space to drag!

[Egypt Urnash]

As someone who spends a lot of time in other graphic apps (PS, AI, Flash...), there's one thing I find awkward about AR's interface: the hotkeys for moving the canvas around, and zooming in and out.

I've gotten used to the 'space to drag, apple-space to zoom' workflow that graphics programs have been doing since the days of MacPaint. Especially the fact that it's a temporary change - once you let go of 'space', you go back to whatever tool you had before. Having to hit 'm' to move, then remember what tool I was using, and switch back to it, has been a constant minor speedbump in my first few images with AR.

Luckily nothing's using 'space' in AR's current keymap, so this could be added without disrupting the flow of people who've been using AR longer than I have.

[DoodLS]

The help file states

Drag the Canvas:
Space + Left Click Drag.

It works on windows - don't know about Mac. I simply hold space and start to drag with mouse/pen.

On Windows I use PageUp / PageDown to zoom in/out. But I agree - Alt+Space would be better for zooming rather than rotating.

A suggestion might be to replace Alt+Space with zoom and change rotate to Shift+Space.

DoodLS

[DaveRage]

We'll be looking at the lack of a zoom key combo for a future update, we do consider that to be an oversight in our current shortcut keys. The current version of ArtRage does support Space to drag so you should be able to return to your previous tool without specifically selecting it, but if you're using an older version you might not be seeing that, so it'd be worthwhile checking you are using 2.2

The 2.2 Full Edition is a free update via the artrage updater ( you can get it from our download page if you're running an older version - www.ambientdesign.com/artragedown.html ), or by downloading the latest installer by entering your details here www.ambientdesign.com/artreageinstaller.html

The 2.2 Free Edition can be downloaded from www.ambientdesign.com/artragedown.html

If you're not getting the behavior I've described abrove in 2.2, just fire me an email at support@ambientdesign.com and I'll see what might be causing the problem. Hope that's of some help.