The thing is, I do not see any benefit in having to consciously activate the view when I select a layer in the layer panel; it breaks the workflow. Select a layer in the layer panel (either by mouse, or by keyboard), and then move it, hide it, transform it, etc. Direct, simple, unconscious.
Instead of selecting a layer, then to remember to activate the main view, and perform the action. And many designers dislike the use of shortcut keys as well - how would one then switch the focus back to the main view? Forcing the user to carefully click in particular areas again breaks the workflow. Select a layer, then do not forget to activate the main edit window. It is just TOO awkward.
In the last version I kept having to zoom out and pan the view to find a stretch of canvas not populated with any content, because I could not click on the content without selecting other things. Even with a short-cut key to switch, one still has to remember that additional action. Same for activating the layer panel.
That's why this old incorrect behaviour is wrong. The arrow keys are now useless for selecting "elements to work with".
And who is saying the cursor keys are generally used to select things? Even in a word processor the arrow keys are used to MOVE through the text, not select text - an additional modifier key (shift) is required to do this.
And according to GUI standards: agreed, list views can be NAVIGATED by pressing the cursor keys - but
navigating is different from actually
selecting those list items. Usually list views require an additional confirmation to select that item, or confirm the action.
Look at sub menus: a list which can be navigated with the cursor keys, after which <enter> is used to select/confirm a menu entry. Or a list of radio buttons, or check boxes. Or a drop-down list in a form: again, the cursor keys are used to navigate, not select.
The common use of cursor keys is to either
navigate or
move. It is generally not a "select" action at all. Selecting layers in the layer panel with the cursor keys makes no logical GUI sense from that point of view. CorelDraw and GIMP have it upside down - when looking at it from the perspective of content editing and common GUI standards.
That is why it is preferable to assign other keys to the action of browsing and selecting layers with the keyboard - which is what Adobe's Photoshop and Illustrator decided on.
All layer selection problems can be easily mitigated by assigning other keys to select elements / browse through the layer list. Page up/down, the arrow keys on the numpad, the [] or ,. keys: it does not matter. Like I said, I assigned <alt><up> and <alt><down> to run through the layers: extremely efficient, and I do not require the use of the mouse to move things and select layers.
Which means I am freed from pressing an additional two keys to switch between the layer panel and the main view. Those actions become irrelevant! Also no arbitrary clicks are then required either to select either one. It speeds up the workflow. Less conscious clicks/keys is a better proposition. Why introduce additional actions when it can be solved otherwise?
Caveat of the current status: the layer navigation keys fail to work well with groups and do NOT work yet with filtered layer lists and the layer search function.
In short, I think we should have these options:
1) Change the layer navigation previous and next behaviour in Photoline to browse through the layer stack in order to allow for jumping in and out of groups, which is currently not possible. Perhaps add a key to open a group in the layer panel.
2) By default the cursor keys ought to move elements in the main view according to GUI standards (which is the case now). (Perhaps allow these keys to be changed in the custom keyboard settings, in order for users who prefer to navigate the layer panel with the cursor keys, and move content with different keys.)
3) When the search option is active, we should be able to use the layer navigation keys to browse through the layer stack. Currently this is not possible, and the layer navigation selects layers which are present in the hidden "non-search" state.