Forum Headings

[Rossjackson01]

Not sure if this is in the correct forum location.

I find the forum setup at present quite confusing. In the original Serif forum, there was a general area for introduction and discussion. Then each programme had its own heading making it easy to search, find and post in a particular subject. You can tell from my comments that I am not a specialist, just a user. It would help considerably if, In todays forums, perhaps a separate section forum for each of the suite, Designer, Photo and Publisher could be made. In each suite heading, a further breakdown for the specific operating systems, windows, ios, and tablet etc. Questions at present are quite specific to particular versions of the programmes, but are hap-hazard in their location. Revision to each programme of the suite would help to maintain a logical progression for a search and view. 

Ross

[Alfred]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity Forums, Ross.

It was much simpler in the old days, since the ‘legacy’ applications are all Windows-only and are are largely unable to read each other’s native file formats. The Affinity apps, on the other hand, are cross-platform and share a common file format (so, for example, Affinity Photo on a Mac can be used to edit a file saved from Affinity Designer on a Windows PC). There are also many overlaps in functionality, which means that it’s relatively rare for questions and answers to apply solely to a particular app.

[firstdefence]

This has been talked about many times, the only thing that you can do is create good posts with concise post titles and if talking about a specific app use the abbreviation in the title, also use the tag option when creating a post. Create a signature detailing system spec and operating system and the Affinity apps you have saves asking these basic questions.

Affinity Photo: AP

Affinity Designer: AD

Affinity Publisher: Apub

[firstdefence]

The Main forum seems to have been tidied up a bit re the stickies posts that were at the top.

[Rossjackson01]

Thank you Alfred. I remember you from way back when. Thank you also, firstdefence.

I note both your comments. I do understand the cross platform sharing. Still difficult to navigate and locate. Yes the stickies do help. In the times of 'legacy,' I used to spend a lot of time going through posts, finding them enjoyable and gaining information. Some are now too technical for me. Ah well!

Regards

Ross

[walt.farrell]

6 hours ago, firstdefence said:

This has been talked about many times, the only thing that you can do is create good posts with concise post titles and if talking about a specific app use the abbreviation in the title, also use the tag option when creating a post. Create a signature detailing system spec and operating system and the Affinity apps you have saves asking these basic questions.

Affinity Photo: AP

Affinity Designer: AD

Affinity Publisher: Apub

Actually, as you can see fro the lack of an underline on "Apub" in your post (compare with AP and AD), Apub is not a currently supported abbreviation in the forums:

Perhaps that will change, but for now the suggested abbreviation should perhaps be APu, which is recognized by the forum. (That can change, of course.)

[Pšenda]

7 hours ago, firstdefence said:

Affinity Publisher: Apub

If you look at my signature, you'll see abbreviation supported by the forum - just hover over them.

[R C-R]

13 hours ago, Rossjackson01 said:

Questions at present are quite specific to particular versions of the programmes, but are hap-hazard in their location.

The only significant differences between the Mac & Windows Affinity apps are some of the keyboard shortcuts, a few performance-related options, & a few features supported only by one OS or the other. (There are also differences among the betas, but there are already separate forums for that.)

As for the apps themselves, in addition to sharing the same 'native' file format, all three can both open & edit native format files created on any of the others (on any of the three supported platforms), & do so without any conversions or loss of data.

More to the point, many of the tools & other features are present in all three desktop apps & work exactly the same on all of them. This includes the View (Hand), Move, Node, Zoom, Color Picker tools, the Fill Tool (except that it is named "Gradient Tool" in Photo), the Pen & the 22 shape tools, & the basic features of the Artistic & Frame text tools. The Layers, Color, Swatches, Character, Paragraph, Glyph Browser, History, Transform, Navigator, Styles, Text Styles, & Effects Studio panels are the same in all of them; as are configurable toolbar items like Snapping, Defaults, Alignment, Assistant Options, & Arrange.

In addition to all that, there is the new StudioLink feature that enables Publisher's Designer & Photo Personas, so if you eventually purchase all three apps, topics about Macros & Symbols would be relevant even if you work exclusively in Publisher.

Of course, if you do not own all three, some features you might read about won't be available to you, but if they seem like something you might find useful someday, you always have the option to buy the others, & their comparatively low retail prices (& the occasional discounts) make that relatively painless.

[Pšenda]

As R C-R writes, the Affinity applications are so common and interconnected that it almost lacks the purpose of asking question for specific application, it's always Affinity Suite. Rather, there are questions and discussions about a specific "topic" - discussion about photographs and their editing, discussion about illustrations and drawings, and discussion about text editing and publications.

[firstdefence]

I'll use APub supported or not, I'd rather not use Apu (A Poo)

[Cecil]

As others pointed out, this topic has gone to the moon and back.  I may point out, many may or may not be interested in other applications threads, beneficial or not.  If you own AP and will never purchase the other applications, it can be a labor of love to fine one post that you open.  Please no counter post, each have their own personal preferences.  

Yesterday, twice when I entered the forum, I had post load from the prior day, which I had Marked As Read.  It’s my standard operation to Mark All Read and verifying no post screen, before clicking out of Safari.  Today, no problem.  
 

 

 

[Pšenda]

22 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

I'd rather not use Apu

Yes, it is your choice - name it for example InfinityTavern :-) 

[firstdefence]

11 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

Yes, it is your choice - name it for example InfinityTavern :-) 

Infinitytavern would be an epic pub' lisher crawl  Maybe AffinityTavern would be a more sobering idea. 

[Alfred]

2 hours ago, firstdefence said:

I'll use APub supported or not, I'd rather not use Apu (A Poo)

As @R C-R has pointed out a few times, ‘Apu’ sounds like a reference to Mr Nahasapeemapetilon, the Indian American who runs the Kwik-E-Mart convenience store in The Simpsons animated cartoon series.

[R C-R]

4 hours ago, Cecil said:

Yesterday, twice when I entered the forum, I had post load from the prior day, which I had Marked As Read

Long ago I set up a custom Activity Stream that is supposed to show me only Desktop Questions forum topics with content I have not yet read. But from time to time it will include some topics with no content I have not already read (including edits to earlier posts). This has been an occasional occurrence for years.

[Cecil]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

Long ago I set up a custom Activity Stream that is supposed to show me only Desktop Questions forum topics with content I have not yet read. But from time to time it will include some topics with no content I have not already read (including edits to earlier posts). This has been an occasional occurrence for years.

Yes, it was odd yesterday.  A problem lately is when I scroll through my unread post, locate one I want to open and I close, it takes me to the start of the unread post.  I have to scroll through to get back to the unread topics.  I can live with it, not a major problem.