Figmatt

It's a shame the management don't take the same stance. Instead they sell us the same core app 3 times, just with different toolbars and other artificial limitations.

It's a shame the management don't take the same stance. Instead they sell us the same core app 3 times, just with different toolbars and other artificial limitations.

To followup on some of my comments yesterday, we are today enshrining our commitment to the Affinity community in 4 pledges made by the Affinity and Canva teams.
You can read about them here.

We do truly believe the coming together of Affinity and Canva is only going to be a good thing for our customers, staff and the development of our apps. We very much hope you will all continue to be with us on this journey.
All the best,
Ash

The positive: this longer video explains more than the version on Instagram/Threads.
The negative: But it still doesn't really explain why the future will be bright and exciting for Users. I assume it's bright and exciting for Affinity Staff because of the quantity of shiny new coins they're now looking at. So, I'm not going to lie, I'm worried. I'd be more worried if I wasn't already transitioning to Figma due to the myriad of outstanding problems and bugs that have remained unresolved for years. The body language, spoken language used or not used, and the moments where there is loss of eye contact in this video screams to highlight the bits that are true versus...not so true.
Not a great day for Affinity Users.

Fun game: pretend you don’t know what this announcement is, then mute the audio and watch this guy closely. What would you guess he’s telling you?
 
He’s lost his job? The family dog’s died? Bad news about grandma, but we’ll remember the good times? The project is going to be past deadline, in fact he’s not even started it, but you can’t have a refund because he’s spent the money already?
The body language is fascinating to watch (is that guilt, sorrow? Why are his eyes red - has he been crying? Why is he so evasive?), and it’s all the antithesis of ‘quite an exciting day’.

Yes, it is understandable from an engineering point of view, but that's not to say it's the best way of engineering it. Far from it. Other "suites" like Office and (shock) Adobe do it a different way to great success.
The ability to create, say, tables can only be done in Publisher but this is an artificial limit. I have a document with a able in that I open in Designer whenever I need to insert one in a document. After pasting it in, it's fully editable. So, yes three standalone apps with artificially limited functionality by choosing which apps get which UI elements.

The positive: this longer video explains more than the version on Instagram/Threads.
The negative: But it still doesn't really explain why the future will be bright and exciting for Users. I assume it's bright and exciting for Affinity Staff because of the quantity of shiny new coins they're now looking at. So, I'm not going to lie, I'm worried. I'd be more worried if I wasn't already transitioning to Figma due to the myriad of outstanding problems and bugs that have remained unresolved for years. The body language, spoken language used or not used, and the moments where there is loss of eye contact in this video screams to highlight the bits that are true versus...not so true.
Not a great day for Affinity Users.

The replies on twitter also use the same language phrased in the present and very vague about the future.
Affinity lost my confidence when I realised they're selling the same app with different default UI enabled (yes, Photos/Designer/Publisher are essentially the same app).

The positive: this longer video explains more than the version on Instagram/Threads.
The negative: But it still doesn't really explain why the future will be bright and exciting for Users. I assume it's bright and exciting for Affinity Staff because of the quantity of shiny new coins they're now looking at. So, I'm not going to lie, I'm worried. I'd be more worried if I wasn't already transitioning to Figma due to the myriad of outstanding problems and bugs that have remained unresolved for years. The body language, spoken language used or not used, and the moments where there is loss of eye contact in this video screams to highlight the bits that are true versus...not so true.
Not a great day for Affinity Users.

The positive: this longer video explains more than the version on Instagram/Threads.
The negative: But it still doesn't really explain why the future will be bright and exciting for Users. I assume it's bright and exciting for Affinity Staff because of the quantity of shiny new coins they're now looking at. So, I'm not going to lie, I'm worried. I'd be more worried if I wasn't already transitioning to Figma due to the myriad of outstanding problems and bugs that have remained unresolved for years. The body language, spoken language used or not used, and the moments where there is loss of eye contact in this video screams to highlight the bits that are true versus...not so true.
Not a great day for Affinity Users.

The positive: this longer video explains more than the version on Instagram/Threads.
The negative: But it still doesn't really explain why the future will be bright and exciting for Users. I assume it's bright and exciting for Affinity Staff because of the quantity of shiny new coins they're now looking at. So, I'm not going to lie, I'm worried. I'd be more worried if I wasn't already transitioning to Figma due to the myriad of outstanding problems and bugs that have remained unresolved for years. The body language, spoken language used or not used, and the moments where there is loss of eye contact in this video screams to highlight the bits that are true versus...not so true.
Not a great day for Affinity Users.

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