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I've placed the request. As has been mentioned, the huge sea of pasteboard isn't friendly to the vast majority of DTP users, most of whom choose to use Adobe products. I know if I were trying to make money in this segment selling a competitor to the Adobe CC suite, I'd be courting them instead of repelling them. Certainly, giving users the option of a friendly work space (to them, whoever they are) would be no skin off the nose of existing Affinity users - which is why I don't understand you and the tiny handful of people bristling at the suggestion.

Hopefully, they will get back to you and, at some point, realize if they want to attract Adobe users, it might be a good idea to give them a somewhat familiar interface - particularly with respect to the gigantic sea the document is forced to float in.

Can we please implement a mechanism to adjust the huge amount of space acting as a pasteboard surrounding a document in Publisher? Right now, it's WAY too large for users used to InDesign or Quark to become accustomed to. An elegant solution would be to allow the user to set the size of that area. That way, your base of fans who began with AP will be happy, and the vast user base of Adobe and Quark products won't be offset when trialing your products. I have purchased V1 and just upgraded to V2, hoping this issue would have been resolved. I'd think that an easy fix would be allowing the user to determine the size of the pasteboard.

I have just addressed it with them directly - thank you for the link. Scrolling ONLY came up because someone asked for an example of how that HUGE space at the top might be cumbersome. I provided one, and they everyone got hung up on the mouse rather than the issue with that space. ALL I am asking for is to make it adjustable, so the current user base is happy, and the gigantic potential user base isn't put off during a trial run, so that Affinity might prosper.

No, I want any user to have the option to control their work environment by determining the size of their work area. Bye.

It's funny. The responses from fanboys here remind me of the time I was in a what was supposed to be a fine restaurant struggling with the toughest steak I'd ever been served. So tough, it was even hard to cut with a steak knife. I told the waiter about it and demonstrated that it was tough to cut, and he admonished me for cutting it improperly. He took my knife and fork and began to cut. I said, "when you are done cutting that piece, would you like to chew it for me, as well?" It wasn't about the cut, it was about the steak.

As I said, I am in InDesign user - you know, the program that Affinity Publisher allows you to import directly from IDML files? Why would you resist giving the user the option of setting the pasteboard size? How would that possibly affect you?

Yes, I have a problem with the GIANT space above the first page in Publisher. I want to be able to switch from InDesign to this - something I have to think the folks at Affinity would want EVERY ID user to do. And I think they do, considering their support for directly importing IDML files. That’s all. Nothing to do with mice, etc. And I don’t get that others don’t seem to want to give the user the option of working that way.

I am happy with EVERYTHING about my Mac and have been for the 35 years I’ve been a designer. There are a great many of us who feel that Windows appropriation of the Mac OS is awful, starting with the erratic cursor. The problem ISN’T THE MOUSE. It’s the space around the document that SHOULD be adjustable. How hard is that to understand?

Will a different mouse make that GIANT void above the document go away?

It has nothing to do with the hardware or mouse. It has everything to do with that GIANT unused area above the document. The mouse is fine, and a speedy scroll to the top of the document is great - it’s just scrolling into that HUGE void that’s the problem. Every other vendor gets it right. Affinity should too.

It’s not the mouse. Don’t blame the hardware for your lack of understanding of how software SHOULD work. 🙄

Put simply, I’d like it to perform as the two leading DTP programs perform. In particular, as InDesign performs. WHY I’d like it scroll in any direction has nothing to do with anything. Any more than me asking you WHY you don’t. Reducing my scrolling speed to a crawl for everything else I do with my Mac seems a bit extreme. And the obtuse workarounds are fine, but the issue shouldn’t HAVE to be worked around. Just please provide the option to set the size of the pasteboard space. While I am at it - WHY have such a HUGE pasteboard area above the first page in a multipage document, and then have the pages so close together vertically for the rest of the pages? If I’d need it above/below page 1, would I not need it for every other page?

If that could be defined by the user, voila! All users happy!

Perhaps, but I am talking more about Publisher.

You place them, you size them, and that’s it. They may sit on top of each other for a second or two. I never found a need to place them all in the pasteboard, when I can see them all in the finder. But I can see if you have all this real estate, one might want to find something to do with it.

The Mac and Magic Mouse are just fine with every other app out there. That isn’t the issue. And why I need to scroll around a document when laying out a catalog should really comes down to my working style after 40 years of doing it. I don’t see a lot of point in continuing this here. I will try and reach out to Affinity directly. Thanks. 🙄

I appreciate that. And I don't think it'd be a stretch for them to address the issue. Perhaps they'd attract the massive number of people that use those other programs? It was offputting for me when I got version one, which is why I seldom used it and had to hang onto Adobe. I'd REALLY like to retire Adobe, as I am now retired. Perhaps it never will, but I don't see why it couldn't. Accommodate a wider user base with the shared code, adapted to appeal to pro users of the Adobe suite.

I am on a Mac and using their Magic Mouse, with the touch scrolling on top. If I am editing text at the bottom of the page, a slight scroll can send the live area of the document flying way past the top of the doc. That's an off-the-top-of-my-head example. For you, imagine if you wanted to scroll to the top of the window we are chatting in right now and instead of getting to masthead, it simply kept going into a field of emptiness. Instead, you hit to top of the window with no extra space that does nothing, as happens in Publisher.

So, it comes down to the document's relationship with its background. In InDesign and Photoshop, the background never lets the document scroll mostly out of the active window - especially not top-to-bottom. All I'd like is a way to reduce that area so that there's maybe an inch above and below the document in the pasteboard instead of the six that are there in Publisher. I see what you are saying about the dependence of Zoom, as that large area of the pasteboard, above for example, is dynamic reading as as 3" at 200% and 24" at 25%. Where as InDesign, the relationship of the pasteboard and the document is constant, rather than dynamic. And I apologize for being snarky, but it's frustrating to us folks who've made our living for the last 20 years using the big two. It'd be GREAT to have an opportunity for another option that isn't hinged on a subscription, but when the interface is so odd, it's tough to get a grip on. I am retired now and have kept Adobe for a year after retirement "just in case" older jobs from clients needed to be reopened. Now, I'd like to retire Adobe, and I'd LOVE to be able to have the option of having the Affinity apps work somewhat similarly at the basic levels.

Here is how it works in InDesign: Screen Recording 2023-09-16 at 5.19.03 PM.mov

Here's a screen recording of moving around in Publisher... It's that scrolling WAY past the document in any direction at any zoom level that is the issue. How can we make that area smaller so we don't have to deal with scrolling so far? Screen Recording 2023-09-16 at 5.12.15 PM.mov

I guess we simply aren't explaining it well enough. It has nothing to do with Zoom.

The collection of screenshots were included to show the HUGE pasteboard area. THAT is what we are talking about. Not getting the document to match the pasteboard. Just the document floating in this huge sea of pasteboard. It doesn't do this in Photoshop or InDesign. Perhaps some of you have been using it so long you are just used to this. But coming from the industry standard apps, it's awkward, time consuming, and frustrating. You'd think Affinity would want to attract the audience Adobe has.

THIS. The pasteboard IS dramatically oversized. If the best answer is "that's the way it always was", well, we advocate for change that makes it usable for professionals who value the time they have to spend re-scrolling to get to where we need to work. Again thanks for bringing this up.