements works strangely when dragging with mouse or trackpad - the dragged element gets lost after drag/drop. User has to refresh the list somehow (e.g. move around the time axis). This applies for the Z-order pane as well as for the Hierarchy pane.

2) When selecting all keyframes and doing z-reordering, it won't apply to all the keyframes.

3) In the "Edit" menu, there are 7 useless "Start Dictation" items, see screenshot:

And let me thank you for the great job! Spriter looks extremely promising so far and I'd certainly go for the Pro version.

[lucid]

Thanks for the feedback Lojza.

I'll look into everything - that Start Dictation thing is particularly mysterious.

[MikeHarvey]

I was going to make a topic about these issues myself but I see Lojza beat me to it. I had played around with Spriter for about 2 days now, and it's just amazing.

Everything Lojza mentioned would make this great program even better (As a Mac user, I too am experiencing the exact same issues). On the subject of Mac control input, I have a Magic Mouse (as well as a track pad) and I 100% agree with drag = scroll, Alt + drag = zoom, and that zooming in and out is too fast.

I'm still going to make my own post with my own suggestions, but I'm glad I saw this so I'll know what needs to be left out.