matt

I'm affected by this so much I've just started looking into other apps. 
 
AD is increasingly death by a thousand cuts. "Small" but important problems have been ignored for years. It's just not cut out for serious interface work.
 
Figma and Sketch and Penpot get this right. Fireworks, Freehand and all the apps of the past got it right. Where did it all go wrong?

Amazing that every time I choose this option I get stopped in my tracks, paralysed by the choice of "separable" or "non-separable"
🤪

Locking away this feature in Designer is unbelievable.

I'm Matt Sephton an indie game developer and former Technology Evangelist at Apple.
I am trying to use Affinity Designer for pixel work but have top say I am close to giving up. I've been here since the beginning of Affinity.
Before that I used Xara Studio (where some of the Affinity developers once worked, IIRC) and before that FreeHand, Fireworks, Canvas, artWORKS, UltraPaint, SuperPaint, Deluxe Paint, PageStream, etc. The fact that all of those old apps are better at pixel work than Affinity is a crying shame. Figma and Penpot are where I will probably end up.

Please add GIMP .gpl file palette compatibility.
Most art programs are able to export this file type, so it's almost a universal file type for color palettes. 
I have to manually recreate color palettes based on color palettes I created with Aesprite. 

I've moved to Figma 100% - I only use this for publishing, photo masking and compositing, things that Figma can't do very well as its vector based. Also to be fair Affinity SVG is much better than Figma too so I use it to clean Figma SVG exports. Figma even has a warning that exports are pixel misaligned. Another good idea.

Please support Import/Export of common palette formats
 
Adobe .aco, .act (.ase already supported)
Microsoft .pal
JASC .pal
GIMP .gpl
Paint.net .txt
RAW .pal
HTML/CSS/HEX .css .txt .html
 
  etc.

Super duper!
 
Many thanks for the further investigation — top work.

As in… which app?
In APh you have the pixel view all the time. In APu and ADe not, which is literally "by design" as these are primarily vector based apps. So in the latter two, I, for one, consider this a feature that a pixel preview is being reset upon reopening a document. 

Good example, John.
it would likely be quicker to list all the places that have correct tabbing behaviour as it seems to be broken in every place I try it.

Good example, John.
it would likely be quicker to list all the places that have correct tabbing behaviour as it seems to be broken in every place I try it.

I only use Mac (MacOS 13.4) and a good example of the problem is when using Layer Effect: Outer Shadow with one layer and the Move Tool selected.
I should be able to enter a value in the Opacity field, then tab through the Radius, Offset, and Intensity fields, in order, entering values as I go. If I do enter a value in Opacity, when I hit tab, focus appears to leave the dialogue box completely and numerical keystrokes affect the opacity of the selected layer. If I continue hitting the tab key, focus returns to the Layer Effects dialog and 'sticks' at the Fill Opacity field.
I was hoping that my upgrade to version 2 apps would fix the user interface problems but unfortunately the apps still do not follow Apple interface guidelines.I really hope that the interface stupidities are fixed in the next update from version 2.1.0. Not being able to quickly tab through fields can really slow work down. 

Thanks, I only use Mac so it's interesting to know there's a difference with this.

Hi Matt, 
Thanks for reporting this, seems to be only affecting OSX though there seems to be a couple of inconsistencies between the behaviour on both OSX and Windows. I've logged it as a bug.
Lee

Someone in the software team needs to go through all the app's dialog's and get the tab order working as it should – tab key to move focus to the next field, shift+tab key to move focus to the previous field.
Apple guidelines on user interface have been ignored for years – I found complaints on here about tabbing through fields and controls in modal dialogs and other windows dating back to 2018.

Hi @matt,
The reason you are seeing the 'bulges' in pixel mode is simply because your table isn't 'pixel aligned', i.e., the cell width and height are 47.6 px x 31.8 px respectively and the line weight is 1.3 px.
If you change the cell width and height to something like 47 px x 32 px and the line weight to 1 px, maintaining an X, Y pixel aligned position for the table then the 'bulges' are no longer visible in pixel view mode...
I've attached a tweaked version here...
Grid madness pixel aligned.afdesign
 

Hi @matt,
It very much depends on the settings you use for your dashed lines...

Dashed Lines.mp4

Wish granted.. beginning of last year January 2020.  
Actually Affinity Designer does have free form gradient.  It was added at the beginning of 2020 to Affinity Designer with the new Appearances tab which allows you to add multiple fills and strokes to a layer.  If you add a gradient either circle or ellipse to the fill and then set the right sides opacity to 0% so its completely transparent and the left side to the desired colour and set the blend mode to average (or you can play around with it) it will become a free form gradient point and function just like free form gradient in Adobe Illustrator.  Duplicate the fills and adjust the color on the left and you will have multiple gradient points that will interact with one another.  Use the handles on the gradient to stretch and shrink the area of coverage of the gradient and how much it overlaps with the gradient fill point next to it.

I don't deal with vectors much, so it's entirely likely the following method may not be what you're looking for.  However these were the steps I used.
1) Created the main shape with the pen tool
2) Duplicated it
3) Removed the top part of the duplicated shape by breaking the curve and deleting the top nodes, leaving just the line along the bottom
4) Used this as the base for outline effect in the layer effects panel (see pic for settings)
5) Clipped it to the original main shape

 

 
 

Super duper!
 
Many thanks for the further investigation — top work.

I consider this a bug because it is such non-standard, user-hostile behaviour.
Original report from 2014: 
 

Detach the panel so it's floating and keep it that way, when it's toggled on it should have the focus then! - For everything else, that's why I already wrote "... to some lesser degree"!

Stroke width:

[ to multiply by 0.9
] to divide by 0.9 (in other words, multiply by 1.111...)
Shift+[ to subtract 1 pixel regardless of stroke unit of measurement
Shift+] to add 1 pixel regardless of stroke unit of measurement

See the "Operations shortcuts" overview under ...
ADe Keyboard Shortcuts ADe Customising keyboard shortcuts ... etc.

That'll do! Thanks.
Less than ideal, but it'll do.