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An interesting app indeed.
Well, all beta UI quirks aside, it has just passed my Divide By Open Paths test.

I have already posted this a few days ago, buried in a partially related thread, but reposting here for "posterity".
I was attempting to divide one simple closed path with a few crossed free form lines. I.e. essentially wanting to create a jigsaw puzzle. A divide path functionality that I may have been using with FreeHand already back in the mid-1990s. And now: can't do! (Well, "could do" by adding nodes one by one on crossings, breaking and rejoining paths one by one, as was proposed in an earlier post in the aforementioned thread.)


Definitely not what I wanted to get. The divider paths were open for a reason and must not "auto-close". The resulting forms cannot be cleaned up to the desired effect. Not to speak of more complex forms and paths.
After spending literally an hour trying to figure it out in Designer and looking for workarounds, eventually I copied my simple paths to Illustrator CS5 (which still somewhat works on MacOS El Capitan), clicked a button, copied the divided form back to Designer. Task done within a minute:

Lack of features such as properly functioning boolean operations, vector brushes, perspective deformation and distortion, convenient possibility of fast merging of vector objects makes me think about going back to Adobe Illustrator. Unfortunately. I am a big fan of the Serif products. But the lack of some features causes me despair.

I do agree to some points to the extent I wish an Affinity person would outline in an open letter stating what their future plans are (as well as outline ambitions) so that it can be referred to in the future instead of just "guessing". I would also like this letter to be very realistic. If it's a small team, with a small budget, I can understand there's issues. Transparency is important.
I understand if they had a roadmap and it didn't develop out in that order and it had to be taken down because it was misleading people. I think that was. That's something that happens when ambition outweighs realistic expectations. I think it was acknowledged before that was what happened?
I don't know that Affinity Designer development has slowed to a "trickle" (at least on Windows), but it has slowed some (the virus surely doesn't help). I think they are trying to keep all 3 programs as consistent as possible with the other and there's cross-program/platform features and other compatibility issue(s) that are being worked on (such as 3D acceleration) and that is making the foundation take longer to set. After Publisher was added, I think that is when it did slow significantly, but I see that as a clear sign they are attempting to compete directly with Adobe because having a Publisher-type app would be important to competing with Adobe's suite.
They are still building the foundation, but we are asking about the facade. Once the foundation is there, I feel like the facade can be built much faster when the skeleton (i.e. stasis) is finished. It's just taking so much time.

Adobe has a consistency problem program-to-program and I think that's why they feel so clunky for me now. Each is their own beast in their own right. Some people love this distinction. I do not personally. I like the method that Affinity has gone with and how it feels more seamless and not a drag to work with. Sometimes things don't work as they should in the program, but it is not like bugs have been ignored. Some things have taken too long to fix, that is true. i.e. Expand Stroke.

I’m curious to know why you think that. Version 1.9 hasn’t even been released to retail yet (although it looks as though it won’t be many weeks away now) and those of us who are not Serif employees have no way of knowing whether 1.9 will be followed by 1.10, 1.11, 1.12, etc, all separated by several months.

Really hope you guys work on a smooth tool and shape builder tool sometime soon! 

I wish lock would actually lock everything like every other app. It is more than annoying to, for example, find that you've accidentally recoloured objects and don't notice straight away.
When you delete an object or click on the background remember where you were, so select the next/previous one. Don't just have nothing selected so when you add a new object it is either at the top or bottom then you have to work out where it was actually meant to be.

1. I also like a visual representation of the object, just not so big, I'm saying to add a smaller thumbnail option because the small option is still too big. I rather see more layers than a big visual representation.
2. Sure, but it's more convenient to drag and copy from the layer panel itself when you're organizing lots of layers. I would have to 1.right click 2. click duplicate 3.drag to where I want, three steps for this simple thing. CTRL/ALT + drag to copy (just like you would in the canvas) right in the layer panel would be nice.
3. That requires a right click, one more unnecessary step for something as simple as locking a layer.
These things might seem really small but get annoying when you're working all day with the software.

Hello,
Fellow UI designer here, just wanted to suggest a few tweaks to the layers panel,
1. Add an even smaller thumbnail setting and maybe even a no thumbnail setting (Not for me but I think some people might like it). The UI is already scaled quite bigger than I'd like and wastes a lot of space from the actual view window.
2. Add the ability to copy paste things from the layers panel, for example: If I hold down CTRL and drag a layer it should let me make a copy of it. It's different than duplicate because it allows me to put the copy anywhere I want directly.
3. Lock icon in the layer itself, it's annoying having to click the layer and then going up and click the lock icon, I already use the shortcut to lock thing but still, annoying. Maybe make the icon appear alongside the checkmark icon as you hover the cursor on top of the layer?
I hope you address this in the upcoming updates! Thanks.

Howdy!
In a previous beta thread, there was a mention that if anyone has any requests for the "Select Same / Select Object functionality," it would be up for consideration. Well I have an idea I would like to share, and that idea is the ability to select object "appearances." So here is where I'm getting at. You can add multiple strokes to an existing object, but you have to check off "Scale with object" to each individual appearance if you want to resize. In a previous topic, there was discussion about this. Well seeing how there is this new "Select Object / Select Same" feature, maybe Affinity could incorporate a way to select all stroked appearances of a selected object/group. It would save time from having to go through each appearance.
What do you think?

Interesting to see the "Save as Package" function appear in Designer. I would normally associate such a feature with Publisher, but I suppose it also makes some sense for it to be included with Designer, as the entire suite of Affinity apps are virtually unified.
Should we expect this function to roll out in updates to Publisher and Photo?

Even just the option to swtich on the display of rulers and then being able to drag and drop guides as on desktop would be great.

UI customization in general would be a great boon for iPads.

For me, Scribble works fine in the Files app, & as I mentioned in other apps as well.

Click here to download the latest beta
Status: Customer Beta
Purpose: Features, Improvements, Fixes
Requirements: A valid product key (for Affinity Store purchases), or an installation of the full retail version from the Microsoft Store

As this is a beta it is considered to be not suitable for production use. This means that you should not attempt to use it for commercial purposes or for any other activity that may be adversely affected by the application failing, including the total loss of any documents. We hope you enjoy the latest build, and as always, if you've got any problems, please don't hesitate to post a new thread in this forum and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. Thanks once again for your continued feedback. 

If you have a general question about the software, please head over to the Questions Forum, or if you have any suggestions, please head over to the Feature Requests forum.
Fixes
Added Studio Presets Fixed Contour and Corner tool radius context toolbar options showing in pixels Fixed filter effects rendering Added ability to rotate view around mouse with Alt+MouseWheel. Shift+Alt+MouseWheel will rotate around the centre. Holding Ctrl at the same time will increase rotation speed. Added Ctrl+Shift+Alt+R as new default shortcut for resetting the view rotation.  1.9.0.767 release notes

Please make the artboard background grey level adjustable.

Maybe I have something set incorrectly or I do not understand how to use this new feature but I cannot get the iPadOS 14 Scribble feature in either of the new 1.8.6 versions of Designer or Photo to work. At best, I can get the little Apple Pencil in a circle icon to appear, to tap on it to get other options like the small floating keyboard to appear, but in neither Art nor Frame text boxes does scribbling with the Apple Pencil do anything other than with Art text try to change the font size -- IOW, no scribbles appear at all.
The one place it does work in the Affinity apps is renaming an open document after tapping on the home screen burger menu to open the rename screen with the 'Please enter the new name' text & the text field below that. But with a document actually open for editing it does not work as I would expect it to in any text box.
I have a non-pro 9.7" (6th generation) iPad, the one Apple designates as order number "MRJN2LL/A (32 GB Gold)" paired with a first generation Apple Pencil.
In Settings > Apple Pencil > "Try Scribble" everything works. All Scribble features also work in Apple apps like Mail & 3rd party ones like Vectornator X for iPad, so this seems limited to the two Affinity iPad apps.

Deselect using the keyboard does not work. Other keyboard shortcuts work and so does deselect using the little x on the bottom left side. I have checked the shortcut  in preferences and Deselect is defined as CMD +D.
This is on an iPad Pro with magic keyboard.

UI customization in general would be a great boon for iPads.

UI customization in general would be a great boon for iPads.

UI customization in general would be a great boon for iPads.

Hello, 
I usually use my iPad with the Smart Keyboard Folio and many times I would like to delete something I have selected with the key as it happens in the desktop app. Is there anything about this?
Thanks! And I take this opportunity to thank affinity for the great work they are doing.

We can definitely improve that, sorry...

The functionality to switch between artistic and frame text would be a great addition to Designer... Illustrator's implementation of doing this (double click a specific node on a text object, or right click > convert to...) is a perfect example on how it should be handled.

Here's a thread with a whole bunch of other people wanting this as well.

IMG_0323.MOV IMG_0322.MOV