JGD
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Posts
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Posts posted by JGD
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1 hour ago, Patrick Connor said:
You argue passionately. I'll check if I'm wrong and this is there on purpose. It feels like an oversight and incorrect but the developers could have left this deliberately.
I do, Patrick, because I actually admire what you've achieved in such a short time span. And I'll stop short of asking you for a job at Serif because I had my chance to migrate to the UK, and I passed up on it, but if things had turned out differently, and if I had a degree in UX, or PR, or even software engineering, I would totally do that. But hey, I'm gunning for academia instead, and hopefully will teach young folks their way around design, including… yep, design software.
You can absolutely have an ally in me, but by god, get your act together, measure twice and cut once. Internal lapses of communication are perfectly normal in any organisation, but please don't give them way immediately – as it may show misdirection –, and don't assume they couldn't have happened either and that you know everything, even if you're the boss – as it shows overconfidence. Being human while running a business/team means straddling that fine balance between… I don't know, fallibility and confidence? Well, one company from which you could learn a lot are your buddies at Apple. They've been getting way better at that balance act as of late.
I want you to succeed, and the only reason I haven't been more vocal before was because I was stuck in the molasses of writing an MA thesis. Well, you wanted your beta tester/evangelist in full swing, and here you have me now. I'm sorry if I come across as a bit of a wisecrack, rude, whatever, but… I absolutely have my heart in the right place, I know how end-users think, and I really think my feature requests through (I've been sitting on this for a few weeks, ever since you released the last betas/GM previews which mangled my toolbars and birthed these buttons, and I only committed to these posts after testing the feature and having the epiphany that, yes, it could be very useful). If they didn't have decent, sensible use cases behind them, and if I hadn't spent the last 15 years of my life reading on UX and working with this kind of stuff, I wouldn't even bother spending my time here writing these rants. These aren't just brain farts I wake up to or something; they are ideas I come up with and on which I hone in while testing the apps, or just by looking at my and my colleagues' professional corpus, and realising that feature A or B is essential to reproduce some of that in a sensible fashion. And believe me when I tell you that I can absolutely imagine all the troublesome ramifications some of my suggestions may bring; if you care to read my posts, I actually anticipate some of them.
Also, while on that subject, I want to make this perfectly clear: I don't want Affinity apps to turn into Adobe apps, or into convoluted, F/OSS-like apps such as Scribus. I know what feature bloat is and how to mitigate it. But I also know you want to attract users to your apps, and… if it's already done and works perfectly, please don't chuck it in the bin. I mean, I know I keep pestering you about your spending of resources on flashy features instead of on polishing the underlying UX and document model, but wasting work that's already done just feels extra crazy; that includes additions like arrowheads, and if you notice that discussion thread, even though I started out by criticising your priorities, I immediately switched into improvement suggestion mode because that feature was already a fait accompli and I do prefer giving out constructive, useful comments.
The same goes for my current suggestion of implementing a market segmentation strategy, that perhaps wouldn't be ideal or even sit well with some of your intermediate but eclectic users but would at least reward the most loyal ones who are willing to buy the entire suite. That is, after all, what you're essentially doing with Publisher personas already, and you never once heard me dissing your strategy there. It makes sense, it was communicated upfront, and you may very well have Publisher-only clients which may have to embed .afdesign and .afphoto files but not really edit them (especially if they are dedicated seats inside of a larger organisation), or users who just prefer to use Corel apps, or F/OSS apps like Inscape and GIMP and just pair them with Publisher (I mean… poor Scribus, really… It's not even in the same league). It's a smart business move.
But crippling at least Designer (Affinity Photo and Photoshop are an entirely different matter; I strongly believe users should actively be discouraged from typesetting long blocks of text in bitmap editors for production reasons, period, and I will always tell that to my students and colleagues; on the other hand, as a typographer, baseline grids are absolutely a soft spot for me, and whenever you may have to or even just be able to typeset but a few lines of text, they should always be an option), on the other hand, feels short-sighted. It only reinforces the fact that Designer is, first and foremost, a vector illustration application, and not a design application. You can absolutely design a typography-heavy and vector-heavy single-page document and make good use of baseline grids in a vector app, and turning to Publisher/InDesign/Quark would be overkill in that scenario and might make some other operations harder for no good reason.
Oh, and I know this is slightly off-topic, but when I ask you to lift some stuff from Adobe is because a) they are also doing that to you, big time (look at their new corner tool in Ai… gee, I wonder where that came from?) and b) it's because I am absolutely sure it will benefit your apps and your end-users. It really boils down to a simple cost/benefit analysis.
Anyway, I have my viva 7 days from now and I have to prepare it in earnest, so I'll have to go now. After that, come the 25th and beyond, do check out the forums. I'll hopefully have earned myself a nice little vacation, but I'm sure I'll also have time to do a few demo videos for the three or four belated features I've been asking for (just simple stuff that can make or break the whole UX); even if you decide against implementing them, I at least owe you that after the earlier votes of confidence you gave me.
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13 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:
It's a bug I will get it removed as it will cause confusion and raise expectations of being able to apply a baseline grid, which you cannot as you have found.
Patrick, I don't mean to be rude, but that is patently false. I can (even if it's “by accident”, hence my suggestion of it being added “by design”), and it absolutely works. Perfectly. In a very predictable and workable fashion. Stuff snaps to it. Text snaps to it. Boom. I don't even think it needs much testing at this point, really… Maybe just validation, I guess.
It's a marketing decision, nothing less. I am genuinely disappointed in you, I'm not even kidding. I almost feel like not buying Publisher after all. You guys are really losing me. Instead of telling me that you'll look into the matter, you're actually arguing with a user (which, mind you, is one of your earliest advocates and internal beta testers who has been asking for essential features for FOUR YEARS and being – or, at the very least, feeling –, err, a bit ignored) and saying, point-blank, that you'll remove this. Wow. It boggles the mind.
Not even Apple, with its myriad hidden preference flags for power users, treats us like this. You've even outdone them in arrogance, jesus.
- Petr Bajer and cloudbusting
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13 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:
No, this feature will not be appearing in ADe or APh and if you can access it accidentally that needs fixing.
With a shared codebase all the applications understand any features that the others can create but that doesn't mean all applications have to let you edit and adjust those layers and features that can't be created in a new document.
So… how do you justify the presence of a “Snap to Baseline Grid” option in the snapping manager, then…? That seems a bit weird, to say the least.
Still, my suggestion still holds. It's already there, and if it works… I know Designer isn't a DTP app, but for light, single-page work, such as academic posters, I could totally see myself using Designer instead of Publisher (especially some vector-heavy ones). In fact, I make one or two every year in Illustrator, and I do miss having baseline grids, so… yeah.
If this is a feature segmentation decision to avoid cannibalisation, or to keep the software simpler, at least tuck the option somewhere else, like a menu item (e.g. under Text > Baseline > Baseline manager), or as an extra tab under the Grid and Snapping Axis manager, or something. And restrict it to Publisher owners, as you already do with its own Designer and Photo personas, if you must. I understand you may want to avoid feature bloat, but it's already in the code base. Removing it/omitting it just feels… petty, and… almost Adobe-like, if I must say so. You guys keep disappointing me more and more, I can't believe this.
- cloudbusting, Petr Bajer and wtrmlnjuc
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Hi guys! As I've said earlier in the forums, apparently Publisher's Baseline Grid Manager is included in the code base of both Designer and Photo.
And, weirdly enough, this feature's corresponding button materialised in both applications, and it seems to be fully functional. However, when customising the toolbar, there doesn't seem any way to put it back there if it ever goes away (or if I actively delete it), nor any other way to access it via the menus, though “snap to baseline grid” is an actual option in the snapping manager.
Can you make this feature accessible by design, since it's already present in the code and seems to work just fine? Even if it's just as an exclusive for people who also own Publisher, in case you don't want Photo to cannibalise it or something (not that a photo editing application should be able to do that, but there are indeed people who do design work in Photoshop, so…)? Or… did you mean to actually include as an accessible feature all along and just forgot to put it in the toolbar?
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Hi guys! As I've said earlier in the forums, apparently Publisher's Baseline Grid Manager is included in the code base of both Designer and Photo.
And, weirdly enough, this feature's corresponding button materialised in both applications, and it seems to be fully functional. However, when customising the toolbar, there doesn't seem any way to put it back there if it ever goes away (or if I actively delete it), nor any other way to access it via the menus, though “snap to baseline grid” is an actual option in the snapping manager.
Can you make this feature accessible by design, since it's already present in the code and seems to work just fine? Even if it's just as an exclusive for people who also own Publisher, in case you don't want Designer to cannibalise it or something? Or… did you mean to actually include as an accessible feature all along and just forgot to put it in the toolbar?
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14 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:
That is what I was missing.
I have been talking apples about your oranges.
Ahaha oh well, no worries, then. I mean, as much as I use all my software in English and give workshops and classes on this kind of stuff, English is not my native language, so I’ve introduced some unnecessary ambiguity there.
Anyway, that A-B scenario finally made it clear, but it’s just peanuts in the grand scheme of things; you’ll finally see why I’m so fed up with waiting for this feature once you see the kind of stuff I did with it.
For some of the simpler projects, I could’ve (nay, should’ve) probably used some built-in pattern-making tools in Ai (and maybe I was a bit dumb and lazy for not having taken the time to learn them way back when, and ended up wasting a lot of time and processor cycles, yes), but some of them, with progressive pseudo-gradients, selectively supressed objects, etc., really called for a greater degree of control and the ability to manually duplicate tens, hundreds or even thousands of objects at a time, and properly snap them to the rest of the pattern right away. Once you see me in action it will all finally make so much more sense.
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On 5/31/2019 at 10:35 AM, gafvert said:
Just tried out the new beta 1.7.0.14, and when I saw that the app had a new app icon I was sure they'd fix this strange oversight with the lack of document icons, but now it seems that they've just done the same thing again and used a version of the app icon for the documents? Only slightly larger? Come on! How hard can it be to actually make recognizable document icons that aren't just the app icon?
Not that hard. As a matter of fact, one of the few things I find Affinity Designer great for is creating macOS icons.
The pixel grid snapping grid works great and, as long as you keep each artboard’s origin coordinates as an integer, you’ll be fine and have no need for Ai’s stupid “make pixel perfect” command. In AD, if you do your prep work properly, everything is always pixel perfect.
And as for creating the final .icns icon files themselves, it’s easy as pie: just plop your exported .png artboards/slices into a folder with an .iconset extension, name your files correctly and run a Terminal command. Boom, instant macOS icon, ready for Retina and old, regular screens and all.
However, I should add that there’s a pretty strong reason for Serif not to have bothered much with it; with QuickLook, which is enabled by default, the Finder already creates preview icons. Still, for those who may wish to disable that feature, those default icons should definitely be HIG-compliant, and they’re miles away from that. There are rules to follow and all of the examples given by @hawk mostly stick to them.
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27 minutes ago, Frozen Death Knight said:
Correction. I do use Illustrator for precision work (my last Illustrator project was building an entire user interface with vectors for a games company), but I am not so well versed in Illustrator that I can describe every feature missing in Affinity like I would be able to do with Photoshop. When you brought up your example I understood what you meant, but I couldn't really deduct what your particular user case would be when you brought the feature up initially. I can understand Old Bruce's reponse to your statement, since it was quite a bit of a sweeping generalisation.
Oh, ok. I stand corrected, then. As for my generalisation, you’re right, it was uncalled for.
Anyway, before leaving once again, I’ll just ask you to trust me on this one; the workarounds offered, while very nice and well-intentioned of you, pale in comparison to what’s possible with this feature, and many of us will benefit immensely from it. Even some of those who may have never tried it in Ai, let alone in Designer (well, it’s not like they could, either, because it doesn’t even exist).
And those videos will further stress my point, because while some of you already “got it”, it was only on an abstract level and even you may be shocked at just how cumbersome it would be to try and redo some of my older Ai projects in Designer. They’re technically possible to make, because Designer is already mature enough in the print production department, but would take me perhaps more than twice as long to do so (and no, considering I do a lot of pattern/symbol-based backgrounds, with hundreds of repeated elements at a time and not always in neat orthogonal or isometric grids, that’s very likely not hyperbole).
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39 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:
It has been stated time after time in many threads that Serif employees read these threads in the Feature Requests but as a matter of policy rarely will they comment on them.
Indeed, you are right. However, they could and should eventually pop up in the roadmap. Well, maybe they won’t until version 3, 4, or never will, but that, too, would have consequences, which I’ve alluded to before.
39 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:I don't know what you mean by "You just can't snap an object to its initial position". It is possible, it is simple and there is more than one way to do so.
I’ve explained it 3 or 4 times already in this thread, but here it goes again this time worded in a different way; it’s the same behavior as (or at least functionally similar to) when dragging in Ai, or the same behaviour when duplicating an object by Option+Dragging and snapping it to its original instance (not outright superimposing it – though that could certainly be an option, and I do use it sometimes in Ai for some applications – but, say, snapping node A to node B’s original position).
I won’t be doing video demos just now because I have a viva to prepare, but sure, come the 25th I’ll get around to it. This feature is essential and easy enough to implement for me to justify doing those.
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18 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:
With the move tool select the object, Duplicate it using Command + J (or what ever the Window's equivalent is). Then you can drag it all you want.
Well, I’ve already addressed that before, but since you’re mentioning it as a workaround, I’ll repeat what I’ve said before: yes, it’s a functional workaround, for a few objects at a time and on a clean canvas; on a busier document, when selecting large numbers of objects or symbols, it gets totally crazy and is wildly impractical. I know because I’ve tried it in Designer already and completely hated it; I’d have trouble selecting just the objects I wanted by dragging a selection rectangle, and then would have to click them one by one (sometimes having to resort to outline view because they would be partially obscured by the new objects I had just created). And it’s a workaround and requires extra clicking and finagling, it’ll always be suboptimal at best.
18 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:Not going to comment on this after all.
Well, if I may ask, was it because my point finally came across, or do you feel I stepped over some line by making assumptions? If it’s the former, great; if it’s the latter, I’m sorry for making generalizations. But hey, I did guess that @Frozen Death Knight doesn’t use Designer mostly for precision, geometric work… I mean, not all of us do, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
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It’s very simple, really; and from an implementation standpoint, if you can achieve the same effect with an Option+Drag duplication operation, just have the Designer rendering engine create a “fake”, temporary, phantom duplicate which will be “left behind”, shown in outline view regardless of the current view mode, and delete it once the drag operation is finished, but otherwise make it behave like a real object.
It might be a little taxing on your system when dragging large numbers of objects at a time, but hey, their engine is supposedly so snappy that I don’t think that would really be a problem (also, not having to render colour, gradients, effects, transparencies, etc., should keep drag operations lean enough), and it could be turned off by default.
So, yeah, let’s be real here: out of all the features I’ve been clamoring for, this has got to be the easiest to implement and the one with the least dependencies on other parts of the app. Messing with the layer model requires a deep rethink of the app (especially the entire coordinate system, which is weird and artboard-centric, but does fit in with the current default model), but this? This is low-hanging fruit.
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On 6/9/2019 at 2:34 AM, walt.farrell said:
What is the use case for wanting to snap an object back to its original position?
Is it simply that you made a mistake and decided not to move it after all (which is easily fixed via Undo), or is it something more complex?
On 6/9/2019 at 2:50 AM, Frozen Death Knight said:Doesn't it work just press undo to snap it back? Not that I disagree with it being a good option to have for snapping, however.
Of some reason I managed to get it to snap to its original position in Affinity Photo in some circumstances when I activated Snap to Bounding Boxes (checked the other options below it too), but in Designer I don't get the same results. Odd.Ok. Imagine I have an object, any object, and I want to offset it by half its length/height; being able to snap it to its former centre point needs that feature.
Imagine that I have a triangle, and I want to put one of its vertices where a different one was; same thing.
Clearly none of you must make much use of vector editors for precision work, because I, for one, use that feature in Ai all the time and I miss it dearly.
And no, this isn’t snapping an object back to its original position, you’ve just described undo. The feature I’m aiming at is being able to snap an object’s nodes or paths to the positions its nodes and paths originally were in before starting the drag operation, but still performing a drag operation to completion.
I’m not even bothering with making more demos at this point because I’m way too busy and stressed out for that. Please fire up an Ai CC trial, turn on Smart Guides (Ctrl/Cmd+U), create some objects, drag them around and notice how they interact with themselves mid-drag. Designer lacks that feature and is much more cumbersome because of that.
- wtrmlnjuc and walt.farrell
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5 minutes ago, fde101 said:
Other similar things have happened with this release that were not entirely expected - people had similar issues with the main toolbar getting out of whack, etc. This one wasn't quite ready to come out of beta just yet, but I'm sure they will get it worked out.
Yep. I noticed that I now have a Baseline Grid Manager button across the suite, that somehow migrated from Publisher; I can't find a toggle for it anywhere else on the interface, though, which means that if I ever remove it I won't be able to add it back.
Because of some weird bug, now both Photo and Designer offer extra functionality. I'm actually thinking of suggesting that that manager thing is made available by default.
I also had some buttons from the wrong personas in Photo, which just crashed the app. Whoops.
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On 6/9/2019 at 6:59 PM, fde101 said:
Open Preferences from the Affinity Photo menu. Navigate to Keyboard Shortcuts. Make sure the two popup menus at the top read Photo and Tools. Click the Reset button.
Thanks, that did the trick! Weird that it should've gone missing by itself, right?
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1 hour ago, velarde said:
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...
I also wanted to focus on this detail in particular and remind Serif devs of another essential UX trait:
Photoshop, while a bit cumbersome itself in its implementation, gets this right, because it gives us some choice. When zooming in and out with the keyboard shortcuts, Command+[+] and Command+[-], the document window automatically resizes, as if the Window>Zoom command was issued concomitantly, thus eschewing the need for that extra user action; when zooming in and out with the Zoom [magnifying glass] tool or with a multitouch gesture like pinch or a Option+two-finger scroll combo, the window maintains its size. That way, managing windows in Photoshop is extremely easy and quick, even if it may appear a bit convoluted to a bystander.
If we want to tile a few, we just have to hit Command+[-] a few times until they are small enough to fit; if we want to fill the screen with one image or even a few and still be able to select them with Application Mission Control (which isn't enabled by default in macOS, but should, and most self-respecting pros take care of that whenever they set up a new Mac), we can just zoom on the image with the trackpad, if it's small, and perform the Window>Zoom command to make it “maximize” (without going under the docked UI items as stated before, obviously).
Alternatively, when we wish to work in only one window at a time, pressing F does the trick without having to activate the Application frame. And this is crucial, for a very important reason: activating the equivalent in Affinity Photo automatically renders Application Exposé/Mission Control completely useless, and even though you could undock file tabs from Photoshop's main window, when toggling the Application frame Photoshop sucks all files into said window, thus resulting in the very same scenario.
If Affinity apps had a proper Separated mode, they would work nicely by default with Application Exposé/Mission Control. If they also offered a “Fullscreen without going fullscreen” mode, weird as that Adobe holdover from back when there wasn't a proper, OS-wide fullscreen mode may be, they would allow you to work on one document at a time and still work nicely with Application Exposé/Mission Control.
The advantage of this feature, especially on bigger screens – and in particular with Adobe's implementation, which resizes any inactive windows back to their original size (and here Serif could try and one-up them by resizing all windows to their original size while App Exposé was toggled, including the current one) –, over the regular fullscreen windows mixed with virtual desktops on Mission Control, is that document windows can be huge if you only have a few of them open, whereas the latter are tiny no matter how few you have open. For photographers working with many photos, even in “pseudo-fullscreen mode”, in Photoshop, this is extremely useful. I'm not even kidding, they are a four-finger swipe – or, in my case, active corner – away, whereas in Affinity Photo you have to go and pick at a tiny tab and can never see them tiled when in proper Single-window or Fullscreen mode. You just can't have your cake and eat it too, and must either keep your desktop über-tidy, or get some desktop-obscuring app (and you would still have to deal with all the other Separated mode shortcomings, of course).
This is one of those rare cases where I say: screw Apple and their official HIG implementation and current dictums. Yes, fullscreen/single-window apps and simple, all-windows-in-a-jumbled-mess-or-grouped-into-smaller-jumbled-messes Mission Control work great in small laptop screens, and should absolutely be embraced. But good old App Exposé and Adobe's arcane methods, for all their own quirkiness, are absolutely key for larger screens. They are holdovers from a nearly bygone era, yes, but there's a reason why they haven't killed them off yet, and probably never will (if anything, that Pro Display XDR beast is absolute proof that computer displays are still growing, not shrinking… 32'' 6K iMac Pro in 5 years' time when that panel – and maybe even that crazy backlighting system – drops a bit in price, anyone? And why wouldn't they add to the product range or fill its slot with a bigger, 8K Pro Display XDR? OLED-based? Who knows, really…). And, once again, Serif could add similar advanced UX tricks which might even be disabled by default so as not to confuse less demanding users. Make it a subset of Separated mode called “Concentration/Focus mode” (in a nod to Microsoft, ha), which is greyed out until the former is activated, or something.
Maybe one day (soon?), when Marzipan/Catalyst gets mature enough and macOS converges further with the other two touchscreen platforms, Apple will allow “intra-window Application Exposé” (“Window Exposé”? It's a sensible name, from a strictly hierarchical standpoint) for single-window applications with a proper, public and documented API; It's not much of a stretch to assume that, since Safari on iPadOS (it's weird calling it that, but I'm sure we'll all get used to it in no time) already does this with its tabs (in fact, that feature appeared at least in iOS 9, because I'm still running it on my iPad 3 and it does that), and Safari on macOS has also been doing this for a while (since… Sierra? High Sierra? Earlier still?). Maybe those who are working with a desktop and a mouse/el cheapo pen-digitiser-only tablet can get a system-wide keyboard shortcut (hopefully a better one than Safari's weird, right-hand-friendly Command+Shift+\) instead of the predictable pinch gesture (maybe adjusted with some extra fingers, 4 or 5 in total, to distinguish it from the two-finger pinch-to-zoom gesture, possibly a back-port to the Mac of the newfangled three-finger pinch-to-cut/copy gesture and definitely the pinch-to-open-Launchpad one) which may activate it, or whatever. But, until then (and I would strongly discourage Serif devs from rushing and trying to implement such a specific feature before Apple makes it available as a prepackaged solution; variable UI gamma does indeed offer more than Apple's own binary dark mode/light mode implementation and absolutely equals Adobe's own, which made it a smart move, but going crazy with aping Safari tabs because maybe it will become a new standard UX model would be just wasting resources, and it's been already long enough since it's been available on iOS/iPadOS for it to maybe not be a priority for them), their photographer users' needs will go unaddressed, and that's a shame. For now, they should take what macOS already offers and users are already accustomed to, and adapt accordingly. I.e., be a good macOS citizen.
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11 hours ago, velarde said:
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.
Precisely. That's the kind of workflow I was talking about. I know I'm not the only one who [sometimes] works like that (and many people do that almost on a daily basis). And I'm dead sure than even some people who are now perfectly used to and happy with working, one photo at a time, on Affinity Photo running on a small 13'' MacBook Pro (I also happen to own one, so it's not like I don't know just how limited it is) may, if they ever get their hands on a 27'' iMac or an otherwise large external display (guess what, I'm using both at the same time and have my palettes on the secondary display, that's why they're always missing from my screenshots), feel completely trapped in Single-window mode. And as soon as they venture into Separated mode, well… the lack of polish starts showing and the whole thing falls apart. Off to Photoshop they go, then, because they do the math and realize the CC subscription is, perhaps, easily paid for by the extra work they can cram through their workday as they no longer have to work around a certain limitation which completely throws off their workflow.
I keep warning Serif about this kind of stuff; just because users are happy now with all the bells and whistles and the default (and arguably polished and perfectly serviceable… for small screens, that is) UX model, that doesn't mean they always will regardless of their future needs. Devs beware.
I know there are many different target demographics to hit with Affinity Photo, but… are photographers working on 27'' iMacs with multiple images open at the same time a niche? Surely there must be a lot of those around, even if they are in the minority. They need a workable, seamless, delightful floating window model, not an app making weird, un-Mac-like decisions for them and which they have to fight at every corner.
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Yep. It could definitely be improved… Your workaround will also work, but only as a one-off for the odd project, not as a workflow to be used daily (that would drive any heavy pro user crazy). By the way, here are some examples of that feature on older software… It's not as good as full-blown video, but you can see how all of these apps respect the window chrome and force it from under any docked floaty bits:
FreeHand MX 2004 with invisible toolbars (because I had Stuffit selected as the active app):
FreeHand MX 2004 with visible toolbars (and also a nice example of a very old multiple-artboard document with universal layers – *wink-wink* *nudge-nudge* – which I did back when I was still a designer foetus, in my third year at the uni):
I didn't have to do anything to avoid the window chrome from going behind the toolbars; when pressing the Zoom button, it would just snap to their left edge. As for the panels, the only thing I missed was the vertical scrollbar and all the scrollbar buttons and resize handles, but as I had, like most people, a scroll wheel mouse (actually, I already had an Apple Mighty Mouse by then) that was no biggie. In any case, Illustrator CS3 solved that for good, as docked panels automatically resized windows to fit along their left edge, too.
Office X for Mac, taken from this article, which also explains the whole earlier Word 6 for Mac debacle, which, if I'm not mistaken, didn't include floating toolbars and irked Mac users to no end also because of that):
Again, the toolbars, when snapped to the edge and to one another, wouldn't allow the title bar to go under them, no matter how hard you tried. I can't absolutely recall if that was the case, but I'm guessing that that floating panel on the side also stopped the Zoom command on its tracks along its right edge, too.
And now, for a more modern app, FontLab VI, in both full “single window” and “separated” mode (they're not really called as such, but you can reproduce both by manually docking the toolbars to the sides of the screen or to the main window):
For a bit of context, FontLab VI is based, of all frameworks, on Qt, for crying out loud! The very same framework used to produce that Soulseek Qt abomination. The difference here being that Adam Twardoch and his buddies have been working on a cross-platform (i.e. Mac+Windows) suite of apps for decades now, and fully respect the expectations of Mac users because they have all that prior knowledge and do care. IMHO, and no offense, but Serif devs seem to suffer a bit from the Dunning-Kruger effect when it comes to Mac-specific UX and UI; sure, they are excellent coders, and they indeed managed to produce a miraculously fast and smooth render engine and a boatload of tools to go with it. But for all their expertise, there are probably no first and foremost Mac devs/product managers over there a day older than 35 (i.e. who started coding for the Mac before 2005-ish); otherwise they would probably know just how important these details are for Mac users, and sweat them with nary a thought because they would know the good ol' Apple HIG by heart, too.
I would strongly advise Serif to interact more, and compare notes with the guys from Panic, the Omni Group, John Gruber from the blog Daring Fireball, these guys from FontLab Inc. who I've just mentioned, Georg Seifert and Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer from Glyphs.app who I also mention on occasion, etc. Indy Mac devs – both Mac-centric and cross-platform but with a strong Mac tradition – who aren't even their competitors and who really show they care in whatever piece of software they put out there. I, for one, feel a bit betrayed sometimes; Affinity started out as Mac-only, but never really felt 100% like it, and that perception hasn't changed one bit.
The preferences window still looks odd through and through, as do the gradient transitions on titlebars because of the custom UI gamma thing and dark/light UI before that was even a system-wide thing – I'm guessing Serif eschewed native interface elements and conventions so they could implement those features, which would also explain why the window borders and titlebar corners looked a bit off during the transition to Mojave; on the other hand, Adobe CS/CC has always looked weird for similar reasons, so… meh –, but you know what? I've already let that kind of nit-picky UI stuff slide and am willing to live with it – again, see my comments regarding CS/CC; I really stopped caring a long time ago, and as long as apps aren't broken by design to the point they use crappy Flash-based panels (yeah, Adobe really did that a lot at one point) and don't react properly to a keyboard (Affinity apps had, and maybe still do, some issues with tabbing between panel fields, by the way… and then there are all those modifier key inconsistencies with bundled or otherwise first-party macOS apps I keep harping on about) and a multi-touch mouse, I'm good.
I've been focusing mostly on UX instead because, at the end of the day, that's what really counts and affects one's daily grind, and this incomplete and cumbersome Separated Mode is, accordingly, yet another hill I'm willing to die on. If FontLab Inc. devs managed to do it properly – and on version 6.0.x and using a completely different framework than the Carbon-based one, probably some arcane Metrowerks CodeWarrior nonsense or something, they were were used to, no less –, so will Serif's team, eventually.
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4 hours ago, Frozen Death Knight said:
I'm not sure I quite understand what you mean by your first feature request. Do you have an example of how it should work like in a video or something?
As for your second one, I am not a Mac user, but the way "New View" works on Windows (I guess that's the one you are referring to with "Separated Mode") is that it opens up a new window of your project in docked mode as a tab next to your original file that you can then just drag to the side like to a second monitor. Is it supposed to act differently on Mac? Do you have an example video of that too?Ok, let's address these separately:
No, I do not have a video example yet, and unfortunately I shall not be doing one of those until after the 24th, as I have a keynote presentation to make, hundreds of pages to print and annotate and a few books and papers (including my entire dissertation) to review yet again. But I'll try and do a few after that, in between sending out CVs and going on vacation.
As for the second one, it depends on the app; Safari, Finder, etc., (i.e. apps that open multiple windows, but which aren't necessarily documents) allow you to open new windows in a “old-school” way (usually cascading, though when they are full height they open side by side) by pressing Command+N, and tabbed, by pressing Command+T, whereas Photoshop allows you to set the default as a global preference. In either kind of app and default setting, you can always dock and undock windows from tabs (though in the Finder and Safari, to dock single windows to a different window you must have “Show tab bar en
abled”.
Now, the entire CS suite, traditionally, worked in a Application Frame-less state, with docked/floating toolbars, toolboxes and panels, and floating document windows that, when zoomed, would automatically fit the available space, as long as the Workspace (i.e. the Studio, in Adobe's parlance) was fully docked. The intermediate step, if I am not mistaken, was the addition of tabbed windows. And the ultimate step was the addition of an Application Frame, which looked and worked precisely like all versions of Adobe apps since Illustrator v.1 on Windows, Corel on Windows, and Affinity's default mode since its inception on both OSes. But, to this day, you can still work with Adobe CC's DTP portion (the old Design Standard/Premium subset of the larger Master Collection, which equates roughly to Affinity, except for the added bonus of Acrobat Pro) in that “classic Mac” mode.
I've since stopped working in that mode in Illustrator and InDesign, mostly because of the advent of Affinity (so I would get used to the Application Frame, because Affinity's Separated Mode was and still is suboptimal), and also because I get spoiled with my 27'' iMac with 40 GB of memory and open too many windows for Exposé/Mission Control to be useful (though I usually work around that by using a dedicated desktop just for DTP apps) but I keep working in that mode in Photoshop. There's no other way to easily move entire layers across documents, period. And there's no split document view/automatic tiling on Affinity Photo, either, so… Yeah, things look a bit bleak. I tested Affinity Photo the other day for a pro bono project (basically I was recreating a vaporwave filter a friend of mine used on some Android app, except on a proper photo editor and with the original, full-res image), and I did have to compare two files side by side, which forced me to fidget with window resizing operations to get my views just right, something which, on Photoshop, would've been a breeze. Now imagine if I had to an operation across four different files at the same time or something? Imagine if I had to do that every day, for 8 hours?
So, in a nutshell – and, unfortunately, only in screenshot form, and not video screen capture –, this is what I wish for. I would like to see toolbars docking to the edges of the screen, and windows not sliding behind them (whether when performing the Window>Zoom/Option+Green button command, or when manually dragging the title bar behind them), just like in Adobe CC and other old school Mac apps. Seriously, try it out on any Adobe app on a Mac (you have to turn off the Application frame first, though; it's akin to Separated Mode, except… it's functional, useful and most definitely intuitive and not frustrating in the least): when the viewport zoom level is small, the windows will neatly wrap around the content, when it's high and makes the canvas exceed your screen size the windows will neatly snap to the docked UI elements, and then you try and drag the windows behind them, no matter how far you push them, their titlebars will always snap back into full view. And this is good, well-researched UX. Is it too much to ask?
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On 6/3/2019 at 5:13 PM, Old Bruce said:
What I do is
Select the object, hold down the option key begin dragging (this makes a copy) let go of the option key (snapping is back on) and then I can snap it back in place if I so want.
Yes, that's what I eventually resorted to doing, too. Except then I end up with one (or multiple) extraneous object(s) which I then have to delete. It's an extremely cumbersome workaround, which becomes vastly impractical with larger, multi-object selections (or, worse even, selections of objects which then obscure or are obscured by others).
You see, most of my proposed solutions – which are, in a nutshell, reimplementations of stuff Adobe already did – make sense, are well thought-out and can save a lot of time. Which, for all their other failings, is a testament to Adobe's developers' foresight. These aren't just “entrenched Ai user behaviours”, as if that's a inherently a bad thing or something; they are about the only practical and logical ways of solving certain use cases. Ghost objects – whether they are a ghost of the “before” or the “after” – and self-snapping are useful and, in some cases, essential features, period. And workarounds sometimes just don't cut it.
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1 hour ago, Old Bruce said:
Hold down the Option key and it doesn't go to Full Screen mode. and this disabled green button turned into Zoom would go against the Apple guidelines.
I'm obviously not 100% sure, but I reckon it wouldn't. Is there anything forcing developers to implement it by default? There are many apps which, to this day, still don't support fullscreen mode as a design and UX decision, and Apple hasn't ceased promoting them. Besides Illustrator and, more importantly, Photoshop (duh… and there's a reason for that, so users can do precisely what I described above and compare images, drag layers and other stuff across documents, etc.), I can name a few other examples, if you wish. And it's not like Apple is enforcing the HIG with a stick and eschewing apps and developers if they fail to comply at every step of the way (Affinity being the most glaring example; it suffers from a lot of un-Mac-like decisions and behaviours and, yet, it's consistently put by Apple high up on a pedestal at every opportunity – like, say, WWDC, their app stores, etc.… As long as a developer takes advantage of their latest tech and SDKs, Apple really doesn't care if they veer off of conventions slightly, especially if it makes sense and doesn't break something else, and that really doesn't seem to be the case here).
As for the workaround you suggested, I already addressed it in my first comment. It doesn't work properly. When you Option+Click the now mostly “Fullscreen” button, the window indeed doesn't go into Fullscreen mode, yes, but the button still behaves as a MS Windows “maximize” button (something which, on the Mac, should only ever happen with single-window apps just like Affinity apps themselves while on single-window mode, iTunes, Calendar, etc.), and not as Window>Zoom should behave as per the HIG. When performing Window>Zoom on a floating document window, the chrome should always toggle between default/custom (it starts out as a default size and once you resize it, the coordinates and size are saved somewhere) and fit-to-content sizes (I'm not even sure how that would work on Designer and Publisher, but if you were at such a small zoom level that all your artboards/objects/pages fit on your screen, I suppose the window could shrink to fit them; as for Photo, make it behave the same as in Photoshop, period).
I didn't want to go there, but you forced my hand; I'm sorry if I come across as rude or something, but please don't argue with a veteran Mac user who studied UX in higher education, or if you do at least take the time to properly decode what I've said. I know my comments are long, but the information, albeit a bit drowned in fluff and asides, is all there and it's entirely factual and correct. As I've said before, I'm no expert, in the sense that I didn't take a full degree like the postgraduate one some former colleagues of mine are now teaching, but I'm a bit of a UI history buff myself (all the way back to Douglas Engelbart's famous mouse demo and the Xerox Alto) and I know without a doubt a badly implemented Mac app, professional or otherwise, when I see one. I've strongly, persistently and informedly complained about this and other issues (which you've recently saw me rehash on the forums as well) more than four years ago, and they all went unaddressed. As I've said before, I'm unabashedly sticking to a bit of a program here: not giving Serif devs a moment of respite until I'm no longer available to badger them with these requests or until they do indeed address them (whichever comes first, and right now I'll have to go offline so I can prepare for my viva voce on the 24th; after that, it's a complete blank, and maybe you'll still see me around, or maybe I'll be gone to work full-time somewhere, pursue further research opportunities, whatever).
To recap: Serif's implementation of Separated Mode seems to be completely lifted off of other “lite” apps such as Pixelmator, and, thus, suffers from the same glaring limitations and “un-Mac-like behaviour”, instead of going full-on against the 800lb-gorilla-beast-thing like its marketing seems to imply. It feels like an afterthought, like something which the devs themselves don't really use daily and, as such, never got to become frustrated with, and it's not nearly as useful or practical if it had been done right in the first place. And for examples on how it can be done right, it's not like there aren't hundreds of apps, both old and recent, an official Apple HIG and nagging veteran users like myself to learn from. At this moment, Serif devs have zero excuse not to get this right by at least, say, version 2 or 3 of the suite (yes, I'm indeed giving them some leeway here, as I remember Adobe CS' palette implementation, for instance, being a complete, all-over-the-place “flustercuck” until CS3, with internally inconsistent implementations such as those weird InDesign's CS/CS2 sliding tabs). Huge screens, floaty UI bits – some of which could and should be dockable, even in separate mode – and pro photographers and designers wishing to tile their stuff, automatically or by hand, on their Macs aren't going anywhere, no matter how many million iPadOS-powered iPad Pros Apple ships, so these features should at least be tucked into some internal roadmap of theirs somewhere.
Anyway, my job here is, for now, done. I'll point whatever easily fixable bugs I find here and there (and you may have noticed I'm already doing that much more frequently, again) if I keep testing Affinity apps, but hopefully these last few posts cover my biggest, “foundational” gripes with the suite (if you put them all on one table you'll recognise the two running themes are “inconsistencies with the host OS” and “inconsistencies with sound WYSIWYG behaviours well accepted and established across the industry” which Serif looked over or, worse even, created for no good – or overall positive and justifiable – reason; those are the biggest factors which, historically, made Mac – and pro – users eschew altogether or otherwise tolerate through gritted teeth certain software packages – never forget Word 6! Ai versions in general in the eyes of former FreeHand users! QuarkXPress during the OS X transition! The list goes on… –, as I've said before, perhaps Serif would have even more happy users, right now, if they addressed those). I would indeed love to be able to make more video demos, but considering all the work I have to do over the next two weeks, you guys are on your own for now, sorry. If you want to see how proper Mac apps in “separated mode” behave, fire a an old Rosetta-compatible Snow Leopard VM (there are some pre-packaged ones lying around, I'm sure), or Basilisk II/Sheepshaver if you want to go even further back (and yes, I know that would be venturing further into Mac OS Classic/Carbon territory, but it's still possible to do those under Cocoa – Adobe CC being a prime example of that, and it works perfectly –, and it should be done if and when it makes sense), download some old abandonware and see for yourselves. Do your own research, please. That should be your job, not mine.
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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.
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Hi guys! Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.
I was rearranging my Studio panels across the suite so that they would be somewhat similar on both Single-window and Separated mode, and I realised Publisher was missing the Cmd+Opt+F shortcut for that toggle which is already included by default on Designer and Photo.
I manually added it back via System Preferences, but having it set by default on Publisher as well is obviously the optimal scenario.
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Hi guys. Basically that's just it, what's on the tin.
I was fooling around with my new Huion tablet drivers and realised that that essential shortcut for a multi-touch-less workflow – I've since stopped using my Bamboo Pen & Touch, and besides my H950P I only have a Magic Mouse connected to my iMac – was MIA (it's present and fully functional on both Designer and Publisher on their default personas, and also on their respective Pixel and Photo personas).
Can we expect it to be back on the first 1.7.0.1 fix?
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Hi guys. Despite all my latest criticism on the suite as a whole, and all the delays in Publisher in particular, your progress on the latter lately is absolutely commendable, and I must say that I am very happy with its current state (cool new splash screen too, by the way), as it does feature some essential features for longer texts, which may come in handy if it's released in time for my next project. The number of “must-have” stuff you managed to finish in time for the GM is, indeed, impressive, and I can only hope you keep up this level of work across the suite.
Now, as for the pre-order pricing and installation when it finally comes out, I have just a practical question: how exactly does the whole payment and download situation work on the Mac? Does our pre-order give us access to some sort of Mac App Store download redeeming code or something? Or are we buying the app directly from you and then have to update it internally like with the betas?
abled”.
Make Baseline Grid Manager accessible by design
in Feedback for Affinity Designer V1 on Desktop
Posted
Not really. And I won't. Serif can't really surprise me any more than this, for reasons I'm not legally allowed to discuss (unless, of course, the special relationship I do/did have with them is/was, in fact, a tad meaningless, or their strategy calls for an added level of secrecy, which I would definitely understand). I should know for a fact that there's not much more to their product line than what's already public knowledge (unless there's a big surprise coming and, if so, good on them). Also, if I had to guess, the Keynote will either serve as a platform for announcing to the world at large the same Publisher version we already know, or maybe previewing some new component (the openly-“secret” DAM, which has been alluded to in the public forums by the devs themselves, anyone?). It will make a lot of people happy, I'm sure. As for current customers with very real, objective grievances? Ah, who cares, am I right?
Also, having the option to align to a baseline grid which you can't control or customise makes zero sense. It's bad form, bad UX, bad everything. And an extremely obnoxious decision if it is in fact just a matter of market segmentation. Affinity apps should, by definition, have a bit more of redundancy than competing packages; it really comes with the territory of using a “shared document format”. Serif should have foreseen this, and I know there must be a cut-off point somewhere (Designer should never ever have multiple pages aligned to a spine, or master pages, or Table of Contents and Index features, for instance), but that “border” should be more blurred and forgiving for users who own the entire suite (and Publisher personas already opened that can of worms, there's a precedent already set there). If anything, because those are the ones who will create the biggest number of projects with objects/documents made on more than one component of the suite, duh.
Anyway, I've just updated Designer to v. 1.7.1 on my iMac and I'm already beating myself over it, as @Patrick Connor and his team made good on the promise of removing the Baseline Grid manager button. I should be downgrading to v. 1.7.0, by copying both the app and its preferences from my MacBook and painstakingly recreating my Studio to its former state (heh, I've been working for the past few months without a working Time Machine backup, whoops). Then, I'd make a poster for the 10th Typography Meeting using this hidden feature just to show off a very real use case (even if it means I'll have to redo my Ai templates just for this occasion). Hey, I might even make a little demo video of the entire process (probably of the process of redoing my poster for the 9th edition, as otherwise I'd have to wait until mid-summer, after the Scientific Commission finishes going through all the submissions). But you know what the ideal scenario would've been? Perhaps Serif could've asked me to test this feature, so they could see if it was worth adding in an official capacity; I'd gladly have done it, and wil still do if asked (or maybe even if not asked, just for the sake of it, but I'm not really feeling it for reasons I'll explain further down).
I'd be putting my money where my mouth was, as I believe this feature is already good enough to use it in real projects. And since I already have Ai templates ready to go, and Designer supposedly honours a baseline grid – which, mind you, it can't officially control –, I'd be hoping that whatever changes I'd make to it would stick deep into the file and work in the future. And if they didn't, I'd always have Ai as a fallback. Or InDesign. Maybe even Publisher, but I'm pissed enough about this not to use it for that, and I'm even passing on the chance of buying it with the 20% discount at Serif's store because I'd rather have it right on the MAS, so I could know when there would be updates available without having to check the forums or open the app unless I absolutely needed it for some reason.
But heck, at this point, unless there are some big surprises at this keynote and some big changes in priorities, I'm even reconsidering the whole point of even buying Publisher at all. And the only reason I'm not even thinking of asking for a refund of Designer and Photo is the simple fact that it's been ages since I've bought them and I already made enough money off of them; that would just be insane and unethical. But the time I've spent here on the forums beating dead horses? Nobody's giving me that back.
The best comparison I can come up with is: Apple's languishing 2013 “trashcan” Mac Pro and the perception it created among pro users that they were just being ignored. I was never in the market for a Mac Pro but, from reading their complaints about the state of affairs until very recently, I can assure you I feel the same way about Affinity. Funnily enough, there's a common theme to both companies: iPadOS (well, in Apple's case, it was more the iPhone, but I digress) as a vortex of attention and investment. Yes, it's the future, but until Apple stops designing and manufacturing Macs, and Serif stops coding versions of Affinity for macOS and Windows, they'd better make a killer job of catering to that market, too.
So yeah. Serif is most definitely in the process – hopefully reversible, but I'm not holding my breath here, and this disgraceful reaction to my suggestion, compounded with a Keynote focused only in photography, may be the final nails on the coffin – of losing a few hundreds of potential users. I'm not even a teacher yet, and I'm already a quite influential guy here in Lisbon. I'm the one guy hundreds of people (more than 250 on my Facebook page, and then some, because they just advertise my services via word-of-mouth) still turn to these days when their macOS/Adobe CC/CS installations/actual Macs get borked and need fixing. I gave Serif several warnings. I asked for stuff, some of it very simple and reasonable, some of it more complex, for years, and most of it went unaddressed (they're not even in the roadmaps, not even as a tiny blip on the radar, zilch, nada).
The truth of the matter is that, four years in, I keep using Adobe CC for almost everything, and whenever I try Designer, the app I would use the most, for even the most basic of tasks, I end up being frustrated like hell. What's even the point? And in the event that I do buy Publisher, I'm likely even putting off using it for an upcoming project that was actually simple enough to typeset with it and would line up neatly with its public release… I'm just not feeling like it right now, as this whole viva thing is very draining and I'll barely have time to get my bearings together to test, head-first, a new piece of software in a real-world scenario. The same goes for that academic poster, which has a tight deadline that will likely coincide with this DTP project, and even though I already somewhat know my way around Designer, multitasking with two different suites and their respective, vastly different muscle-memory models is a recipe for total disaster. Nuh-uh. There's no way I'm jeopardising both my academic and professional careers because of a piece of software, no matter how keen I am on putting it through its paces.
I still want Serif to succeed, but I'm fed up with wasting my time. I have work to do. Vacations to enjoy. Stuff to research. I just want my tools to work, to be versatile, to be quick – not just smooth, but quick, because I'd rather use a choppy CC app which allows me to automate workflows than super slick apps which are then dumbed-down by default and/or incomplete – and to pay for themselves – see above; time is money, and if CC keeps saving me time, I will gladly pay for it (even after having invested in Serif apps, yes; they'll just sit in the drawer, sadly). I'll go even further and put it out there for the world to read: Affinity on the desktop is probably too cheap for what it already is. And, at the same time, I should've known from the get-go that it was too good to be true. It could never, at 1/4 of the price of the old CS6 Design Standard, seriously compete with it until version… 5? 6? How long will we have to wait for a true CC alternative? But perhaps keeping the current pricing for the education market and raising it by a staggering 200% could still be tenable (at the end of the day, it would still be 1/2 the price of that old CS sub-suite, and the same as 14 months' worth of a CC subscription, only perpetually licensed), and allow Serif to actually finance itself and compete with Adobe on all design fronts, right now. Because, as it stands, it really feels a bit like a loss-leader-wannabe and makes me fear for the future, that's what it is. If Serif wants to hike prices for version 2, I'm all for it, as long as they promise, if not outright deliver, a more solid suite right from the initial feature roadmap.
As for my feature suggestions, I'd also like for them not to fall on completely deaf ears. At this point, the only thing I'm doing for Serif is not even for Serif per se. I kindly answer information requests on Affinity-related Facebook pages, and more often than not I end up directing users right here, to the forums (though I do give straight answers frequently, too). And guess what, they love it. I'm doing it because that's the stuff I'm made of (you know, just as in that old saying, “you can take the Mac guy out of the Mac Room, but you can't take the Mac Room out of the Mac guy”). I do like to help people, and since these souls already spent their hard-earned money on Affinity apps, I might as well assist them in recouping their investment when the proverbial crap hits the fan. I also like to help small (or, in this case, smallish/indie) businesses out when I believe them, but now I will, once again, kindly ask you people to do your part. Peace out.