Hans

Hokusai, Thank you for your suggestions, I had noticed this preference setting but as you said it does not solve the problem of white objects on white background and neither does it solve the main problem with layers in isolation mode. But if as suggested the Affinity team slightly extends this preference setting by (1) a user-selectable background colour and by (2) giving us the choice to use this colour in layer isolation mode then everything will be fine. I agree, placing a filled rectangle at the back is of course a workable approach if layer isolation mode is not required and your suggestion of the outline mode is at the moment the most sensible workaround for this problem in isolation mode. But in the end I would prefer a solid colour, looking for some time at outlined text in front of that chequered pattern is not easy on my eyes.

A setting for a non-printing document background colour that, if set, also overrides the chequered background in this situation would be a possible solution. Often, I work on imported PDF and EPS documents, mostly greyscale and a non-printing document colour would in addition allow to easily spot where these documents contain unnecessary white background.

Please add a command to show/hide invisible text characters (spaces, tabs, linefeeds).

Option click on a layer in the layer panel switches to 'isolation mode' showing only the selected layer content. That is a very useful feature which could be enhanced by allowing to set a different temporary background colour. The chequered background makes it very hard to see/edit white objects.