Feature Request: Toggle Layer visibility with middle mouse click

[LWChris]

It's a bit cumbersome to quickly toggle the visibility for many layers, because the checkbox is quite small. Nowadays where most computer mice have a middle button, how about defining middle click on a layer in the Layers tool window toggles the visiblity? This greatly increases the "hit box" for this.

 

Thanks 😁

Edited February 26, 2019 by LWChris

[Rick Brewster]

I'm not sure that's a good idea, seeing as how middle-click is used for closing an image when you click on the thumbnail at the top.

 

Simpler idea would just be to make the checkbox bigger.

[LWChris]

51 minutes ago, Rick Brewster said:

I'm not sure that's a good idea, seeing as how middle-click is used for closing an image when you click on the thumbnail at the top.

 

Well, middle click as a shortcut to close tabs is quite common, but I don't see how that would contradict using middle click on other UI elements with a different action. Currently, middle click behaves like left click.

 

51 minutes ago, Rick Brewster said:

Simpler idea would just be to make the checkbox bigger.

 

I'm not sure this will look very well. And no matter how big it will become, it will necessarily always be a lot smaller than the whole layer item.

Also, the clickable area is already taller than the checkbox, but every time I try to very quickly toggle many layers in a row, about half of the time I activate the layer instead of hiding it.

 

It actually may be an UI issue with the click event being routed to the wrong element for inactive and/or invisible layers, but it's hard to tell for me whether I nailed the click or am just a few pixels off when doing it fastly in a row for 10+ layers.

Edited February 26, 2019 by LWChris
Typo fix

[Rick Brewster]

Middle click being used for two different things is just not something that sits well with me, especially when one of the actions is destructive.

 

Anyway I've filed an issue to look into this at some point. I don't know when it'll happen, but it's on "the pile"  Thanks!

[LWChris]

2 hours ago, Rick Brewster said:

Middle click being used for two different things is just not something that sits well with me, especially when one of the actions is destructive.

 

I understand that in general for hotkeys. You wouln't want to assign "Reset to default colors" to the "Delete" key (as in deleting your custom color choices), when the same key triggers a destructive action for other parts of the program. But I think it's okay for mouse actions on totally different areas of the GUI. Also

1. You cannot expect the same thing to happen, since you can neither "close a layer", nor "hide an open file".
2. The action that is closest to "closing a layer" is hiding it - which would happen.
3. The action that is closest to "hiding an open file" is closing it - which already happens.

So I think it fits in the greater scheme of understanding.

 

2 hours ago, Rick Brewster said:

Anyway I've filed an issue to look into this at some point. I don't know when it'll happen, but it's on "the pile"  Thanks!

 

Thank you. I get there are more important things (like maybe updating the "Popular Feature Requests" thread? *hint* ). I hope it'll be in soon nevertheless since it's just an event binding to add.