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This highly annoying issue remains in the GM seed: The issue does not occur in the app store version (1.8.6).

I have a scroll bar for that... and the scroll wheel works in a "blank" part of the scrollable area. Before jumping through the hoops of resetting everything you might want to check to see if you have "Show Scroll Bars" set to "Always" in the "General" section of "System Preferences" as they do disappear for me if that is set to the other options.

Ok, so here is my take on a menu reorganization for Affinity Photo. I did change my mind about some of those options going into the Window menu... It might not be quite perfect, I may not have gotten the keyboard shortcuts correct, and I am not showing some of the menus/submenus that I am not changing. This is based on the 1.9 betas and is not intended to add or remove items (though some are renamed and many are in different menus). I removed the "..." from a number of items that should not have them (the "..." should only be present when a command requires more information to proceed - "New Astrophotography Stack" for example does not, nor does "About Affinity Photo" whose entire purpose is to display information - no additional information is requested by that command...) There are many ways to do this, so take this as one suggestion, not the only one. Also, I did this as an exercise and possibly to open up discussion - it is not necessarily a feature request in its own right.

I think I would place those in the Window menu. While in "normal" mode they open tabs, the tabs in Photo are in effect a consolidation of what would be separate windows in separated mode, which indeed these do create when in that mode. The panels themselves do not, but their content does. One of the examples given in the HIG is that of an "inspector panel" - such a panel changes its content based on the active selection but is not in and of itself tied to any particular document. The one they picture resembles the Metadata studio panel in Photo, for example. An example of something that does not fall into that category is the new Account window. Serif has chosen to place that in the application menu, which is appropriate according to the HIG, which indicates that menu should be used for options that are not related to any specific document "or window" - though the command itself opens a window I still think that is appropriate in this case (the "About" option is supposed to be there too, and that is explicitly indicated in the HIG as the correct place for it). However, the HIG also indicates that the About item should have a separator after it and should not be grouped with other items - Serif has placed the "My Account" and "Check for Updates" options before the separator after "About" (which also incorrectly has dots after it and is missing the application name - "About..." should be "About Affinity Photo", "Hide" should be "Hide Affinity Photo" and "Quit" should be "Quit Affinity Photo").

HIG spells out that auxiliary windows which display information related to the open document or selection are considered panels (https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/macos/windows-and-views/panels/) and that open panels should NOT be listed at the bottom of the Window menu (https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/macos/menus/menu-bar-menus/). I need to partially correct myself on this one: the HIG indicates that you should "consider" including such items in the Window menu, but then indicates specifically that it is not necessary to include the Font or Color panels as those can be accessed from the Format menu (missing from the Affinity products)... so this seems to suggest that the panels should be listed in the Window menu if they don't appear anywhere else? However, it DOES spell out that the View menu should NOT contain items for displaying panels and indicates that the Window menu should be used for this instead! The View menu is meant to control the way things are displayed within a window and should never be used to control whether or not other windows (panels or otherwise) are displayed or to navigate among them. My interpretation is that if a panel fits better in a different menu it is fine for it go there, but otherwise they should be in the Window menu. Thus all of the following being in the View menu in the current Photo beta are wrong and directly violate the HIG: A few of those options, such as the Resource Manager, could reasonably be moved to the Document menu if desired, but otherwise the Window menu is appropriate (the View menu is NOT). However, having these options in the Text menu (for example) should be fine:

Just so this doesn't lose attention, this is still happening in the latest release candidates of all three apps. It seems this happens after an unsaved document has been open long enough to be auto-saved; if you just quit immediately after creating a document and quickly adding a shape to it this doesn't seem to occur.

correct

Explained here: https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/publisher/studiolink/ The way I'm reading it, the intent of "StudioLink" is to allow access to photo and illustration tools from within a Publisher project - in other words, you are designing a publication (what Publisher itself is intended for) and need to create or manipulate vector artwork, so you can switch to the Designer persona within Publisher to work with vector artwork that is being used inside of a document that is still basically within the realm of what Publisher is ultimately designed for. I don't see any indication that it was ever intended to replace using Photo separately for working with a photo as the end product or using Designer separately for creating vector artwork as the end product. If you are creating an illustration as the end product in its own right, it would still be best to do that in Designer rather than in Publisher - but if you are creating a book or similar product and need to create an illustration to use within the book you are working on, that is what StudioLink is for, and for that it is great. The current Export Preview feature is really optimized for standalone art pieces and does not seem to be particularly optimal for a publication. While adding it to Publisher would not be unwelcome, I don't believe it would be particularly helpful for the use cases that Publisher is intended for. I think a better option for Publisher would be to add a separate persona for prepress setup and similar tasks such as color separations and imposition and that a more complete preview function should be included as part of that persona. Yes, Publisher would benefit from an export preview, but to really be useful for its intended use cases it needs something a bit more sophisticated than what has been added to Photo and Designer in this round of betas.

Then what would be the point in having three programs? They could just build it all into one program and be done with it - but that obviously is not what they want, as has been discussed multiple times in the past. If it works for you, great - nothing wrong with that, just possibly not what was intended.

Sure - If I do a File -> Edit in Photo after creating the layer, I can double-click the thumbnail in Photo and edit it there, and the effect does carry back over to Publisher if I then send it back... but that saves me nothing over simply doing a File -> Edit in Photo first then adding the layer.

It sits there and stares at you.

It doesn't crash for me on the Mac. The layer gets created but is worthless within Publisher unless you switch to Photo to edit it.

Why does the Photo persona in Publisher allow you to add a Liquify live filter to the document if you can't edit it without switching to the Photo application anyway?

I believe the point of StudioLink is to make it more convenient to work with resources embedded in Publisher projects, not to replace the use of the other programs for their own dedicated tasks. This is hardly the only thing you are missing by working that way - no access to the RAW development feature set or the Liquify or Tone Mapping features of Photo, no Export persona, etc.

Thanks, I just dropped by to report the same.