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Remember header expand/collapse states between sessions

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05-22-2023 01:43 PM
Status: Open
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wayfaringrob
Honored Contributor

One bizarre and annoying thing about Pro is that many panes hide their core functionality by default.

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This is not much of a problem in ArcMap, which offers a much more intuitive approach than a single scrolling column of loosely organized toggles which, by nature, will inevitably run into a space issue more quickly than a spatial approach.

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The same spatial layout and exposure of commands persists through the submenus - I don't have to resize or expand a thing.

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Meanwhile, Pro again strangely defaults to showing you nothing -- requiring an extra click to open every single header every single time you open the program.

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Even more irksome is that these reset to their default closed position upon closing and reopening the application. I never want to collapse any of these, really.

The lowest hanging fruit, here, would be to just keep these things where I had them when I last closed the program. I would give extra credit if these panes could be redesigned away from the flawed single-column approach (that necessitates most of the headings) in favor of something that is a little more efficient in its use of space and more intuitive in practice. I dare say ArcMap is more intuitive and "dense" or space-efficient as far as these types of panes go. Pro, in general, has a lot of dead space that could be used for consolidating commands, allowing more room for content.

Reminds me of automakers' recent moves to ditch touchscreens in favor of old-fashioned buttons...but I'll hold my breath on Pro going back to old-fashioned buttons. (We're in the "touchscreen" phase of Esri UIs)

I understand the desire to design Pro to work on a screen the size of a smartphone, but I think that approach is detrimental to the experience for 99% of users. Netbooks died for a reason. Update, I use a 13" laptop for GIS now and it's even worse. I guess I don't know who they're trying to design for.

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1 Comment
wayfaringrob

thinking about this still... by default, none of these are expanded.

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it's a click to do anything every time you want to do it - terribly inefficient for users looking for the right toggle and awful for discovery of new functionality - unless esri wants to make using GIS require courses (which would be understandable, considering they're in the business...) this ought to be improved. We can do better than a long, scrolling, one-dimensional list of toggles, but they should at least be expanded by default

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