First of all, nice tool. Great work.
I will sound a bit nitpicking, but i thought you might be interested in my first hand experience with Paint.NET. I have some background in using Photoshop (5.5) and GIMP (recent). The Paint version i used was 'Paint.NET 2.2 (Alpha 1 Release build 2.2.2067.27821)'.
1. Floating windows in my way
The first thing i noticed was that the floating windows are obstructing my workspace. For example if i have an image 800x800 and the workspace area is around 750x750 i can not edit the corners of my image without moving the floating windows.
My wish: hot key for hiding all floating windows (IIRC Tab-key in PS)
2. Floating windows move ... now
Then i tried to move the floating windows outside of the main window. At first i didn't manage to move them past the border, but soon i discovered that i could move them out on the oposing side (i'll explain it later). Now i moved the tool box _around_ the main window to place it to the left.
What happened? Obviously you can only move the floating windows over the border at a certain speed of the mouse, which explains why i couldn't move them in the first place. My mouse needed to gather speed and it only happend when i arrived at the oposing side of the window. This feels very strange to me, since i have never seen moving restrictions based on mouse speed in any UI.
My wish: Use the distance to the window border as a threshold.
3. Floating window now move where i want you to be
After finally managing to 'jump over the border' i couldn't place the toolbox in the upper right corner, because the mouse was ahead of the point where I initially started dragging it (relative to the toolbox window). So i had to release the window and grab it again to move it to it's final position.
My wish: After crossing the window border, make the window stick/jump to the mouse cursor position again.
4. Ahhhh it was hard work moving the windows ...
After starting Paint again, it gracefully forgot the window locations. Back to step 1.
My wish: Remember the window locations ... always.
5. Where's the color window?
After stacking some floating windows i noticed that clicking on the color field in the toolbox doesn't raise the color window (in this case obstructed by the layer window).
My wish: Raise the color window when clicking on the color fields in the toolbox.
6. Rulers are strange
I noticed that the ruler somehow is part of the working area e.g. i can start painting inside the ruler which might also trigger the auto-panning.
My wish: The rulers shouldn't be part of the working area.
7. Rulers still strange
The ticks on the ruler show some sort of 'rounding error'. Example: start Paint, switch to 25% zoom. You should see the ticks being shifted right by some pixels.
My wish: fix it
8. Pan by space key
Change the zoom setting via the tool bar. Try to pan the image using the space-key shortcut. Now the zoom combo box gets filled with spaces and i can't pan either. There is no easy way to get the focus back into the working area without using a tool and the only tool that doesn't alter the image or change the selection is the ... *drummroll* ... pan hand tool
My wish: Make the zoom combo box 'space insensitive'.
9. Pan by space key revisited
Same as ( 8 ) but this time i changed the layer. Now my layer gets invisible when i try to space-pan (in fact the visibility tick gets re-/setted)
My wish: Make the layer visibility tick 'space insensitive'.
10. Select nothing
I terribly miss a shortcut for 'Select nothing'.
My wish: obvious.
11. Move layers
I first thought that layers can not be moved. After a while and a coffee, i noticed that by using 'Select all' and 'Move Selection' tool i can move a layer.
My wish: When nothing is selected, make the 'Move Selection' tool move the whole layer.
12. I'm german. Please give me back the _english_ version
I would love to have the possibility to select the language.
BTW: the german translation is realy good, no complaints on my side.
My wish: ...
13. Some minor things nagging here and there
a) The ordering of layers in the layer window feels backwards to me. I would expect the background to be down and the topmost layer to be at the top.
The zoom icons in the toolbar feel switched to me. I would expect the (+) zoom to be right and (-) to be left. (i constantly click the wrong ones)
c) The shadow around the image is distracting. I would love to have just a simple rectangle.
d) When double clicking a layer, it would be nice to have the layer description/name field focused and completely selected. So i could start typing away instantly.
e) Confirmation dialogs shouldn't be transparent (e.g. after dropping an image on Paint '..Open as new or as a layer...').
::::THE END::::
I hope you didn't lose interest on your way through my nitpicking.
Keep up the good work
... Martin ...
