Jeremy Bohn

Screenshot attached. See the columns are shaded and now lay overtop of the photos and text which makes them look washed out. It didn't do this for me the night before the new build came out when I started this design. Either a s setting got changed by the new build or the behaviour was changed.

Thanks Walt.

I think if you read the rest of the forum you'll see why it's essential to many people. You don't need to understand it or need it yourself, just accept that a lot of people require it. I work at a printing company and often need to be a lot more precise in measuring things. Percentage comes into play there. If I place one image and then manually have to make it smaller, then place a second image that needs to be scaled down the same amount, how can I tell by how much the first image was scaled down? With InDesign, I would select both placed images and then change the percentage to 25% (for example). Percentage also comes into play when I am creating different sized versions of the same file (say, different sized posters), so I can make sure in the new size that all elements are scaled properly. There are of course work arounds in Publisher but it takes more time and as posted above, sometimes requires doing the math manually. fde101 above says "percentage of what?" - this would be a percentage of the current size. So if a box is 2x2 and you choose to scale by 200%, then the box increases to 4x4. Now the 4x4 size is considered 100% for that object. Photos are the same except dpi is involved.

I didn't know what we were expecting, only that it is a known issue.

Ahh thanks guys, so it should be page down. The problem is the Document menu only shows it to be a regular arrow, not that funky arrow, so I was trying the arrow keys. Not sure if that's a Publisher bug or OS bug. I also found another funky right-arrow for Toggle UI. Not sure that it's supposed to be.

Thanks. I thought there was feature like that but couldn't find it. So the question is why did that get enabled on its own. It seemed to only happen right after installing the new build so my assumption was it's a bug. I think I'm going to remove the keyboard shortcut to it because it's just the \ key which could be too easily hit by accident.

This isn't right... take a look at my screenshot of the Document menu. Add Page, Next Page and Previous page all use the arrow key, but none of those keyboard shortcuts work. Now open Preferences and look in Keyboard Shortcuts... the shortcut is not a regular arrow there which you can see in my second screenshot (I already changed Next Page by the time I took the screenshot). If I retype each keyboard shortcut then it uses the correct arrow and the keyboard shortcuts work. I don't know what the intent was for those keyboard shortcuts - either they are wrong in Preferences or the Mac menu is not displaying it correctly. I'm not even sure what to press to get that kind of arrow!

I agree with all this. I just started using Publisher on a small project and I find it hard to managing sizing of objects of all kinds if percentage isn't part of the tools. It could be in the Transform panel or even in the contextual toolbar, and not just for images but all items.

Not fixed in build 238.

Once a picture is placed into a picture frame, where can I see its attributes? I've spent 10 minutes searching. Where can I see the size of the picture, how much it's scaled, what the aspect ratio is? Rotating a picture within a frame appear to be a chore too - I figured out that I have to command click in the frame to select the photo but half the time the rotation cursor doesn't pop up. macOS Mojave

View > Show Column Guides This seems to have changed. Now the column shading is on TOP of the content which makes everything appear to have a washed out look. I don't think this was the behaviour in the previous build and it's quite annoying. macOS Mojave

When this is enabled: View > Show Text Flow ... then when you scroll, the text frames disappear then reappear when you stop scrolling. It's a little jarring. I don't remember this happening in the previous build. macOS Mojave

I don't remember this happening last night before the new build came out... items placed outside the document and on the artboard are there, but are covered by the artboard so I can't see them. Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong?

ISSUE 1: The increments used in the Table panel when using Picas is too large of an amount. Clicking the up and down arrows, the increments are 1 pica which is way too much. It should be p1, not 1p. I have set the nudge distance in Preferences to p1 and 1p with the modifier key but the Table panel ignores this and does basically the opposite: 1p and p1.2 with the modifier. When in inches, the increment is a lot smaller, more logical amount. ISSUE 2: In build 238, macOS Mojave, the little up and down arrows have stopped working correctly in the Table panel, as follows: INSETS: left and top up arrows do nothing when you click them, right and bottom up arrows work. Down arrows appear to work for all. CELL: width up arrow does nothing, height up arrow works. Down arrows work. Inset left and top up arrows don't work, right and bottom do work. So basically, all the ones on the left of that panel don't work, and the right ones do. And in general, ALL of the arrows in that panel require a lot more precise click than they did in the previous build. Even on the arrows that are working, I found I had to click more than once for it to register properly. ISSUE 3: Clicking and dragging to select the text in the measurement boxes is flakey if you drag right to left. For example, if you click and drag on on the text for Inset Left, drag from the left to the right and it selects the measurement text. But try dragging right to left and you get random, unexpected results, for any of the measurements in that panel. Sometimes it doesn't work the first time. Sometimes you have to click in the box first before dragging. Sometimes clicking in one box causes the adjacent one to highlight. In the cell width box, often dragging on that box causes the cell height box to highlight and drop to zero, only to return to normal once you let go. If you just keep randomly clicking and dragging in those boxes you might see what I'm seeing.

I have today's new beta, and the table increments are not behaving properly at all now, either picas or inches. I'll post about it in the bugs forum.

I have the new beta now and the tabbing works in the expected order.

Confirming that the convert shape feature is there in the contextual menu in today's new build.

I had already looked in the menus and by right-clicking, so I think the commands weren't showing up when I right-clicked. I will try after I get the update.

I'm not comparing to InDesign, I'm just giving my opinion/first impressions in using Publisher for literally my first actual project. I know it's a new app, and I'm saying as a new app that I find some features are not logically grouped and are rather scattered. There are several places where I feel they could combine things into one place to save on space. Document and Spread setup is a big one for me - I'm not seeing the purpose of breaking these features into 2 small windows with tabs when they could be one larger window with tabs. I can see myself have to switch back and forth between the 2 often, meaning more clicks and more time spent. I'm also finding tools that only appear to be in the toolbar and don't have a panel or menu command of their own. it took me awhile to see that some features I couldn't find were there (rounded corners and item spacing/distribution are 2 examples). Maybe they are elsewhere too but I didn't see them. But I will get used to this in time. I'm sure over the years the UI will be refined. I've only used the app for a few hours, but I do like the promise of this app and not having to subscribe to InDesign once CS6 stops working for me. I came from using QuarkXpress for years (high school / trade school / start of career) and then took the plunge to InDesign when I started working for a printing company. I found the change frustrating too, but eventually discovered that things were more logically ordered in the UI. So you see I have experience using a new design app. Back to the actual topic... this might be why I missed the convert feature, from the release notes of today's new build: Convert to Picture Frame/Text Frame missing for right-click on any selected shape.

Ah, I didn't know. I'm not at home at the moment. I connected remotely to my computer and it says I'm up to date but it's not. I'll try again later.

I have the latest version. I only just downloaded and installed it for the first time at home last night.

I'm allowed to have my opinion using this app for the first time sir.

Thanks, I'll have to check that out later. I was looking in the menus and thought I looked in the contextual menu. I haven't even bothered with the layers panel at all yet. I'm finding a lot of stuff I need is there but it's just not where I would think to look for it. It took me awhile last night - couldn't find rounded corners for boxes and item spacing/distribution but eventually I did almost by accident. Seems like many things are kind of scattered around the UI instead of in one place.

Yes I have seen that.

In my first small project in Publisher in which I was recreating a layout of boxed photos originally from InDesign, I drew all the boxes and afterwards realized that they didn't work like InDesign. Is there no way to convert between shapes and containers? InDesign has a menu command to, for example, convert a regular box into a text or graphic box. In my case, I had to redraw the boxes using the correct too in order to place photos in them. Thanks!