effectcraft/docs/ui-parity.md

UI parity

Last reviewed: 2026-10-12 · Last updated: 2026-10-12 · Change: minor (closed issue references re-audited against upstream/main 470ea7a3) · Target: Adobe After Effects 2026

How closely EffectCraft's interaction matches After Effects: tools, handles, snapping, nudging, modifier keys, shortcuts, drag behaviour, numeric entry, panels, context menus and feel. Evidence is the code at origin/main 1446e27, the 42 scripted UI test files in crates/ui-egui/tests (real pointer and keyboard events, run headless), fidelity/workflow-checks.md and the issue tracker. After Effects was not driven for this pass, so "same as After Effects" means "matches its documentation and users have not reported a difference".

Overall ≈ 65% (estimated): the shape of the interface is After Effects' (menus, panels, workspaces, shortcuts), and the scripted tests cover many interactions, but users keep finding feel and platform differences, and the 26.x interface changes are not in yet.

Area	Status	%	Evidence and gaps
Menu bar	After Effects' menus, order, submenus and labels; native on macOS; keyboard-operable in-window bar	95%	587 entries in crates/engine/src/menus.rs; Adobe-service entries omitted by design; ui_menus tests (#279)
Panels and workspaces	Every After Effects panel; all standard workspaces; drag-to-dock, tabs, floating panels, maximise	75%	ui_tabs, ui_panels; panels move into their own native windows on any screen (#486 open: no dragging tabs between those windows); #302, #301 and #320 (docking, stacked-panel headers, workspace persistence) are closed
Timeline	Switches, modes, parent & link, twirl-downs, reveal shortcuts (U, UU, P, S, R, T, A, E, M, F, Alt+Shift…), pick whips, graph editor, work area, markers	75%	ui_keyframes, ui_timeline_*; expand precomps in place (#601); #456, #457, #569 and #355 (Graph Editor jitter and buttons, negative rotation, bulk keyframing) are closed; Proportional Scrubbing (26.2: Ctrl+Alt / Cmd+Opt scrub of hot text spreads the change over the selected layers by selection order, #770) matched for layers selected as a whole, not yet for individually selected properties
Composition viewer	Selection, handles with direction-aware cursors, rulers, guides, grids, snapping, channels, exposure, region of interest, snapshots, 3D views, Spacebar hand	70%	ui_viewer, ui_viewers; Cmd/Ctrl +/− doesn't zoom (#570); anchor point grab on Linux (#492); #352 (snapping) is closed; no 3D transform gizmos (#392, #347); percentage guides (26.5) exist as View ▸ Add Percentage Guide and Convert Guides to Percentage / Pixels (a guide stores a percent of the comp, so it follows comp-size changes; behaviour inferred from the release note, not compared with After Effects); Copy Frame to Clipboard (26.3) is in the Composition menu and the viewer's context menu
Tools panel	All After Effects tools; long-press flyouts; Tool Creates Shape / Mask; Fill / Stroke options	80%	#213, #227 fixed; #553 (pen and vertex tools on motion paths) is closed
Nudging and modifiers	Arrow nudge (1 px, Shift 10 px), Alt/Option duplicates and slips, Shift constrains	75%	#290 nudging fixed; #491 (Linux multi-layer edits) is closed
Numeric entry	Scrubbable values, typed entry with Tab / Shift+Tab, angle revolutions, Escape cancels, non-finite rejected	85%	ui_angles, ui_inline_edit (#93, #141, #361); rename arrows on Linux (#488)
Effect Controls	After Effects' twirl-downs, angle dial, point crosshair, eyedropper, curves/levels editors, effect menu on right-click	70%	ui_effect_controls, ui_fx_editors; 26.5 rebuilt this panel with icon controls and effect colour labels: labels exist (a colour bar on the effect header, right-click Label menu, effect.setLabel; not in the Timeline), the rebuilt controls are not matched
Context menus	Layer, property, Project, Timeline empty area, work area, labels with colours	80%	ui_blank_context_menus, ui_project_rows; #227, #290, #407 fixed; a comp's Project row menu has Composition Settings… (#1058)
Keyboard shortcuts	After Effects' defaults; Keyboard Shortcuts editor that rebinds and saves sets	75%	Shortcut editor in Settings; #467 (adding shortcuts on Linux), #428 and #336 are closed; no shortcuts for scripts
Drag and drop	Project → Timeline / viewer / New Comp / Render Queue; effects onto layers; files from the OS	65%	ui_drag_drop; OS drops fail on Wayland (winit) and some Linux setups (#268); #552, #351 (multi-file drops) and #511 (crash dragging over the import dialog) are closed
Text editing on canvas	Point and paragraph text, per-character styles, Character / Paragraph panels, OpenType and variable axes	70%	ui_text_edit, ui_font_search; paragraph alignment inverted (#316); toolbar font options (#550); font search by typing (#583) is closed; the font menus' variable-font filter (26.3) landed (#741)
Preview feel	Spacebar / Numpad 0 previews, RAM preview, cache bars, adaptive resolution	55%	ui_ram_preview, ui_live_preview; stutter (#595, #304); scrubbing lag (#329, closed by #784)
Home screen, Learn, templates	Home with recent projects, template gallery, interactive Learn tutorials	70%	Layout nitpicks (#581); Home literals untranslated (#574)
Quick Apply (26.2)	Search to apply effects, presets or commands	partial	A command palette exists; not After Effects' Quick Apply
Accessibility	AccessKit enabled; focus labels tested; Project panel keyboard navigation and accessible names (#776)	20%	No screen-reader pass or keyboard-navigation audit of the other panels; no contrast check
UI scale	Settings ▸ Appearance ▸ UI Scale 75–200%	beyond	After Effects follows the system's scaling (#284)

Estimate

≈ 60–120 h: the open interaction issues above (25–45 h, about 0.2–0.5 h each with a scripted test), 3D gizmos 8–15 h, multi-monitor panels 10–20 h, the 26.x interface changes 10–20 h, an accessibility pass 15–30 h. Checking feel against After Effects needs the owner's Mac with After Effects running; most of the rest parallelises.

Revision history

Date	Change	Summary
2026-10-12	minor	Closed issues (#302, #320, #491, #511, #553 and others) marked as closed instead of open; panels in their own windows (#486)
2026-10-12	minor	Percentage guides and effect colour labels (26.5) added; rows updated
2026-10-10	major	First UI parity checklist