Affinity Publisher Customer Beta 1.8.0.499

[fde101]

1 hour ago, PeterB. said:

few strange positions (my opinion) in paragraph studio

Not too sure about the text fields seeming to crash into the scroll bar, but the leading space before "Leading" (ha ha) looks to function to align the left side of the text field with the one from "Use space before" below it, and there is a little extra space before that which might be to allow for the space used by different translations of that text?

[R C-R]

Just a reminder, one I hope is not out of place in this topic:

With no document open, open the Fields studio panel & check if the Author field is filled in with your user account short name, which I think is the default. If you do not want that visible in documents you upload or share for privacy reasons, change it to something else. Do that with no document open & it will become the new default.

[mac_heibu]

39 minutes ago, mac_heibu said:

Interesting! My internet connection is working fine! I just re-downloaded the actual version of InDesign for a test in some 5 minutes!

But it is ok. The new beta cycle will work without me as well.

… and here a life screencast of this strange behaviour:

 

[postmadesign]

I look forward to testing it, but the download is extreeeemly slow. 

[jeff]

Requested screen shot of the unified toolbar. Retail in back, Beta in front. Pen tool selected in both.

 

[mac_heibu]

6 minutes ago, postmadesign said:

I look forward to testing it, but the download is extreeeemly slow. 

Thanks god! I am not alone!  Here I have 32 KB/s!!

[thomaso]

@mac_heibu, its lunch time, everybody wants to get feed  

But I wonder why you get more food than me?  + 22,8 MB: you ordered with a drink or additional bread?

 

[A_B_C]

Thank you, @jeff! 

Yes, downloads were slow here on the continent … 

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, jeff said:

Requested screen shot of the unified toolbar. Retail in back, Beta in front. Pen tool selected in both.

Thanks! So basically, smaller toolbar icons to make room for the title.

[mac_heibu]

… 4 hours(!!) later. Really unbelievable:

[PepGold]

1 hour ago, mac_heibu said:

… 4 hours(!!) later. Really unbelievable:

I have issues with Safari's download manager in general. Slow downloads and stalls. 

[mac_heibu]

No, Safari definitely isn’t the cause. All other downloads are running without any issue, and there is no difference if I use Chrome.

But finally after 6 hours(!!!) the .zip file is in my download folder.

Guess, if I went to Nottingham with my bike and a shopping basket to get the beta zip file, I would have been faster!

[Mark Oehlschlager]

20 hours ago, fde101 said:

It looks the same to me also - here is release and beta right up against each other (beta in front):

 

There does appear to be a redraw issue - i had another window in front of the toolbar just now and when I moved it away I got a line through the icons:



Yes. I'm running Mac OS High Sierra and I'm also seeing the grey line running through the toolbar.

[garrettm30]

 

On 10/30/2019 at 12:18 PM, Jens Krebs said:

Me again ... just started the beta and noticed that the main toolbar has significantly smaller icons than the release version.
Is there a way to enlarge them and make them the same size as before? I have a 27" screen and there's plenty of room for bigger icons ...

I second this. The icons are noticeably smaller to me. It's not just harder on the eyes, but it also makes for a smaller click target.

The below screenshot has 1.8.0.499 on top and 1.7.3 on bottom. This is on a 2019 27" iMac with macOS Mojave 10.14.6.

[KipV]

Mojave toolbar buttons are way too small. I also don't see why the persona buttons need to get a lot closer. I am curious about the title area of the document. Will I eventually be able to click on that and be able to change the document title, tags, and location like with many other programs? If so that would be a useful update to the way 1.7 is. I hope these interface improvements get in place before bring the interface over to Photo and Designer. I hope you can also enlarge the tools icons on the left side of the screen as well.

[R C-R]

I think the icons have shrunk to make room for the title text. Otherwise, document titles would have to be truncated excessively. In fact, I wonder how much of longer document names can be displayed without having to pop up the title menu (if that is what it is) or wait for a tool-tip type popup to appear, as it does in Finder's list view.

[KipV]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

I think the icons have shrunk to make room for the title text. Otherwise, document titles would have to be truncated excessively.

I don't have titles turned on though so it makes no difference to me. All I see are giant gaps of blank space between the buttons.

 

2 hours ago, R C-R said:

In fact, I wonder how much of longer document names can be displayed without having to pop up the title menu (if that is what it is) or wait for a tool-tip type popup to appear, as it does in Finder's list view.

I could see it working some what similar to iTunes were the song the artist, song and album info scrolls along when you hover over it if everything doesn't fit in the allocated area at once. It wouldn't need to be a pop up menu that you click on. I just brought up the pop up menu to as a way to keep it interface inline with most over Mac apps these days.

[ronnyb]

On 10/30/2019 at 9:29 AM, AdamW said:

Unified Applications Toolbars
 Updated layout of toolbars in main application Window. (Mojave or later)

 

Thanks for the great update. Some observations re. the new unified toolbar: It looks super busy. The spacing of toobar icons and the element order is not apparently logical. I attached a suggestion, please consider. I placed the filename next to the window controls, next the persona controls, and finally the toolbar icons. Not having the filename in the center of the window helps. Also the Toolbar icons' spacing could use some help, but I didn't get into that, just the main hierarchical elements. Thanks for all you do!

 

[RNKLN]

This is how Apple's own applications save space at the top of the screen...

 

Simply by reducing the height of the title bar. It leads to a cleaner look while also saving space (although less than with Affinity's solution), about 18px.

Compared to current Affinity (Designer)...

 

 

[KipV]

7 hours ago, ronnyb said:

The spacing of toobar icons and the element order is not apparently logical.

Putting the file name in the center of the menu bar keeps it unified with all other Mac apps. If it was moved to the left would be using Windows UI conventions.

[R C-R]

9 hours ago, KipV said:

I don't have titles turned on though so it makes no difference to me. All I see are giant gaps of blank space between the buttons.

Sorry for so many questions about the toolbar but since I am still considering if I want to upgrade this iMac to Mojave, I would like to know if by not having titles turned on you mean that 'customize toolbar' gives you the option of displaying the title or not, & possibly where it is positioned vs. the other toolbar items?

Also, do you still have a choice between "Space" & "Flexible Space" for dividers between toolbar items? I prefer to have everything on the toolbar at a fixed location regardless of the widow width, so one of the first things I do with any Affinity app & to remove all the "Flexible Space" dividers & replace them with one or more regular "Space" dividers (or no divider at all) to get an unchanging toolbar layout that best suits my tastes & workflows. I would be very disappointed if this choice is not available with Mojave. 

I was also disappointed that (I think) for whatever reason this beta did not use the toolbar layout I had set for the previous 1.7.3 beta, but perhaps that is an unavoidable consequence of updating from a 1.7.x beta to a 1.8.x one.

[fde101]

On 10/31/2019 at 2:40 AM, AdamW said:

Hopefully you'll find Text Editing Keys can be set up via Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts and then in the second popup, under 'Text Input'.

Thanks, from the way that the feature was worded in the original post I had expected to find a checkbox or radio button to the effect of "Use standard Mac text editing conventions" or something like that, which is why I didn't find it right away, but this is obviously much more flexible and even better.

[R C-R]

22 minutes ago, fde101 said:

On 10/31/2019 at 1:40 AM, AdamW said:

Hopefully you'll find Text Editing Keys can be set up via Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts and then in the second popup, under 'Text Input'.

Thanks, from the way that the feature was worded in the original post I had expected to find a checkbox or radio button to the effect of "Use standard Mac text editing conventions" or something like that, which is why I didn't find it right away, but this is obviously much more flexible and even better.

Since the "Apple Defaults" button appears in every second popup (& seems to be active in all of them), it is not obvious what shortcuts it changes to Apple defaults. So it would be helpful if somewhere in this topic there was either a list of the affected ones or maybe a link to a list somewhere else like maybe a pinned topic in the Publisher Beta on Mac 'master' page.

Also, since clicking it is destructive in the sense that it wipes out any previously set shortcuts that are different from the Apple defaults, perhaps an "Are you sure?" warning with a reminder to save the current ones if desired might be a good idea, at least in the release version.

[fde101]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

Also, since clicking it is destructive in the sense that it wipes out any previously set shortcuts that are different from the Apple defaults, perhaps an "Are you sure?" warning with a reminder to save the current ones if desired might be a good idea, at least in the release version.

The ability to have multiple saved sets of keyboard shortcuts would have made even more sense here, since preset ones could be provided with the Apple defaults vs. the Serif defaults, and any user customizations could simply be saved as another set.

[R C-R]

9 minutes ago, fde101 said:

The ability to have multiple saved sets of keyboard shortcuts would have made even more sense here, since preset ones could be provided with the Apple defaults vs. the Serif defaults, and any user customizations could simply be saved as another set.

Isn't that what we already have with the Save & Load buttons?