VIPStephan

Wow, that was my first post/thread here. 2015 – has it been that long already? Yet, I still despise the App Store and try to avoid it wherever possible. Call me old fashioned. But I don’t like that Apple has control over my software when it’s not even the creator but just the distributor.

I don’t. And I don’t see any use other than for quick prototyping. But that would require so much more functionality than “just” CSS export. What about interactivity? Fireworks (Macromedia/Adobe) was such a tool, but even it didn’t produce production-ready code.

This would be pretty hard to do correctly for multiple reasons: HTML isn’t made to create a certain layout but to structure content semantically, i. e. it’s about content and giving it a meaning. For this you’d have to first define a meaning for any text object (the simple ones are heading, paragraph, list; more complex are tables with headers and data cells, and even more obscure things like forms with fields of various types (text/number/date etc.), sectioning elements and what not). Websites aren’t static objects like printed pages. They are viewed on a multitude of devices with different aspect ratios, display dimensions and rendering capabilities and therefore need to be responsive. Also, websites are usually more or less interactive (with hyperlinks and possibly some behavior (e. g. mouseover interactions)). If it should just be the print layout viewed in a web browser you might as well just export and display an image. Affinity Publisher would have to take a serious effort to become web designing tool with proper code export. There have been attempts at something like this with Macaw but I don’t know how good the code was that it produced. In any case, this would be a vastly different approach than creating print layouts, so I don’t know if Serif will ever go this way. Even if APub would include UI designing capabilities (which I’d very much appreciate), proper code export for production (and not just for prototyping) is a whole nother level.

This toolbar issue appears for me if I unplug my other monitor and AD has to move all windows back to one monitor. The workaround to get the toolbars back without resetting AD is to change the screen resolution (and then change it right back), so it can recalculate the proper positions.

Whatever, as long as I can choose not to use it. But yeah, I have AD already, puchased reluctantly through the AppStore, because at the time there was no choice. And I most likely won’t purchase it again. Exactly that’s why. I don’t like the idea of a centralized repository where everything about me and my history (and even my family’s, and my family connections in general, and …) is stored.

Oh how I would love to abandon the AppStore and buy Affinity independently!

You can save file size if you don’t embed an ICC profile (however, I don’t know what effect this will actually have in a browser; as far as I know nobody has complained so far) and meta data, so that could help, too. Progressive JPEGs can help when loading the images (see https://www.thewebmaster.com/dev/2016/feb/10/how-progressive-jpegs-can-speed-up-your-website/) but this might be irrelevant for Facebook, as they might be processing the image further.

Is there a reason why it has to be 2048×2048 pixels? If the file size has to be below 100KB then an image of this size is going to be of bad quality due to high compression. And I can’t think of any circumstance where these dimensions are even used to their full potential. The majority of people are using Facebook on their smartphones with their tiny displays. Even double pixel density doesn’t really matter because people won’t see a big difference (and what good does a high resolution image if it’s of bad quality due to high compression?). So, if you could do with smaller dimensions (I’d say arbitrarily 1600px max.) it would help you get better image quality because it doesn’t have to be compressed that much to stay below 100KB.

Nope, I’m just a regular customer. And yes, I was also asking for pages previously, but not in a condescending manner. That’s why I said, the concept of “pages” would have to be thought of as more fluid than in the past. It might even start by not calling it “page” but “view” or “flow” or “frame” or whatever. If you’re creating something for print this would resemble a page with static measures but if you’re creating a web site that would be of variable length, for example. But when creating a wireframe or a concept with Affinity we’re not at that stage yet. We need to create a visual example using graphics first, that’s the whole point.

Actually, in a broader sense, I think they aren’t that different. A printed page is a single viewable item. A web page or UI view are also single viewable items (with some dynamic elements, of course). If something significant changes in a web page or UI state then a new page could be created. The concept of “pages” needs to be thought of as more fluid than in the past. I think you are assuming way too much. You are assuming that “pages” (in AD or APub?) are viewed side by side. You are assuming that Serif is just thinking about print first. How about you stop ranting about things you don’t even know yet and either contribute in a constructive manner or wait silently until you see an actual result. I’m sure they will come up with something smart, as they have done many times in the past. But it might be different than we were used to for years (just like artboards in AD are different than in AI, yet useful) and you might have to change your workflow a bit (which doesn’t have to be a bad thing).

No pages in Fireworks are not layers. In terms of organization they are probably similar to artboards in Illustrator, i. e. they have their own panel where you can sort the pages; they can be re-ordered but can’t be nested and aren’t organized as tree with layers inside (the layers panel is extra). Only one page’s content is shown at a time, so that’s different to artboards which are all shown on the canvas. And you can have a master page whose contents are shown on all other pages. However, I think if one were strict and regarded web/UI design as sort of “publishing” (in terms of confronting people with information) rather than illustration (as an art), all the UI functionality currently in AD would have to go into Affinity Publisher, where we’ll definitely have pages and stuff. So, APub would be the all-in-one DTP/UI design application while AD would be more geared towards actual illustration. That’s just my opinion; we’ll see where Serif goes. But we should probably get rid of the old way of thinking of “pages” as was implemented in FW and embrace more modern approaches.

That only shows that you don’t see the big picture. AP, AD, and APub are going to be a trinity where each program complements one another, and (it has been mentioned before) features of one program are also going to be implemented in the other two. I’m just speculating here but the time it takes now for new features in AP and AD is probably going to be made up twice once APub is out. Also, I seem to remember having read, that a lot of code for AD 1.7 is already in the current version, but it’s not active yet, in preparation for the release of APub. But what’s the point in bad-mouthing Serif without knowing what they’re up to?

His point was that this causes everyone to “own” and use PS, and therefore popularize it even more, making it harder to get away from it.

Unfortunately the font embedding issue I reported previously isn’t fixed yet. And also unfortunately it appears randomly and I don’t know any way to reliably reproduce it. Sometimes fonts are embedded, sometimes they aren’t. Sorry, I can’t be of any more help.

Well, that’s something one can argue about; it depends on the definition of “standard”. Colloquially this means it’s the application with the widest usage, i. e. it’s basically a standard to use this and whoever uses other programs is kind of in a niche.

To develop a UI, perhaps, but to conceptualize it and create the graphical components, AD is the tool.

No, AD is also an application for user interface design. And UIs do sometimes contain text, it is said.

I suppose since current Affinity programs support the import of Photoshop and Illustrator files (and since Serif wants people to switch), it would be stupid if APub wouldn’t also support InDesign files, so the question is kind of moot.

Perhaps you can get an old (pre-subscription) version of the competition’s programs for really cheap as long as these features aren’t in Affinity yet?

But they did get a discount, didn’t they?

Uhm… you realize that you’re currently testing a beta version, right? Nobody is selling it like this, and reporting bugs is why this thread here exists in the first place. The point is to get it working to a point where it can actually be released. You’d do a better service by just reporting issues and not adorn your posts with such unconstructive comments.

Have you tried the resizing workaround? Expanding large strokes is more precise than expanding small ones; so, scale the object larger, expand stroke, and then scale it back to its original size.

Just don’t hold your breath.

As I (and others) said: if it’s just the application icon that bothers you you can create your own (using your very own copy of AD, if you like) and use that as dock icon.

Well, that was more of a hypothetical question. Fact is, the design can be completely arbitrary because there is no “general guideline” which an icon has to follow. By the way: you can change the application icon yourself if you really don’t like it. I believe this has also been explained earlier in this thread.