Improve tedious Layout Design process
planned
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Jason Ruffolo
Can we talk about how challenging it is to see the actual result of custom layout changes? Forgetting the already requested features for layout manager, it takes many steps to see what the actual result of a layout change(s) will be. In order to see the result of a change and to then make an adjustment or more changes you have to follow all these steps EVERY time: Reports > New Report > Type Report Name > Select Report Type > Print Preview > Evaluate > Cancel Print Preview > Cancel Report > "X" Report > Layout Manager. It would be great if when in design mode we could see a real time or single-click update of what the layout change result will be when actually printing. It's a pretty tedious and time consuming process in its current setup. Unless I'm totally missing a better way.
Herman Phillips
Merged in a post:
Granular Strip Layout Control
J
Jason Ruffolo
Strip Layouts: It would be ideal to have more control over the height and width of each element when designing a strip layout. Currently we can only adjust the height and width in preset increments; seemingly snap-to on a grid. I would like to adjust the element width at the pixel level instead. I'd go as far to say that I'd also like to be able to overlap or stack elements in some instances.
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Jason Ruffolo
It would also be great if we were able to insert thin vertical lines in strip layouts to help divide or separate information, especially if you are able to provide more finite control over element spacing/size.
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Darren Devlin
I actually like the limited snap-to grid design layout. I always want to have things look consistent and having too much control gets so finicky when trying to make everything line up nicely. But I can see why some people would want to get even more detailed with the controls! Maybe they could add a feature where you can toggle on or off the snap-to grid when designing layouts?
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Jason Ruffolo
Darren Devlin I don’t mind the snap to grid as much as I think the grid space from edge to edge is too large. I like to include extra information on the one line and the large grid squares prevents or limits what you are able to display. I’m not sure how we would know that having too much control would get finicky in cinapse since we only have the current snap to grid option. Unless an early version allowed for that? I like your suggestion of making it optional though.
Herman Phillips
planned
Herman Phillips
Jason Ruffolo This could definitely be better and we will revisit this soon so make the design preview process much more streamlined.