Skyesofrock

The one thing that stops Affinity Designer from being the perfect tool for UI design for me is the lack of an ability to set up a guide layout.
 
There is almost this functionality in the grid set up options, just without the ability to make grid tiles the full height of the artboard and add a default margin on the left/right/top/bottom independent of the gutter. The ability to save a guide layout preset in the Guide Manager and load it up in future documents has been mentioned previously, and this is potentially another great way to solve the problem, so +1 to that idea too.
 
My issue is just that when setting up a new document I need to be able to quickly set up the bootstrap grid as guides before I start. My current workaround is to set up the guides in a document and use that as a template for any web UI work I need to do. 
 
Please consider adding a Guide Layout feature and/or Custom Guide Presets (honestly the Guides Manager is currently brilliant, it just needs extending).
 
I'm so very close to being able to replace PS/AI with AF. 
 
 
Cheers

I disagree. Because a good application works well when has a clear mission. 
Do you want to draw, edit, apply effects (some good effects) an so on? AD
Do you want to create or edit a bitmap image? AF
Do you want to publish complex documents? AP
 
Do not try to catch all in one app. That is a wrong way. Because one app can not do all well. Imagine the User interface, the windows, and all the panes you can put in one app. And could we talk about updates of a monster app?
 
Indeed, you can go wrong with just an app that tries to do well in one area. Illustrator, for example is tremendously confusing. A lot of panels, so many panels that do a lot of things. Affinity Designer can do the same things faster and simpler than Illustrator. The routines and options are simpler and clever.
 
Is like eat food. You need spoon for soup. And a knife to cut bread. You can not eat soup with a knife... Er well, you can do, but the results are not practical and desirable.
 
I have been involved in DTP since 1983. Do you know about Common Ground, xRes, Canvas? One app that can do all sort of things usually do not work well in any area.

That sounds like a polite public way of saying that someone’s gonna get a spanking tonight. :D

Hi,
 
We notice that a number of users are complaining that certain features (Inpainting brush, RAW develop, Document Crop, etc.) are not available in the current Affinity Designer beta..
 
There is a good reason for this - the product we have released is "Affinity Designer" (vector editor, graphic design tool).
 
So, to anyone looking for our fully-featured photo editing application - "Affinity Photo" - this is not the beta you were looking for!!
 
Affinity Photo on Windows will enter public beta for Windows later this year - you should wait for that announcement email if you want those things..
 
I recognise and appreciate that our marketing people made this far from obvious - and will apologise (on their behalf) for that.
 
Thanks,
 
Andy.

That's already in the plan...

Thank you all who replied, I have now successfully downloaded the Grade UI Kit.
 
I've also ordered the new book! :-)

For the developers:
 
Please check out this great grid calculator if you don't already know it:
 
http://gridcalculator.dk/#/980/12/20/20
 
You can use the arrow keys to inc/decrease the values and all relative values are updated accordingly.
A similar functionality would be insanely useful for web design.

Ahhh yeah! With RC3, the countdown to the full launch of the Windows version for Affinity Designer nears its conclusion! Business is about to pick up!  :D

I would expect a 0 value as a default space before/after until explicitly set to a value and/or saved in a style or template.

The one thing that stops Affinity Designer from being the perfect tool for UI design for me is the lack of an ability to set up a guide layout.
 
There is almost this functionality in the grid set up options, just without the ability to make grid tiles the full height of the artboard and add a default margin on the left/right/top/bottom independent of the gutter. The ability to save a guide layout preset in the Guide Manager and load it up in future documents has been mentioned previously, and this is potentially another great way to solve the problem, so +1 to that idea too.
 
My issue is just that when setting up a new document I need to be able to quickly set up the bootstrap grid as guides before I start. My current workaround is to set up the guides in a document and use that as a template for any web UI work I need to do. 
 
Please consider adding a Guide Layout feature and/or Custom Guide Presets (honestly the Guides Manager is currently brilliant, it just needs extending).
 
I'm so very close to being able to replace PS/AI with AF. 
 
 
Cheers

No worries! I did wonder that! I'll get it passed onto development.

Hi John,
Welcome to Affinity Forums :)
Make sure you are not blocking your internet connection with Little Snitch or similar.
You can download it through a link on the Welcome screen as @Skyesofrock said, but if your internet connection is disabled that screen will not appear.

Hey ladislavsulc,
 
The global guides is an excellent idea and I would definitely post it in the Feature Requests. I've had a quick look and couldn't find it. A possible workaround would be to apply your desired guides to one artboard and then duplicate it. The only problem is if you had to change it further down the line, you'd have to change them all separately.
 
The ruler guide only showing vertically is a known bug. The horizontal one does drag out but it is quite offset from the pointer. If you keep dragging you might eventually see it. 

The one thing that stops Affinity Designer from being the perfect tool for UI design for me is the lack of an ability to set up a guide layout.
 
There is almost this functionality in the grid set up options, just without the ability to make grid tiles the full height of the artboard and add a default margin on the left/right/top/bottom independent of the gutter. The ability to save a guide layout preset in the Guide Manager and load it up in future documents has been mentioned previously, and this is potentially another great way to solve the problem, so +1 to that idea too.
 
My issue is just that when setting up a new document I need to be able to quickly set up the bootstrap grid as guides before I start. My current workaround is to set up the guides in a document and use that as a template for any web UI work I need to do. 
 
Please consider adding a Guide Layout feature and/or Custom Guide Presets (honestly the Guides Manager is currently brilliant, it just needs extending).
 
I'm so very close to being able to replace PS/AI with AF. 
 
 
Cheers

I know what you mean, it happens frequently to me too.
In the past I used to do what you say, today I tend to ask firmly for new assets or specific re-design tasks for a simple reason: "the best logo vectorisation" needs the same amount of refinement work that "from scratch re-design" would require.
Also, it is useless to ask a quality job if the quality is not distributed equally.
 
I think that a Tracing Persona, or something like a Tracing Tool will be very welcome be in AD 2.x.
Great to trace inked pictures, to vectorise resources... Lots of creative way to apply it.
 
But if you try to vectorise a jagged Jpeg oldie 221px wide should prompt a message like:
 
"Hey man, do you like puddings?" 
 
:D

The one thing that stops Affinity Designer from being the perfect tool for UI design for me is the lack of an ability to set up a guide layout.
 
There is almost this functionality in the grid set up options, just without the ability to make grid tiles the full height of the artboard and add a default margin on the left/right/top/bottom independent of the gutter. The ability to save a guide layout preset in the Guide Manager and load it up in future documents has been mentioned previously, and this is potentially another great way to solve the problem, so +1 to that idea too.
 
My issue is just that when setting up a new document I need to be able to quickly set up the bootstrap grid as guides before I start. My current workaround is to set up the guides in a document and use that as a template for any web UI work I need to do. 
 
Please consider adding a Guide Layout feature and/or Custom Guide Presets (honestly the Guides Manager is currently brilliant, it just needs extending).
 
I'm so very close to being able to replace PS/AI with AF. 
 
 
Cheers

Dynamic guide tools will be coming soon.

It's a bit of a deal-breaker for me, I don't really want to switch applications to disable fonts in Suitcase, when a font search facility in AD would solve the problem.
Whilst on the subject, is there any reason why the font list couldn't be extended to accommodate more fonts on view at a time, 25 in the list would help.

It would be a huge advantage if we could search fonts not only by a first letter. It's achievable if the font selector will be replaced by an autocomplete solution like: 
 
 

Definitely not a high priority (well maybe)... Would be cool to have the viewport "go quantum" when one reaches the limits of the virtually infinite zoom... like the "noise" made on a tv set to no channel, or static....  :ph34r:

A) I laid out a 978 grid last night with guides, and it took me a while, and thought how cool it would be if I could save this and load it from the guide manager (which is a very cool thing you have, btw).
 
I see grid and guide improvements on the roadmap, but nothing specific so I just want to throw this out there:
 
1. Automatic guide creation based on 3 fields: "number of columns", "column width", "gutter width"
2. Saving guide layouts as presets.
3. Centering the guides.
4. Click the ruler to bring up the guide manager, or just a button/hotkey (bonus request). 
 
Now, I saved the file, and can open the file and do a save as, but I am stuck at the width of the canvas. If I want to widen the page, I need to recalculate everything and move all the guides around. But, if I could widen the page, and hit a guide centering button, oh my...that would be beyond fantastic. I could be dreaming, so feel free to pinch me if I have asked for the impossible. 
 
B) Alignment/Smart guides
1. Hot key to press that will show the space between either objects or guides
2. Lines that show up while dragging objects to show how they align in relation to other objects, For example, if I layout a box and put a logo in it and move the logo around, when I hit the center a small line could pop up to show I have hit the center. 
 
 
Obviously, I am coming from the perspective of a web designer and not an illustrator. But I can see myself using Affinity for my layouts, with just a few additions. There's something really refreshing about your product and the way you guys are doing things. Looking forward to watching you expand. 
 
 

maybe I'm missing it, but is there an option to open a JPEG, or bitmap image
and trace,or convert it to a vector file for further editing? If not there should be one, it would be a great option. even if it had only a few modes like black and white, and 5 color
it would make me convince me to convert from adobe illustrator

Hi!
 
Today icon fonts are a de-facto in UI design and there are tons of libraries available.
It would be very useful to have a glyph palette or studio to list them all for quick&dirty usage in projects. 
 
Just a simple grid should work.
Pick or double click to insert them in a text object.
 
I know you love to do things "the very Serif way" so candies such as CSS escape code or hex code label for each character should be a well praised feature!  :)
 
Cheers!

I MissV,
Welcome to Affinity Forums and thanks for your feedback.
A glyphs panel was already requested quite a few times. We are considering it but it may still take some time.

Forgive me if this has already been asked. I didn't quite see the exact suggestion I'm about to ask below:
 
Global / Shared Symbols:
 
I'd like to have the ability to not only create symbols that are document specific, but in the form of a global library that can be shared or distributed in such a way that i can reference them from any document. I see the need for this in that I'd like to create libraries or packages that can be used across different teams within a company. If I update the symbols within, it would be nice to have all the symbols update accordingly provided the reference file was updated or something along those lines.
 
I'm not necessarily suggesting some sort of cloud storage for the symbols because it would be nice to pass the libraries around without an internet connection as an option. I'm also not keen at all on Adobe's symbol sharing mechanisms and although it "works", it's a pretty bad experience imho. 
 
I just feel like as powerful as symbols are, as users we can extend that power and freedom to a level in which we can have an external or global areas that can be referenced. In our company for example, we'd even like the ability to save it to a file (doesn't matter the format) it can be committed into version control and backed up however we or anyone sees fit.
 
In this way, creating entire design guide element collections can be grouped into either a global library or collection of categorized libraries that define an entire platform or range of products that are not tied to a single document.
 
Again, i'm sorry if this is a duplicate feature request. 
 
Thanks for your time and patience :)
 
Very Sincerely,
Frankie Loscavio