Bit Disappointed

Just look at this - introduced in April 2010 in Serif DrawPlus X4 - Serif never implemented this interface in Affinity.

I strongly recommend that the elements adjusted with the line width tool be enlarged, and especially that they are also affected by the tool handle size setting in preferences. I don’t know what it is with Serif and microscopic elements in the interface, but things really need to go together here.

Now, there are limits to how much desktop functionality can be implemented in iPad apps, but I would really appreciate if the very mechanical and algorithm-driven model became truly visual and usable as in the bygone DrawPlus. It just seems incredibly pointless that something so visual and experiment-driven is implemented so primitively in Designer. Implemented correctly and visually, it is an extremely useful tool for all graphic designers who, by the way, know what they are doing with colors. In the desktop version, I would like something feature complete like in DrawPlus, and reasonably, a simpler version in the tablet edition.

That sounds good!

Yes, that is indeed a fundamental principle at Boeing, for example. 🤪 One of many things I learned in my early working life, let's say when I was 20-25, was not to show work to clients too early in youthful arrogance and childlike eagerness. I knew exhaustively everything about what had been made (visible or not), what was coming, and what was not, but clients filled the void of knowledge with uncertainty or excessive expectations. Today, an assessment of timing is critical, and if there is the slightest thing that can cause unrest or worse, that clients go back to their home base and spread unrest, then things are really bad. I only show work in progress after assessment, and always live in a room with time for questions. But fundamentally and basically, show something that looks finished and convincing. Early involvement on a serious basis requires direct dialogue, live.

I don't know why Canvarif was in such a rush to release a beta when it's not really a beta. It clearly lacks features like variable font support, the line width tool is half-finished (or is simply delivered flawed and algorithmically weak), and it also seems like most of the QR code setup isn't ready yet. One of the great gifts of adulthood is indeed gaining wisdom on the importance of... timing. In all aspects. And likewise, learning to wait a bit for deliveries, as a customer.

More relevant now 🤭

Thanks for really well put and structured feedback, @8BIB8 - It almost aligns 1:1 with my own impressions and objections.

Detrimental Effects of Begging Customers For the customer: Frustration: Repeated requests can be frustrating and demoralising. Waste of time: Time spent pursuing a resolution could be used more productively elsewhere. Loss of trust: Begging for a resolution can diminish trust in the company's ability to deliver reliable products and services. For the company: Poor reputation: Frequent complaints and visible customer dissatisfaction can damage the company's reputation. Financial loss: Resources spent on repeated fixes or customer support could be financially draining. Strain on resources: Constant demands for corrections can strain staff and divert focus from new developments or other customer support issues.

Forget it, it's a lost cause. This thread - and many others here - prove that Serif has long lost the battle for the serious and professional market, and has attracted hobbyists and the smallest sole proprietorships, and a number of users who lead these discussions here. Just try to read all the nonsense in the thread again! It's completely surreal for me as an adult to come home from the labor market and the seriousness there, and the type of thorough and insightful people I meet there, and then come home, and just see if there's anything new regarding a rather significant and serious acquisition situation, here. I can, with quite convincing use of enormous understatement, ascertain that this forum is a different genre, and that it is demotivating as a serious customer of Designer to have to navigate this nonsense and hell of postulates. It's like having an evening job at a youth school. The thread about the acquisition was actually one of the few threads where more focused and mature customers contributed their two cents, and I felt like I was among adults, and it has been beneficial for everyone, and I hope, especially for the leadership at Serif. But the illusion that there are serious customers out there in significant numbers quickly collapses when we very quickly end up back in nonsense. This thread (and many others) has ended in a dead end, and it makes me quite clearly state and summarize what I have otherwise reflected on in the analog world, that it's the same for Affinity. 'Revolution' my bare butt. There's explosive energy behind a revolution. This is the last gasp of a leaky beach ball we're witnessing. I do desire we may be better strangers!

It's really a terrible bug to have in a release version for so long. Bugs that so recklessly remove data from documents should be fixed asap, and as someone else says, it's not reassuring or confidence-inspiring that it can happen at all. Then the architecture behind is seriously shaky and insecure.

Example, CorelDRAW File -> Document Properties It illustrates well that in this program for professionals - in collaboration with customers, I assume, and in the style of many other programs - this has been collected in document info that is easy to find and enter. And as mentioned, this is quite important information for everyone, and especially in a serious context.

I have both the latest versions of Illustrator and CorelDRAW, and I don't hate either of them, but I find it disheartening that the interface for a large part of both programs remains stuck in the past. That's how it goes when you have a hundred million users who have decades of routines ingrained in muscle memory and from courses. Illustrator becomes better and more aesthetic, while Corel's interface gets uglier. And Corel as sellers are untrustworthy in a mail-order catalog kind of way. I don't like the company. I don't think Adobe themselves are thrilled about being so tied to the past. It seems like Lightroom has been more open to improvements, and Photoshop here and there too. But Corel... I really don't know what they want. That's probably where Serif has gained the most headwind, aside from the price, in their desktop versions, where the basic functions of the interface are much more pleasant to work with. Unfortunately, not in the iPad versions, which I can barely bring myself to use. And as for usability beyond the basic functions, it's not going well in the desktop versions either. Serif got some fundamental design right in 2014, but from there, the magic disappeared. On the other hand, in Illustrator and CorelDRAW, I've rarely hit a wall or had to use as many workarounds as in Affinity Designer, and output-wise, I also have far fewer problems. When Vectorstyler is developed and maintained by a real company, and when Inkscape is coded from scratch with a genuinely usable interface, then their potential will be realized. Only then. The most important thing for me is that the journey from start to finish is as short as possible, that the output is state of the art, and I don't have correction tasks after delivery. With that approach, it's the tasks that define which product I should choose, not my opinions.