Marco Arnulfo
7304f4c672
First in the menu, as in After Effects, and for the right-clicked comp rather than the one in the viewer: the dialog keeps the comp it edits and OK passes it to comp.settings. comp.settings with only {"comp": id} opens the dialog on that comp.
5.8 KiB
UI parity
Last reviewed: 2026-10-10 · Last updated: 2026-10-10 · Change: major (first UI parity checklist against After Effects 2026 26.5) · Target: Adobe After Effects 2026
How closely EffectCraft's interaction matches After Effects: tools, handles, snapping, nudging,
modifier keys, shortcuts, drag behaviour, numeric entry, panels, context menus and feel. Evidence
is the code at origin/main 1446e27, the 42 scripted UI test files in crates/ui-egui/tests
(real pointer and keyboard events, run headless), fidelity/workflow-checks.md
and the issue tracker. After Effects was not driven for this pass, so "same as After Effects" means
"matches its documentation and users have not reported a difference".
Overall ≈ 65% (estimated): the shape of the interface is After Effects' (menus, panels, workspaces, shortcuts), and the scripted tests cover many interactions, but users keep finding feel and platform differences, and the 26.x interface changes are not in yet.
| Area | Status | % | Evidence and gaps |
|---|---|---|---|
| Menu bar | After Effects' menus, order, submenus and labels; native on macOS; keyboard-operable in-window bar | 95% | 587 entries in crates/engine/src/menus.rs; Adobe-service entries omitted by design; ui_menus tests (#279) |
| Panels and workspaces | Every After Effects panel; all standard workspaces; drag-to-dock, tabs, floating panels, maximise | 75% | ui_tabs, ui_panels; dropping a panel on a stacked panel doesn't make a tab (#302); stacked-panel headers (#301); saved workspaces don't persist (#320); no panels on a second monitor (#486) |
| Timeline | Switches, modes, parent & link, twirl-downs, reveal shortcuts (U, UU, P, S, R, T, A, E, M, F, Alt+Shift…), pick whips, graph editor, work area, markers | 75% | ui_keyframes, ui_timeline_*; Graph Editor jitter and hidden buttons (#456, #457); rotation can't go negative by dragging (#569); bulk keyframing (#355); expand precomps in place (#601); Proportional Scrubbing (26.2: Ctrl+Alt / Cmd+Opt scrub of hot text spreads the change over the selected layers by selection order, #770) matched for layers selected as a whole, not yet for individually selected properties |
| Composition viewer | Selection, handles with direction-aware cursors, rulers, guides, grids, snapping, channels, exposure, region of interest, snapshots, 3D views, Spacebar hand | 70% | ui_viewer, ui_viewers; Cmd/Ctrl +/− doesn't zoom (#570); inaccurate snapping (#352); anchor point grab on Linux (#492); no 3D transform gizmos (#392, #347); percentage guides (26.5); Copy Frame to Clipboard (26.3) is in the Composition menu and the viewer's context menu |
| Tools panel | All After Effects tools; long-press flyouts; Tool Creates Shape / Mask; Fill / Stroke options | 80% | #213, #227 fixed; pen and vertex tools on motion paths (#553) |
| Nudging and modifiers | Arrow nudge (1 px, Shift 10 px), Alt/Option duplicates and slips, Shift constrains | 75% | #290 nudging fixed; Linux multi-layer edits (#491) |
| Numeric entry | Scrubbable values, typed entry with Tab / Shift+Tab, angle revolutions, Escape cancels, non-finite rejected | 85% | ui_angles, ui_inline_edit (#93, #141, #361); rename arrows on Linux (#488) |
| Effect Controls | After Effects' twirl-downs, angle dial, point crosshair, eyedropper, curves/levels editors, effect menu on right-click | 70% | ui_effect_controls, ui_fx_editors; 26.5 rebuilt this panel with icon controls and effect colour labels, not matched |
| Context menus | Layer, property, Project, Timeline empty area, work area, labels with colours | 80% | ui_blank_context_menus, ui_project_rows; #227, #290, #407 fixed; a comp's Project row menu has Composition Settings… (#1058) |
| Keyboard shortcuts | After Effects' defaults; Keyboard Shortcuts editor that rebinds and saves sets | 75% | Shortcut editor in Settings; adding shortcuts fails on Linux (#467); requests for more (#428, #336); no shortcuts for scripts |
| Drag and drop | Project → Timeline / viewer / New Comp / Render Queue; effects onto layers; files from the OS | 65% | ui_drag_drop; OS drops fail on Wayland (winit) and some Linux setups (#268); multi-file drops (#552, #351); crash dragging over the import dialog (#511) |
| Text editing on canvas | Point and paragraph text, per-character styles, Character / Paragraph panels, OpenType and variable axes | 70% | ui_text_edit, ui_font_search; paragraph alignment inverted (#316); font search by typing (#583); toolbar font options (#550); the font menus' variable-font filter (26.3) landed (#741) |
| Preview feel | Spacebar / Numpad 0 previews, RAM preview, cache bars, adaptive resolution | 55% | ui_ram_preview, ui_live_preview; stutter (#595, #304), scrubbing lag (#329), Shift+Space default (#551) |
| Home screen, Learn, templates | Home with recent projects, template gallery, interactive Learn tutorials | 70% | Layout nitpicks (#581); Home literals untranslated (#574) |
| Quick Apply (26.2) | Search to apply effects, presets or commands | partial | A command palette exists; not After Effects' Quick Apply |
| Accessibility | AccessKit enabled; focus labels tested; Project panel keyboard navigation and accessible names (#776) | 20% | No screen-reader pass or keyboard-navigation audit of the other panels; no contrast check |
| UI scale | Settings ▸ Appearance ▸ UI Scale 75–200% | beyond | After Effects follows the system's scaling (#284) |
Estimate
≈ 60–120 h: the open interaction issues above (25–45 h, about 0.2–0.5 h each with a scripted test), 3D gizmos 8–15 h, multi-monitor panels 10–20 h, the 26.x interface changes 10–20 h, an accessibility pass 15–30 h. Checking feel against After Effects needs the owner's Mac with After Effects running; most of the rest parallelises.
Revision history
| Date | Change | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-10 | major | First UI parity checklist |