loukash

Why no manual, PDF or otherwise, for Affinity Designer? The short videos are inadequate for someone new to the software. 

No, Keyboard Maestro can handle the document window sizes and positions just fine. You can save its macros just to affect the Affinity apps, be it via its global menu, a keyboard shortcut, whatever.
But it's everything else that's wrong with the Separated mode, starting with UI rendering bugs, unmovable palettes appearing off-screen at the top, and ending with no option to save the workspace arrangement after spending an hour to set everything up the way I like, only to accidentaly select the "reset" menu command. Been there done that…
Perhaps Keyboard Maestro can access the palettes by some means, too. I just haven't wasted my time to find out yet…  

Seriously, I hope none.  I do not have Affinity Publisher, but I do rely heavily on Affinity Photo.  I am dismayed at how long some features remain broken, while others seem trapped in a cycle of breaking, being fixed, then regressing.  A long thread about compatibility with Apple Photos is an example of the former.  And it is still not possible to print directly (i. e., without merging layers or exporting to another format ... except PDF) an .afphoto that uses live filters. In my experience as a software developer for a major Swiss bank and a large Swiss pharmaceutical company, it is sometimes necessary to put new software and new features on the back burner in order to fix the foundations of existing products.  This would be a good time to do so.

Signed up for an account just to cosign this request. Separated Mode is irritating to use, my document always has it's top bar area (title/Mac buttons to minimize, maximize, close) behind the top toolbar, nothing snaps to the edges, maximizing the window goes behind panels instead.
This tedium, along with there not being some list as far as I can tell of keyboard shortcut mappings to be more in line with Adobe are basically the two major things keeping me from using Affinity products in the long term. The keyboard shortcuts is not really poor experience per se, Affinity does it's thing which is fine, but some of us have been stuck in the Adobe ecosystem for decades and those shortcuts are ingrained muscle memory…however, the thing with Separated mode is really lousy UX. Please fix. 

JGD , I get you.
I also use Affinity Photo in separate mode and its a waste of time moving windows every time you open a new document and it's hidden by the toolbars...
Zooming in and out of photos you have to manually resize the windows ( the window frames keep the original size) And when you have 10, 15 images open at the same time you can imagine the waste of clicks and drags just to start working...
These little things are not buzz words  sellers like :  OpenEXR and Radiance HDR support / Import OpenColorIO configurations /  HDR / EDR monitor support
but we need them for the daily use of the software ... 
Little things that Photoshop has (and now  you miss)  and appreciate them more  when you don't have them. Photoshop veterans will notice this when they are trying to make the switch and notice the software is not "polished" 
I've seen posts asking things like this in this couple of years but I guess they don't get much track... A 1.7.1 update would be great to address interface adjustments in the Mac. 
An example post (9 months old): 
 
 
 

Hi guys. Once again, I'm sorry for overusing my “CRITICAL & OVERDUE” “tag” of sorts, but… until the end of the v.1.x cycle, better get used and pay attention to it. I'm reserving it only for the most glaring omissions, especially those which damage Affinity apps' reputation the most as professional tools.
Anyway, I digress; what I'm asking is: please make Affinity apps (especially Photo, where it makes the most sense) under Separated Mode behave like all Adobe apps when the Application Frame is disabled, FontLab 5.x, Microsoft Office X/2004/2008 for Mac, AppleWorks, and pretty much every classic Mac app with floating UI elements since 1984. Nineteen-freaking-eighty-four; those are thirty+ years of muscle memory for some users (in my case, it's only a respectable 16, but still).
Floating palettes and other UI elements have a reason to exist, but they also should work in a sensible and intuitive fashion, otherwise you might as well not have them at all. If you decided to implement a “Separated Mode”, at least take the time to fully learn, understand and respect Apple's Human Interface Guidelines (and, by extension, Mac users). Don't make the same mistakes Microsoft did with their infamous, universally-hated Microsoft Word 6 for Mac (source: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/rick_schaut/2004/02/26/mac-word-6-0/ ).
As it stands, the Separated Mode is very cumbersome, forcing users to painstakingly resize windows by hand, one by one, so that they fit on the screen and fit their content, aren't obscured by the floating UI elements (which forces them to switch to another app or toggling the Studio just so they can grab their titlebars), etc. Making them dockable and properly coding the document windows and Zoom behaviour to prevent those scenarios would allow one to open several windows in cascade, side by side, tiled, etc.
I should add that the Window>Zoom command/green “+” titlebar button is not MS Windows' “Maximize”!!! We all know that Serif devs come from a Windows background, and this is a common misconception former Windows devs have, and a common error they commit, when porting their apps to the Mac. To make matters worse, the Affinity apps actually started out as Mac-only but never even behaved properly as such, ever. Please make that button behave precisely like in Photoshop, Preview, TextEdit, Pages, etc. Will it be inconsistent with the Windows version? Maybe, yes. But it should, first and foremost, be coherent with the host OS. On the Mac, that command/button should be a toggle between a default/custom size and a “fit-to-content” size (which can be very useful in Affinity Photo, and which I constantly use in Photoshop, Preview, etc.), and not a “maximise button”; for that, we have the default Fullscreen behaviour.
Better yet: under Separated Mode please disable Fullscreen for the green button and make it Zoom (properly, please) by default. Seriously, try activating Separated Mode and opening a document window in Fullscreen; it's not very useful and doesn't bring much to the table, functionality-wise, over opening the app in regular mode and making it Fullscreen am I right? I'm willing to bet that maybe 0,0001% of your users ever turn to that particular combo… At least, please allow the user to set the default behaviour under Preferences.
Yes, I know this is no longer the default “green button” behaviour in macOS, and that Apple is pushing us heavily towards Fullscreen mode. But seriously, until Apple disables it altogether (and I reckon they never will, as they keep selling huge iMacs and now will start selling the even bigger Pro Display XDR, which will be a massive hit with pro photographers), please implement it correctly for the users who still use the Window>Zoom command. It's the least you can do as a self-respecting Mac developer.

Yup:
Might be a font issue as well.
 

I'm happy to report that the App Store version 1.7.1 now runs on Mountain Lion again. Thanks!

It would be convenient when changing the document size automatically recalculate the size (for non pixel units) <-> DPI as in Photoshop when "Resample" is disabled:   The dialog might look something like this:

A feature that still gives Illustrator a slight edge over AF is the vector 'filters' and 'effects' - things that change the appearance of the vector paths [ which can then be 'expanded' into curves if need be.]

For instance there is a simple 'roughen' effect [or filter] that can be applied to the vector shapes in illustrator

Another example is the powerful feature of the 'transform' effect. see image

 
Any thoughts?

I know I've suggested a similar feature, but all this talk of smoothing curves brought this up in my mind; in addition to a tool to smooth a curve, Affinity Designer should also have the opposite.  I am of course referring to Midpoint Displacement, which would allow illustrators to make non-uniform curves more easily than having to draw each node individually.
 

 
Being able to smooth curves is indeed important, but as it is, it's really hard to produce a line that doesn't look uniform, and a roughening tool to add pseudorandom midpoint displacement would make illustrating much less time-consuming.