Feature Focus: Text Has Arrived in the Properties Panel!

[Catie Bass]

Hello Beta users!

We've extended the Properties Panel to support text as of After Effects 23.2 build 53 and we'd like you to try it out!

With Text Properties in the Properties Panel, you can quickly and easily edit all the properties from the Character and Paragraph Panels for your selected layer. Update your font, change your fill and stroke, set your paragraph alignment, and even add Text Animators, all without needing to switch between panels!

Known Issues:

• The hamburger menus in the new Text & Paragraph sections do not yet work as expected when multiple Text Layers are selected.
• Adding or removing keyframes using the right-click menu in the Properties Panel will only affect keyframes on the first selected layer.
• Users who have enabled operating system settings that use a comma (,) in place of a decimal (.) will see the tenths place of transform values truncated in the Properties Panel (i.e. position value in the Properties Panel would show 100 instead of 100,5 like in the Timeline). 
  
  

Please let us know what you think -- what's working particularly well for you? What isn't? We'll also be sure to update this thread as known issues are resolved.

[Shebbe]

Looking great!

Some immediate observations and questions.

- Will the properties panel fully replace the dedicated Character and Paragraph panel? To me that would make a lot of sense (provided it has the exact same, or more features) in order to both clean up the software and improve user workflow. The properties panel has the beauty that it will only show context relevant to the selected layer where the dedicated panels always show something regardless, taking up space in return.

- Any particular reason why Faux Bold and Faux Italic aren't present on the properties panel as buttons?

- Nit picky but the horizontal alignment feels a tad awkward between stroke width and line join buttons.

- Are there plans to add Essential Graphics properties from a selected layer to the Properties Panel? It would greatly improve our workflow as we wouldn't have to twirl down such layers to access their settings. Mister Horse's Animation Composer also has a similar implementation on it's extension window.

[Catie Bass]

Hi there @Shebbe !

Thanks so much for the thorough feedback! I'll just throw my responses inline. 🙂

- Will the properties panel fully replace the dedicated Character and Paragraph panel? To me that would make a lot of sense (provided it has the exact same, or more features) in order to both clean up the software and improve user workflow. The properties panel has the beauty that it will only show context relevant to the selected layer where the dedicated panels always show something regardless, taking up space in return.

We don't currently have plans to replace the Character and Paragraph panels with the Properties Panel -- that was not the intention in adding Text Properties to the panel. That being said, if the overwhelming feedback we get after releasing the Properties Panel outside of beta is along the lines of "Why do we even still have Character and Paragraph panels?", we'd certainly take that feedback into heavy consideration when making decisions regarding the future of the product!

- Any particular reason why Faux Bold and Faux Italic aren't present on the properties panel as buttons?

I'm going to pass this one to my partner in crime design, @Brianstorm , to answer for you! Sorry to pass the buck, but I think you'd appreciate his expertise/insight more than mine on this decision.

- Nit picky but the horizontal alignment feels a tad awkward between stroke width and line join buttons.

We still have some alignment/minor design updates to make -- this should be resolved in the coming weeks.

- Are there plans to add Essential Graphics properties from a selected layer to the Properties Panel? It would greatly improve our workflow as we wouldn't have to twirl down such layers to access their settings. Mister Horse's Animation Composer also has a similar implementation on it's extension window.

Stay tuned!

[Brianstorm]

Thanks for the feedback @Shebbe! To add to Catie's response:

- While we're not removing the Character/Paragraph panels from the app at this time, you can safely remove them from your workspace because all of their controls (and more) are available in the Properties panel. We're interested in getting feedback about whether or not users still need the Char/Para panels for anything--if we can safely remove them from the default workspaces, we'd love to do that to free up space.

- Regarding Faux Bold/Italic -- In user testing, we had been hearing a lot of negative reactions to the Faux style buttons in the Character panel, with many users feeling like they're a "trap" that tricks people into thinking they're switching to the font's real Bold or Italic typeface, when really they're getting an artificially thickened/slanted version. By making the Faux styles less prominent, the thinking was that it will guide users towards the best practice of selecting a real font style from the dropdown menu. For users who want them, the Faux styles are still available from the Properties panel by clicking the hamburger menu in the Text section. What do you all think, though? Do you miss having dedicated buttons for the Faux styles? If people need them, we can consider adding them.

[Shebbe]

Thanks for the reply both of you!

No I don't miss them at all. I was just analyzing :). I don't think I've ever used them in projects since most of them require client specific fonts only anyway. I'd too favor the reasoning that it's too much of a trap especially for beginners!

[scrozier]

Not opposed to this but...

• This seems redundant to the legacy text property panels we already have
  • If everything is being consolidated into the properties panel great, but a bit strange to have both now. 
• I'm almost sure more of this is coming but, I'm interested to see more done with the text animator space as that is one area that is super powerful but very "buried in the twirlies" in the current AE. The + Animator is a good start but would like to see:
  • + Selector
  • +Property
  • Sliders for properties 
  • +Access to the advanced selector settings 
  • 

P.S. I always put this in the feedback box within AE on the "Rate Features" box but please please please add stroke join, dashes, taper, wave, dropdowns to the property panel maybe behind a more box:

We've had stroke color and fill color and width in the header bar for years so having only those options in the property panel doesn't really add that much, we need the full options. 

[Brianstorm]

Thank you for the feedback @scrozier! It's really helpful to hear which other controls users would like to see added to the Properties panel. Our initial release likely won't include all of the controls you mentioned, but we'll continue adding new functionality to the panel over time so it's helpful to know what you'd like next!
Regarding the redundancy of the text panels, our hope is that you'll be able to remove the old panels from your workspace, and that the Properties panel will give you those controls when you need them.

[scrozier]

Was testing some stuff in beta today and just saw that stroke caps/joins have been added to the properties panel! Huzzah! 

[Zack Einhorn]

Hello everyone! The Properties Panel now displays line cap, line join, and path in the shape layer properties. More details here...