UI designer is great. It could use some new features. I'm starting this post for people to share their ideas. Please do so in the following format with no more than 3 feature requests per post:
Feature Name
Description of the feature goes here. Links to similar ideas would help.
Purpose of the feature goes here
Workaround:
Possible workarounds until the feature is considered. Code would be nice.
Pen Tool
Something like Adobe's pen tool where we can add custom vector shapes to UI's.
The reason I suggest this is because I find myself having to design UI elements in a separate app and converting them to .png, loading them into an ImageView. SVG support would be nice.
Workaround:
Can't think of a workaround right now. But I do have some ideas that could use the objc_utils. Also there is a vector app that is open source now. Perhaps some parts could be integrated into Pythonista?
Alignment Options
Alignment and snapping options. I think Editorial aligns and snaps just fine but it doesn't work in Pythonista's UI designer. Perhaps even a bit of grid spacing options also.
Alignment in Pythonista's UI designer doesn't really work.
Workaround:
Can't think of a workaround right now.
@TutorialDoctor
Feature Name
A lock object ability
So when touching and doing long presses on objects they don't move around accidentally
Workaround:
If you pinich zoom out to increase the size it can help with smaller objects. Not perfect, but it does help
Feature Name
Ability to create user named Presets, alongside the built in presets.
Just a productivity thing. If you are dealing with a particular size all the time you could make your own named preset for it, like 'iPadPro Portrait'. This does not sound like a big deal, as you can just enter your size into the provided width and height fields. Where it comes in handy is when you set up your view using flex, then you swap between the presets to make sure it's all working as the builder honors flex attrs when changing presets, also if you change the size manually
Workaround
Enter your size manually
@TutorialDoctor , for your Alignment Options, a distribution option would be great. Maybe you meant that with your grid spacing comment.
Seen this functionality in many draw programs. The implementation that I have seen is you select a number of objects and then say distribute. Normally this can be done vertically or horizontally. If it's going horizontally, would normally choose the left most object and the right most object as the start and finish points. Then distributes the objects evenly between the two at the same time aligning the heights. For the ui designer it may be better to distribute to the parent view.
Feature Name
Group/Ungroup function. The ability to group items in the same view together
Purpose - just makes it easier to keep a set of objects aligned and easier placement.
Workaround:
Place your items in a Custom View item. Gives you the grouping, but you have one more level of indirection to go through to access your objects via code.