dominik

I can confirm that this is the way to do it. Set up a text frame the way you like it and optionally assign a paragraph style. Make sure the text frame is selected. Then select 'Edit > Defaults > Synchronise from selection'. From now on every text frame has these properties.
Furthermore you can:
have different styled text frames as assets. Pull them in and 'Synchronise from selection' to switch between different default text frame styles. 'Edit > Defaults > Save' to transfer default settings between documents (in the other document one has to select 'Edit > Defaults > Refert' to pick up the changes to default settings. reset everything to factory defaults if one got lost  It is worth looking at.
d.

Incidentally, the 'Expand Stroke' function is about to get a LOT better very soon...
 

Hi Astrax,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
You can do this already (more or less) but you will have to save the document(s) at least one time. Force Quit isn't really the way to go and you are risking losing data. Go to menu Edit > Preferences, General section and tick Reopen documents on startup (the label/description must be fixed - it's missing missing the S). Then when working on a new file go to menu File > Save (or Save As) and save it to a folder for temporary/research projects as suggested above - the file(s) are now saved/written to disk. From now on as soon as you have finished working on your file(s) make sure you go to menu File > Save again for each one (or press Ctrl +S) and close the app leaving the document tabs opened (but saved). Next time you run the app, all the (previously) opened documents will be there already opened/ready for you.

If we'd have plain folders instead of groups styles we would loose the ability to control some settings that are common to the styles in a folder. In this regard I find group styles superior to plain folders. I admit, it took me a while to understand this 
Groups styles can be used both ways: just as folders or as folders that are the root of a style family (a.k.a. group).
d.

The market already is saturated with both free and commercial production level animation software. Take your pick: Toonboom, TVPaint, OpenToonz, 3d animation software (Blender, Modo, Max, Maya, Lightwave), CelAction2D, Moho Pro, Flipbook, Spine, DragonBones, Krita, ClipStudio Paint EX, Animate CC, and the list goes on and on. Not to mention visual effects software which also includes very accomplished 2d (and 3d) animation features (Nuke, Fusion, HitFilm, etc.).
So just pick one of the above, and import your work. I don't think Serif is going to attempt to compete in this market with a dedicated animation tool.
That said, a simple Krita-like animation timeline would be nice to have in Affinity.
 
Funny, the first time when I read this sentence I read "Adobe Perversion". :-) I never knew about that software, btw.
In regards to presentation software: I create a lot of presentations/slides for my work, and I've completely given up on superfluous eye candy like transitions and animations years and years ago. I create my slides in design layout software, and export a simple PDF. Audiences are distracted and bored at the same time when faced with yet another PowerPoint-like slide collection. Nowadays I focus on the content and the content structure instead of useless slide animations and effects unless I have to show a complex topic or subject which requires animation to clarify the content. In that case I fire up a movie file.
Otherwise I just stick with simple static slides which have a good clear readability and visual hierarchy. People grow bored quickly staring at that same old cross fade or wipe-in for the umpteenth time. Good presentation technique works FAR better than someone rattling off yet another boringly animated presentation slide. The less slides to bring the message across, the better.
"Oh look, it's one of those presentations where the heading and text bullet points fly in sequentially from whichever direction" responses should be avoided. Have the audience focus on the presenter and the presented content, and avoid pointless animated effects. Avoid inserting graphics and images "just because" - there should be a valid reason. Stop brain-dumping all over your slides. Elucidate and engage and interact with your audience. Stupid pointless animation effects will just bore the audience. Clarify, use great typography, visual structure and presentation structure instead of relying on visual animated effects which no-one in your audience appreciates or cares about anyhow.
If I do need to create something eye-catching, I create it in an animation and/or visual effects package with sound and so on. But that would become a running presentation for a booth at a convention, or something. Or a museum kiosk. In these cases I have control over the hardware used as well. And in such cases I avoid traditional presentation software like the plague and opt for different solutions.
sso often have I seen presenters get into technical trouble because PowerPoint wouldn't run right, or slow, or the hardware was completely outdated and software wouldn't support their latest greatest presentation files. Or they would bring their own snazzy Mac notebook with Keynote, and forget about that RGB/HDMI regular connector.
PDF always works no matter the OS, and I bring my own portable version of PDFExchange Editor, as well as export simple PNG files just in case when presenting in locations where I haven't presented before.
If you are heck-bent on introducing slide transitions, why not export to a PDF, and assign page transitions with a PDF tool like PDFExchange Editor? Works fine.
 

Glad to be of help. Cheers to Budapest 
d.

Hi @Cealcrest,
it works differently:
First you place the document in your APub file. Then you see on the toobar a selection drop down from which you can choose the artboard you want (see screenshot) below. If you name your artboards in a meaningful way you can tell which artboard contains which content (I didn't in the screenshot  )
d.

I can confirm that this is the way to do it. Set up a text frame the way you like it and optionally assign a paragraph style. Make sure the text frame is selected. Then select 'Edit > Defaults > Synchronise from selection'. From now on every text frame has these properties.
Furthermore you can:
have different styled text frames as assets. Pull them in and 'Synchronise from selection' to switch between different default text frame styles. 'Edit > Defaults > Save' to transfer default settings between documents (in the other document one has to select 'Edit > Defaults > Refert' to pick up the changes to default settings. reset everything to factory defaults if one got lost  It is worth looking at.
d.

I would like to request that the Appearance panel in Affinity Designer offer the ability to add effects and opacity settings to the individual strokes & fills.
For example, assume a shape with two fills and two strokes. 
It should be possible to apply 50% opacity to the top fill; and inner shadow to the bottom stroke; and a drop shadow to the top dashed stroke. See the attached illustration below.

Hello @vjsouza,
as Alfred pointed out this is not something APub can do automatically.
There are several different ways to accomplish your task. In Windows you can use the print command to send multiple seperate image files to Microsoft's PDF printer. This will combine all images into one file. See an explanation here: https://www.howtogeek.com/248462/how-to-combine-images-into-one-pdf-file-in-windows/
I would assume there must be a way to do this on Mac, too.
Cheers,
d.

Please add eyedroppers (inside of the curves panel) to define custom values for black, gray and white, as in Photoshop.

Just the other day I had to change only one sentence in a one page PDF. The main font used in the PDF was not installed on my system but I found and installed it for that purpous. I tried with Adobe Acrobat pro, FlexiPDF and APub. All three were able to open the file and all three exposed the same display problems with the font (even though it was available and not substituted).
Changing the one sentence was possible but the overall result was different in comparison to the original.
What I want to say is: PDF in general is a delivery and not an editing format. It very much depends on the quality of how it was generated and also its complexity. Working with original files is always the better choice if possible (but obviously this is not the case many times  )
d.
 
 

Or to use its outline if it does not have a fill nor a stroke. Even though outline view is not available in APub the outline must be part of the object.
d.

Glad to see another user of Postbox. I'm very happy with it as my email client for several years now.
d.

Hello @tudor,
another option that works (I tried this time  ) is to use one artboard the size of your design. Then place transparent rectangles on top of the design with the indiviual sizes to export. You can lock these to not interfere during designing.
Then you select one rectangle after the other (in the layers studio) an use 'File > Export'. Make sure to choose 'Area > Selection with background'. This creates segments of your design just not using artboards.
I do not say your request to span objects across multiple artboards is not a valid feature request. It's just not working right now and slices in Export Persona and my method above do 
d.

I have found the most accurate conversion of an AfDesign file to illustrator is using SVG as an export type, with RASTERSIZE set to NOTHING in the "more options" panel on export. You will inevitably lose some effects in translation (drop shadow, gaussian blurs etc will be rasterized since there is no other option), but with SVG as the file type, you will get good text, vector, outline, fill and clipping mask accuracy when opening in AI. As with any proprietary format (illustrator, freehand, corel draw, etc) there will ALWAYS be some effects lost in translation, but the Affinity SVG to illustrator is a very good translation.  
EPS rasterizes EVERYTHING out of AD, and PDF, Illustrator cant even open those right, so forget it.

Correct. Proper logo designs of all things should be created with the most painstakingly efficient and elegant paths. The more vector-appropriate the artwork, the less excuse for auto-tracing. Else, you lose the resolution independence advantage that vector-based graphics exist for in the first place.
Certainly anyone claiming to do commercial quality vector illustration (i.e., charging money for it) should be proficient in drawing optimal paths with the appropriate tools. And that's where anyone learning to create commercial-quality work should expend energy; not in tweaking a bunch of tolerance settings in an auto-trace feature. The more vector-appropriate the artwork, the fewer and cleaner the paths should be, so the less "time consuming" it is anyway, for someone who knows how to do it right.
So when it comes down to it, the only few-and-far-between excuse for resorting to auto-tracing is for things that are just too complex for drawing with deliberate and intelligent discernment. And even in those cases, one should always ask oneself if auto-tracing is going to yield any technical advantage anyway. See the self-cancelling cycle?
It's not the beginning users' fault. The software vendors grossly over-glorify the "automagic" of auto-tracing features with claims like "Instantly convert raster images into resolution independent vector graphics!"
That's the myth perpetrated among hobbyists. There is no "conversion" to it. Raster-to-vector is not some kind of unambiguous code translation, like converting a TIFF file to a PNG file. The only lossless 1:1 "conversion" from a raster image to a vector graphic would be literally tracing a square path around each and every pixel. And that would have absolutely zero resolution-independence advantage over simply using the original raster image. That technically "perfect" auto-trace would also be perfectly useless.
No, there's just re-drawing the subject. And auto-tracing doesn't even make any attempt to re-draw the subject, because it has no idea what the subject or its purpose is. It merely tries to draw paths around contiguous clusters of similarly-colored pixels, utterly regardless of shape or meaning. So you either re-draw the subject with meaningful (and hopefully aesthetic) human discernment, or you entrust it to a completely dumb algorithm that has (as of current standards) absolutely none.
JET

I want to add one more thing that come to mind as you write 'constrain'.
Holding down SHIFT key constrains to horizontal or vertical movement as we know from other tools.
d.

Hello @BAK UI-SEOK,
welcome to the forum.
The grid and the guides are design aides and not design elements. Thus they cannot be exported.
If you have to design something that includes these aides on export you have to find a way to do this on your own. I have two suggestions:
Create a grid on your own with vector lines, spacing and color according to the grid or a design that suits your project better. Create an empty document, setup the grid and rulers and make screenshot. Place this as an image in the background of your project. Both ways will include the grid in the exported file.
You also can save either of the grid objects as assets for later use.
I personally do not think to make grids and rulers optionally exportable (or) printable. But it may be worth to make it a feature suggestion 
d.

What you can do is ALT+click on the nested layer. This makes it visible in it's entiety. The drawback is that this turns of every other layer so you'll not see the context. I assume this is not what you are asking?
d.

It's not really about abandoning loyal users but  the PagePlus code base is hopelessly outdated and it made no sense to continue trying to flog what had become a dead horse. The alternative path for Serif was to produce an engine that could be ported across two incompatible platforms (Windows and MAC OSX) and use the same code base for 3 different applications making their files cross compatible - something quite ground breaking. That meant it wouldn't be reasonable to spend time and resource to create a reasonable conversion from the PagePlus file code system to the new .afxxx format.
If it is possible and financially viable then my guess is that a 3rd party coder will reverse engineer the pp9 file format and produce a converter.
Of course you don't need to use templates to create a document. You could also build it from scratch - it's by far the best way to learn Graphic Design and you can just as easily copy what others have already done to create your design.
 

Hello @nautiloda,
if it is just for printing (or export to PDF via print dialog) you can specify which pages to print. It is not necessary to delete any pages.
In the print dialog look for 'Pages' below 'Range'. There you would type in '1, 3-6,8-10'. This excludes pages 2 and 7 from printing 
d.

Hello @Nanndc,
welcome to the forum.
I want to ask why one should / would use a font that does not have good kerning tables in the first place? If there is the need for this particualur font one has to deal with its lack of features.
If it is an exotic/special font that cannot be replaced easily by a font with better attributes, this should be used only for a small amount of text and manual kerning should be no big deal.
If you want to use such a font for a huge amount of text you'd be better off to look for a better working alternative.
In the long run we will see if Affinity will have this. But for the moment it is not on the list
Cheers,
d.
 

The problem is that you can not transform the object by dragging the transform handles if you are zoomed in or the object is just very big. Would be great if you could resize by dragging the edge of the object.

Hello @Claudia_D,
you may be surprised how many other forumsters have commented about the feature to select same colour, fill, etc. 
This thread also includes some official statements that they are working on (or at least thinking about) this feature. But no time estimation was made.
Cheers,
d.