[notinty]

>For an opacity slider to provide 101 steps, it needs to be at least 101 pixels wide.

There's no reason this needs to be the case: slider elements could trap the cursor and give realtime feedback of input.

The iPad Pro trackpad does this with all UI elements and I believe it's an important step for UX.

[marcedwards]

Yep, that’s an option as well, and some tools do it. Figma’s only layer opacity slider is via holding a modifier and dragging the text input field.

I personally like having opacity sliders as well. They provide a nice visual representation of the state that’s easier to parse than reading a number, and you can also do things like set 100% with a single click. Layer opacity is important enough that it should have a text field, a draggable value with a modifier, and a slider.

The other main point of the article is that these tools don’t seem to even realise their precision sucks.

[notinty]

Agreed; immediate analog feedback of a slider is important.

Thanks for the great article, the images you created are especially fantastic.

Edit: my friend just checked and Clip Studio Paint also has 0-100 with no decimal support. Crazy that it's ubiquitous.

[marcedwards]

Sure is!

Interestingly, Acorn can show the full 0-255 range.