Object Gallery improvements for next version...

I'll start off by saying the Object Gallery is probably my favorite new feature in XX 5.1. It has many of the abilities that Xara users have mentioned in past feature requests, like locking and hiding individual objects and thumbnail previews.

However, there's some room for improvement in the next version. (I figure it's too late for last-minute changes.)

1. Renaming individual objects and groups: I noticed that pages and layers can be renamed in the Object Gallery, but individual objects and groups just have a generic name based on the type of object or group it is (Bevel Group, line, shape, etc.)

The thumbnails help somewhat with identification, but when there are many objects that are similar, it can still be hard to tell them apart.

I'd like to be able to do a slow-double-click and rename objects and groups in the same way we can rename pages and layers now. (I know about the Name Gallery, but it would be handy to rename them in the Object Gallery.)

2. More features in the right-click context menu: For groups, you could add Ungroup.

For shapes and other objects, we have Duplicate and Delete, but maybe you could add other features like "Group" if you have more than one selected, or "copy attributes from/to" (although I like the Ctrl-Shift-A method).

3. Please add the ability to move more than one item at a time by drag and drop.

4. Please increase the contrast on the eye and lock icons, which are too light by default.

5. Maybe add wireframe or solid visibility icons so that layers or even individual objects can be displayed as solid or wireframe independently from the current draw mode. This could help with manual tracing.

I've seen this in other vector programs, but I get redraw errors when using that feature in other programs. Xtreme used to have a visibility mode that let you see bitmaps with vector objects in wireframe, but this was removed when bitmap handling was changed to clipped objects.

Again, thanks for the Object Gallery and what it can do at present.

These all sounds fairly reasonable to me...
I guess we all should be glad they visited it and made the changes they did.
But there is always a million things that could be improved and its a shame because as having just spent considerable effort up-grading this it may be a long time before it is revisited so it is a shame it was not really nailed.

I have a more radical update proposal for the object list area for a future release which i have already stated but just for your information:

A new mode for the object list area:
A "Microsoft Word" type "styles list" style display system for selecting objects and changing shared properties globally across a whole design.....

I.E. like this could be very similar to the styles list i have seen in an old version of word where (automatically) every object in the design that has a unique set of properties is listed as a unique style in this styles list.

In Xara this list could also be displayed in a database grid with column headings for the most common types of properties .

-these columns would also automatically be sorted from left to right (and could be [hidden or visible] and be dragged from left or right to rearrange the sort).

-the first column would be z-order....normal sort....(so this being on the left hand side by default would mean a normal sort (ie the normal object list)

- but by introducing new columns ie show "stroke width"...and then dragging this column to the left....
then all the objects in this list would be sorted by "stroke width"...i.e no-stroke then stroke from lowest to highest... then secondly by z-order with-in each group (style).

This way the user could chose any property or group of properties to sort and hone in on any set of objects across the whole design.

-clicking on any style would select every object that this style represented...

And by typing over this style's information
i.e in the case of stroke changing one of the stroke widths to another number etc...
this would change all those object's stroke properties at once!

This system would be extremely powerful and very fast for selecting objects and changing properties globally.

Someone else suggested this elsewhere but I thought it was a very good idea, so I'll add it here. In addition to toggles for visible and selectable, a toggle for printable would be nice.

In addition to the excellent ideas presented above, I'd like to see a method of solo-ing layers, much like can be done in video / sound editing packages.

Perhaps the Eye icon could work as a 3 phase toggle...

1) User selected layers are shown.
2) All layers are shown.
3) Only the current layer is shown.

+1 for the 3 phase toggle

+2 (would be very useful).