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.

Well then, family members in Nottingham can just pick them up themselves and prepare for overnight guests. No, they can't just do that. It's important to network with various industry representatives and its users, but it's usability specialists who must stand between the industry and development teams, and who must own the user interface across Affinity applications and now Canva as well. Otherwise, nothing is learned and nothing is gained. What you're describing is precisely not the professional and contemporary way to work with user interfaces, especially not for millions of users. My hope is than in Canva, usability teams have a significant role in the product development process. They likely collaborate closely with product management and design teams to refine user interfaces before development tasks are assigned. Developers therefore do their engineering work, while other specialists like usability teams do theirs. It's a completely logical separation of roles and responsibilities. It's Affinity's last chance.

Now I haven't been able to use Publisher for digital publications at all due to a lack of accessibility, so it's only now that I'm hearing about the absence of a move page dialog, and I can say with great conviction, "Good heavens, that's definitely missing!!" especially for larger documents or other scenarios where drag and drop isn't meaningful. I could need it in a scenario where I'm working on something in Designer across many pages via Publisher. It's strange that the feature is missing; it's usually such obvious functions that can be relatively easily implemented, and therefore are included from early versions or in feature weak programs as fillers if nothing else. I won't interfere with the other part. 🙂 When Canva flies in a handful of experienced usability specialists to Nottingham with first aid, there should be good solutions coming.

Difficult? Let's examine the scenario. I'm not using in Publisher creating a few but large documents (books, whatever), where entering the author, description, etc., is a rare event in a longer workflow. I start and work in Designer, which is the only program I actually (should) use, and I create many documents quickly for various uses. Beyond copyright reasons, I also enter descriptions, tags, etc., since my work is saved in a document management system at work AND some of what I create is subject to archival obligations. Metadata from PDFs is actively used for this purpose by the document management system so it is crucial stuff. Having to edit in Publisher from Designer, travelling into a menu item under references and fields and back to Designer (and NO, I do not work through Publisher and personas, ever), instead of being able to enter this information under document setup (there could be an Info tab) or similar is sheer folly. Doing it several times is crazy. Of course, I can waste a lot of - but less - time using a program to tag these PDF files, but in a business context, it's also madness that this information is then not also saved in the .afdesign files. Just imagine how well that would work in a re-export scenario. It's as if Serif does not imagine their products being used by anyone other than individuals, printing to paper. Through Adobe Reader, by the way. That's not very progressive or insightful. Perhaps Canva can open the door for Serif to a larger world.

I see the same issue in macOS with files saved from Microsoft Word, so the arrow seems to point towards Apple.

Unfortunately, as a user of Canvaffinity Designer, I have to go all the way into Publisher to find the functionality to set metadata about myself as the author of a file that is going out into the world as a PDF, and even more unfortunately, I have to go under "Window" and the submenu "References" to find the menu item Fields, where I can write Document Information. I could really use the theme music from Benny Hill while clicking my way to this illogical location in another program from the large Canva family. But it becomes really annoying, on the other hand, when as a customer you discover that you can't tab from field to field in the dialog. I wonder if you are ready to include document info with these lines also elsewhere in the program where you actually work with document information, where it is expected, and then with tab support in both places. It's completely absurd because the most central and simple thing in a document - this metadata and logical addition of it for customers - has not been considered in the development of Affinity by Serif for 10 years. First things first. Not last.

If I check the metadata in a specialized tool I see this: If I right click the file on the macOS desktop and select Get info it does, however, show Serif Affinity Publisher 2 2.4.1 both next to Authors and Content creators. Looks like issue in macOS but I can't say for sure.

If these options from Photoshop are what you're missing, then they simply do not exist in Photo/Affinity. A peculiar and serious omission.

A very old bug that will now join the Canva family:

Yes, the name change was always on the cards. But one thing is what it's called. Another thing is what has happened to the product. It might as well be called Corel Fossilized. There is no further development on it, but there is a false "time-limited" offer on a subscription to the product that was Gravit. Corel has added nothing - only sealed the program's fate: locked, abandoned, and living on borrowed time. Las Vegas. Now in your toolbox.

Ah, that is unlikely. Gravit is a relatively simple program that didn't have that many customers, but it was an exciting web-based approach with online review mode for clients that Corel was interested in, and they made a CorelDRAW version of it, which is far out, because it's not CorelDRAW. It seemed more like a loose plan Corel had the money to experiment with, and then the internal wind at Corel changed, and this irresponsibility, seen through a societal lens, plucks a product out of the market. Yet another one. Gravit's creators, like Serif, worked hard during the acquisition to ensure existing customers were respected, even in terms of pricing, but such pledges and agreements do not have long-term viability. One can still access Gravit/Corel Vector, but it is not being developed or improved, and who knows how long it will be kept running online. That's my whole point; Serif had control until they handed it over. From there, we can all lose the tool we had. As I said, one has to be more than youthfully naive if one believes that THIS time a miracle will happen in an acquisition scenario. My risk assessment is printed in flaming red letters.