Hey @Animark, I’m glad to hear that you’re enjoying animating with Krita and I want to thank you for sharing your opinions with us.
We’ve had similar discussions about this over here where I’ve shared the basic philosophy and intentions behind the original design: (1) that the most commonly used pieces of GUI should be put out front while the more rarely used ones are tidied away, (2) that every out-front widget should be continually useful, regardless of state or context, and (3) that, even though it might not always seem that way, UI space is a finite resource and clarity is important.
I understand this is all very subjective. Some people might not agree with those ideas at face value, and even people who do agree might have different opinions or interpretations when it comes to the actual implementation details.
We could add frame rate, or clip start/end, or autoframe, or onion skins options, or some of the many other animation features that are hidden behind context menus or key-bindable actions directly to the Timeline’s toolbar–but we can’t add them all, not only because of the fact we lack the space to do it (we have to consider 1080p, and to some extent 720p, still), but also because it would become, in my opinion, a messy sea of icons that hurts the ability of all users, but especially new users, to separate the signal from the noise. So it’s just a matter of deciding where to draw the line, and accepting that with every decision decision come some kind of trade-offs, right?
Anyway, I hear ya and I appreciate the feedback! Right now we are in the final stretch of development for Krita 5.0, so there won’t be any significant changes to the design that happen before the release, but Krita is never finished and we will take every piece of feedback that we can into consideration in the future as the timeline and other animation tools continue to evolve.
– Emmet