Arrow keys and ruler guides not adjusted when using Rotate View

[jcederholm]

Love the feature that you finally can rotate the view in Illustrator. However – after rotating the view, for example 90 degrees, the arrow keys are not adjusted to fit this particular view. When I hit the up arrow key, things move to the right instead and so on. Same with ruler guides, try to make a horizontal guide and it makes a vertical one. The arrow keys thing is the worst though. Am I the only one thinking this is hopeless? When rotating the view in Indesign this is not a problem.

[Ton Frederiks]

You may want to mention it here:

https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/191...

[jcederholm]

Thanks, will definitely do that. I just wanted to know if it's supposed to be this way or if it's fixable in options/settings. But I guess that's not the case then?

[Doug A Roberts]

I'd imagine it is designed that way, as that is how the same tool works in Photoshop.

[jcederholm]

But not in Indesign. 

[Doug A Roberts]

Indesign doesn't have a rotate view tool.

[jcederholm]

Not sure what you mean. You can rotate the view both in Illustrator and Indesign under View. 

Indesign:

View > Rotate Spread

Illustrator:

View > Rotate View

[Doug A Roberts]

I mean Indesign doesn't have a tool that you can select to rotate the view to an arbitrary angle like the tools in Illustrator and Photoshop.

[jcederholm]

So what, it's still the same feature. And the way it is currently working in Illustrator (and Photoshop apparently) is just totally backwards. If I hit the left arrow key and the selection moves up instead, someone is doing something wrong.

[Doug A Roberts]

I'd imagine it's supposed to be analogous to physically rotating your monitor.

[Ton Frederiks]

---

@Doug A Roberts wrote:

I'd imagine it's supposed to be analogous to physically rotating your monitor.

---

That's how I always used to do it 🙂

[Ton Frederiks]

I can imagine that if you want to move an object to the left or right using the right or left arrow keys that you want the same to happen when the page is rotated 90 degrees instead of the current up and down.

Currently in Illustrator you need to set the constrain angle to -90 in the Preferences.

It would be nice to have an option to auto adjust the constrain angle when the page is rotated.

[jcederholm]

If I hit the left arrow key in a user interface, the selection should move to the left, regardless of what view you're currently in and what the original orentiation is. Anything else is just bad UX design. Period.

[Ton Frederiks]

I agree.

[eleni5F8D]

I have to agree, and wanted to add that the same should apply to every tool that is tied to document coordinates. For example, in 180 degree view trying to horizontally align two objects to the left is working as horizontal align right. Trying to zoom in with the scroll wheel does not center to the mouse pointer but to the opposite corner of the current view. I don't even want to think about working in 90 degrees or arbitrary rotations.

Also, while in rotate view the scroll bars behave in a derranged way that I can't decode honestly. Using them instantly forces the view to the ends of the workspace. The navigator proxy preview area, that I used to click on to quickly select a zoomed view sends me in random locations instead.

I really hope the new feature can be fixed so we can work efficiently while in rotated views, it would help in many cases, but for now it's easier to just work in the default view with upside down texts and elements.

[Kurt Gold]

I'd rather not completely agree with your postulations, jcederholm.

You may be somehow right if we are only talking about full 90°-rotations, but absolutely not if there are other arbitrary rotations which might be useful as well. In those cases strictly orienting the arrow keys toward the actual rotation of the coordinate system may have way more benefits than a short-sighted approach of absolute horizontal and vertical thinking.