One thing that stops me dead in my tracks and becomes frustrating in Penpot vs other creative apps is the zoom shortcuts being non-standard. Zooming is core to many creative workflows, especially on infinite canvas style apps.
Currently the Zoom shortcut is = to zoom in and - to zoom out. Ctrl/Cmd + and Ctrl/Cmd + set the zoom scale for the Browser window, which may be common for landing pages etcetera but not creative apps.
I have actually been working on a creative app and reviewed dozens of apps recently and I can’t think of another that deviated from the standard keyboard shortcuts for zooming: Ctrl/Cmd + to zoom in and Ctrl/Cmd - to zoom out. (This includes web apps as well) Also I have been a digital creative for a decade and have tried nearly every creative app you can think of so I say this needs to be updated without much reservation.
For me (Firefox/Windows) + zooms in and - zooms out. In the apps I tried zooming (miro, figma), it seems that the default of the browser zoom is not prevented consistently and browser zoom is triggerd, so I prefer the current state over ctrl shortcuts.
I just tried Miro and Figma in Firefox and Edge and Ctrl/Cmd + to zoom in and Ctrl/Cmd - to zoom out worked as expected. But even if this wasn’t the case and there were significant inconsistency in other implementations, I don’t see how that justifies handling it the wrong way in Penpot.
Again these controls are ubiquitous in creative apps, beyond Figma and Miro it is the implementation in:
Sketch, Abode Illustrator, Inkscape, Affinity Designer, Adobe Photoshop, Affinity Photo, Gimp, Photopea, Krita, Clip Studio, Corel Suite, Adobe Fresco, Sketchbook, After Effects, Blender, Houdini fx, Cinema 4D, Spline, Vectornator, Procreate, Art Studio Pro, and so on.
Also with all that said most implementations have multiple means of zoom controls, and Penpot already supports multiple in the form of Ctrl/Cmd drag and Ctrl/Cmd mouse wheel. So there is not a reason to maintain such a non-standard implementation.
Yes the zoom is very annoying as its totally ingrained in muscle memory and the browser zooming instead makes it hard to work efficiently. Surely this must be an easy fix?
Yes, I think that there is something wrong with the standard of the zoom too, because when panning
and zooming with my wacom tablet it goes the other way around and it is very clunky.
