Hide icon usability

Summary:

Using the hide icon in a document with many objects (10+) adds extra cognitive load and annoys over time for three reasons.

You constantly have to hunt down invisible buttons where –
only the rough position is known, and –
that only appear milliseconds before you approach them.

• The discoverability of the show/hide icon suffers as it is literally invisible when not hoverd over.
• The position is non-standard; Krita, Gimp, Illustrator, Photoshop, ... all have the hide icon left aligned.
• The the eyes travel distance to connect object to icon is unnecessary large.

Possible improvement

Repositioning the icon could solve the issues mentioned above. Re-added visual clutter can be toned down by only using 100% opacity on hover:

BTW: Shout out to the UX work "Layers and Objects" in the latest releases! Thank you, it is currently way better than it was ever before.

Version info

Inkscape 1.2-beta (1b65182, 2022-04-05)