Kal

I completely agree. The undo/redo stack should be reserved for destructive actions only. This has been raised in the past and ignored by the developers. When it was raised as a bug here, they closed it as 'by design' without (it would seem) taking the time to understand why the behaviour is completely unnecessary and a frustration for many. It was also discussed here and requested again here. So I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for this to be fixed. In Affinity Designer and Photo, you have a Snapshots panel, which enables you to save various states and switch between them, but it's a pretty clunky process in practice—after saving each snapshot you have to select one with the mouse, then click a tiny icon, then repeat if you want to switch back and forth to compare them—you can't just click (or even double-click) on a snapshot to view it. (I know, it boggles the mind.) In any case, the feature didn't find its way to Publisher. What you can do, rather than deselect objects, is hold down the space bar to temporarily hide the selection boxes. However, this will not work if you have text selected, or the keyboard focus happens to be in some UI text field.

Ah okay. That's what I meant when I asked 'are you sure the ruler isn't off the edge of the canvas?' In that case, what you're seeing is just the standard behaviour, where a guide is removed by dragging off the canvas.

How very strange that this works for you and not me. I just tested in all three apps, and the behaviour is the same for each—if I'm zoomed in on the page and quickly drag and drop a guide to (or beyond) the ruler, the guide just ends up off screen at the point where I released the mouse button. This was mentioned earlier, in response to the original question. At this stage we're discussing how the task of deleting guides could be improved. If you happen to be zoomed up on a page, I think you ought to be able to drag a guide back to the ruler to remove it. That just makes intuitive sense to me. You know, I just assumed this is how it worked in Illustrator, but I just checked and no—it only works that way in InDesign! I guess in Illustrator, I was just in the habit of selecting a guide and hitting delete. I think InDesign gets it right in every way. You can delete a guide by any of these means: Drag a guide to the ruler Select a guide and press the Delete key Select Layout > Create Guides and check 'Remove Existing Ruler Guides'. This just makes it all super easy. In addition, you can place guides off the edge of the page should you wish to—although the value of that might be debatable. You can also trigger auto-scroll by dragging a guide off the page and beyond the ruler—although the value of autoscrolling for guide placement is also debatable IMHO.

I can't get this to work. Even if I do it quickly, so as to avoid auto-scrolling, the guide just moves under the ruler. When you do it, are you sure the ruler isn't off the edge of the canvas? I think both of those are good ideas.

Thanks Dan. Yes, very helpful. Coming from Illustrator, I don't find it intuitive to select the object that I'm not moving or modifying. But in a way it makes sense… It allows you to see the node you're trying to snap to.

I want to grab a bunch of objects, and move them as a group. This is easy with the Move Tool, but I need to use the Node Tool, because I need to snap a node on one of these objects (a curve) to another node in the artwork. These are the steps I'm trying: Select all the objects (a combination of curves and geometric shapes). Drag a marquee selection around all the selected objects. (I'd expect at this point, to see all the nodes/dots on all the objects to be filled, but the geometric shapes still have unfilled dots.) Click and drag on a selected node. (Only the curves move, not the geometric shapes.) The Node Tool works for selecting and moving normal curves, and it works for selecting and moving geometric shapes—just um, not at the same time. I'd call this a bug, but I’m posting it as a feature request to preempt being told that it’s the expected behaviour. PS. As a side-note, If you select a geometric shape, then drag a selection marquee around it multiple times, it alternatively deselects and selects it completely, indicating that there is some kind of invisible selection at work. If you then try the same on a normal curve, it does a funky double take, and the marquee vanishes. It's all a bit weird.

I must be missing something here surely, but I can find no way to snap to a smooth node on a curved path. I have an end point on a simple line that I wish to snap to the node of another path. With 'snap to object geometry' turned on, the point will stick to the curve as I drag it around, but it will not snap to the actual node in the middle of that curve. I've tried turning each of the snapping options off and on, but with no joy. Any ideas? Or is this a shortcoming of Designer's drawing and editing tools?

Yes, or drag it back to the ruler from whence it came (which is how I've always removed guides in other apps). Given that this doesn't work, dragging it off the canvas always leaves me wondering if it's really gone, or if it's just hiding out of sight.

+1 to this request. It's a limitation that affects all Affinity products, on both Mac and Windows. As such, 'Feature Requests, Suggestions & Discussions > Feedback for the Affinity Suite of Products' is possibly a better place to continue the discussion. As it happens, another user posted here recently: Workspace customization improvements

This is a long-standing request from many users. It is perplexing that such a standard (and one would think, simple to implement) feature would be ignored for so long. As user @Samoreen said on another thread: These kind of issue serves to illustrate my love-hate relationship with Affinity products. I absolutely LOVE that we have a very real alternative to Adobe products. The tools are powerful, and in many areas they shine brighter than Adobe's tired old offerings. On the other hand, some basic usability issues seem to hang about forever. It drive me nuts at times. Take 'Separated Mode' for example as discussed in this thread. In Affinity apps, basic window management commands (like maximise) completely ignore the location of toolbars and studio panels, making for a pretty frustrating experience!

@JGD, that's quite the novel you've written here! I definitely don't have time to read it all… But as for your feature request, let me just say three words… YES. YES. YES. As it stands, the Separated Mode experience is so bad, I'm guessing none of the Affinity devs actually use it themselves. One quickly tires of doing this every single time one opens or creates a new file: Manually drag window to the top left of the visible screen. Select bottom right corner of window and drag to the bottom right of the visible screen. Click Command-0 to 'Zoom to Fit'. And that's when you just have the one file open. Heaven help you if you want to see multiple windows side by side (which is kind of the whole point of Separated Mode).

The 'More' button is more than little easy to miss! Would love to see the UI improved here. Once found, it works well though.

Hi Sean. I'm not sure I quite understand what you're saying. I do understand that the text frame resizes as you type (to fit the width of text), but I'm not sure why it can't resize about the centre of the text (if the type is centred) or the right of the text (if the type is right aligned), etc. I mean, currently that's what it appears to do… But it's only when you have precise requirements that you notice it might be out by a point or two. I guessed (as per the title of this post) that it's because the centre of the type doesn't match the centre of the text frame for some reason. I think the expected behaviour for most users would be that it matches, which is why I called it a bug. What do you mean by 'the align status is not remembered'? Do you mean, if you switch alignment, the text frame stays put and the point of reference moves? For example, in Illustrator it's the opposite: if you change the alignment of type (without a frame), the anchor point stays put and the type moves accordingly (which I think is the preferable behaviour, but that's possibly just because I'm used to it.) Unless I've misunderstood, I don't agree that the chosen node in the transform panel should affect the alignment of type, as this might conflict with the paragraph alignment settings. I see entering type as quite a different activity to transforming an object.

I just think we need the developers to fix it. :-)

Yep, I'm using the Artistic Text tool. The equivalent in Illustrator (clicking with the Type Tool, rather than clicking and dragging) doesn't have this behaviour. In Illustrator, you can see the centre point, and it stays put when retyping. I just followed your (much simpler!) example, observing coordinates in the Transform panel while changing a zero character to a one (using 50 pt type). The error varies depending on whether the type is left aligned or centred: Movement of left aligned type: 0.1 pts Movement of centred type: 1.8 pts So only the tiniest of errors when left aligned, but a huge error when centred. Strange.

This odd behaviour is a little difficult to describe in words, but is easily seen by following these steps: Draw a symmetrical shape (say a circle) and elsewhere, type a symmetrical character (say the number zero). Select the text character and set the paragraph alignment to 'Centre Align'. Select both objects and align their centres using the 'Align Horizontally > Align Centre' option from the toolbar. Now, select the text character and change it to an asymmetrical character (say the number one). Repeat step 3, and observe that one of the two objects moves slightly. The movement, observed in step 5, should not happen, because the two objects were already centred, and the text itself was also centred. This suggests that the centre of the text does not properly align with the centre of its containing object. I would consider this unexpected and undesirable behaviour.

Great suggestions Aammppaa. I do agree with metajake in principle though, that non-destructive actions (like deselecting an object) shouldn't be added to undoable history. Without thinking too hard about how or where this catches me out, I know it does from time to time. As I said on metajake's other post: "Some people may remember that with InDesign CS3, Adobe started including non-destructive actions (switching to preview mode, showing and hiding guides, etc) in the undo/redo stack, and it was a nightmare. People hated it, and Adobe restored the previous behaviour. In Adobe apps, I like that the relevant selection comes back when you undo or redo." The Adobe behaviour provides the best of both worlds I think… You can safely deselect an object without losing redos, but if you do undo or redo, you get your selection back.

Yes. Thanks for that. I see the devs have acknowledged it as a well-intentioned, 'long standing bug' and talked about fixing it. But that was back in 2016! Yikes. I guess I shouldn't hold my breath.

I've been noticing that as I work on complex artwork in Designer, I invariably end up with unwanted duplicates of various objects. Since each object is perfectly aligned with its duplicate, I don't notice unless I try to edit, move or delete one of them, or unless I happen to notice them in the Layers panel. I've been clueless as to how these duplicates are being created—I just assumed something about the way I work isn't jibing with the Designer way. (I never had this problem in Illustrator.) Now I think if I've found the likely culprit—at least one of them anyway. I notice that if I copy an object by option-dragging (a single action), it takes not one but two undos to restore the status quo. The first undo doesn't delete the duplicate object—it just moves it back to the precise location of the original! (See attached screen-capture.) Is this the intended behaviour or a bug? I can't imagine why anyone would want a single action to require two undos, particularly given the potential for duplicates as I have discovered. Affinity Designer duplicate undo issue.mov

I agree LCamachoDesign. Working with colour palettes is a frustrating exercise in Designer. Your suggestions would take it closer to Illustrator in this regard. (I don't always say this, but Adobe gets colour swatches right.) I would add to your list: Drag and drop of colour swatches within palettes Simple way to add Pantone swatches to document palettes (drag and drop, or contextual menu) Retain Pantone colour names (don't change them to Global Colour 1, etc) Search field in 'Add Global Color' panel, and edit colour pop-up. Without these features, it really is hard to work with Pantone swatches and spot colours. An especially odd and confusing occurrence happens when you make a new global swatch from a Pantone swatch. Whether it's a spot colour or not, you can right-click on the new swatch and choose 'Rename Spot'. It then brings up what appears to be the correct Pantone name, but clicking 'OK' does not change the swatch from 'Global Colour 71' or whatever it is. (I'm scared to try and override the suggested Pantone name for fear of what it might do to the original Pantone swatch!) All in all, it's just very confusing and counterintuitive. Yep. Illustrator works a bit like this, while InDesign has an explicit 'Name with Color Value' option.

I notice you can transform a selection using the Transform panel, which is good, but I agree it would be great if we could transform selected paths/nodes with the cursor.

Thanks MEB. :)

Thank you, that worked. I discovered that some of those steps were unnecessary. The key factor seemed to be moving the objects with the Node Tool (not the Move Tool) by grabbing one of the points that needs to be snapped (or enabling the third snap button). Unfortunately, you can't seem to move the circle with the node tool, but to avoid converting the circle to curves I dragged the L shape instead, and this worked. Looking forward to some improvements here, because this feels like I'm having to learn Designers' idiosyncrasies to accomplish something that should be pretty simple and intuitive.

I have two simple shapes, a circle and an 'L' shape. (See the attached screenshot.) I'm trying to align the circle to the inner edges of the L, so that they touch at two points. When I drag the circle, it refuses to snap to these edges. I can't even get guides to snap! I've played around with the snapping manager, but to no avail. Curiously, when transforming the circle, snapping to the inner edges works just fine! Just not when dragging. It's driving me nuts. Please help before I give up and do the job in Illustrator!)

Wait up… I just discovered 'Create Palette from Document' under the swatches options menu. That essentially achieves what I wanted and in a more elegant way than Illustrator ever did. Carry on… I'm happy. :)