Merchako

This is a design failure, and no amount of training will be sufficient to fix it. The pitfalls of modes are well-understood, and Frame Text vs Artistic Text is a second-order mode. @R C-R is offering advice that beginners will never see, and @walt.farrell is blaming users for the product's shortcomings. Sure, Adobe Creative Suite has similar second-order modes with their cursor tools, but that doesn't mean it's a good decision. Affinity has an opportunity to be free from the we've-always-done-it-this-way impasse of Adobe. I hope they'll take it.

I'm a Figma user, and Figma zooms with ⌘+scrollwheel. Whenever I switch from Figma to Affinity, I wind up rotating the page, and it's a pain to reset. I'd like to be able to match Figma's interaction.

Just for the devs: This is a major stumbling block to new users. It's easy to make an Art Text box instead of a Text Frame because they both use the same keyboard shortcut, `t` (same as InDesign's text box). The signifiers that differentiate the Artistic Text and Frame Text tools aren't strong enough. Same goes for the layer icons. Compare the Artistic Text 'A' to Microsoft Word's WordArt icon. Now that's differentiated! The only thing that differentiates the boxes on the page is a single dot. The two behave the same until you try to resize them. If you use the wrong one, the only way to fix it is to remake it. There's no conversion tool. I just made masters, precise layouts (Bringhurst's golden section grid on ISO), running headings, page numbers, sections, table of contents, and columns for a 46-page prospectus only to find out (once I started putting in real content) that I used the wrong kind of text box. This is not the kind of initial experience you want users to have. It'd be good for everyone if there were an easy way to convert Art Text boxes to Frame Text boxes.

Just for the devs: This is a major stumbling block to new users. It's easy to make an Art Text box instead of a Text Frame because they both use the same keyboard shortcut, `t` (same as InDesign's text box). The signifiers that differentiate the Artistic Text and Frame Text tools aren't strong enough. Same goes for the layer icons. Compare the Artistic Text 'A' to Microsoft Word's WordArt icon. Now that's differentiated! The only thing that differentiates the boxes on the page is a single dot. The two behave the same until you try to resize them. If you use the wrong one, the only way to fix it is to remake it. There's no conversion tool. I just laid out masters, precise layout (Bringhurst's golden section on ISO), running headings, page numbers, sections, table of contents, and columns for a 46-page prospectus only to find out once I started putting in real content that I used the wrong kind of text box. This is not the kind of initial experience you want users to have. It'd be good for everyone if there were an easy way to convert Art Text boxes to Frame Text boxes.