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Affinity on Desktop Questions (Mac and Windows) Forum


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The following suggestion would only apply to:

Affinity Support & Questions

--- Frequently Asked Questions [FAQ]

  • Affinity Desktop Questions (Mac and Windows)

I believe a lot of confusion, repetitive post and increase viewers ability to visually screen forum post by pre-populated User Selected Affinity Program. The media file provided, as example, would populate the applicable Affinity program selected.  ALL could be added, as failsafe, if Serif has concerns USER is not familiar or confused to which Affinity program to choose. This would not eliminate the User from reviewing all posts to increase their knowledge, basically, highlighting the Affinity Program first, followed by the question.  

I believe if implemented, adding the appropriate program and then clicking Continue and then Topic. As an example the thread would show: 

Affinity Photo (any program selected or ALL) - Please help, Cannot find curve filter.   

Thank you for your review.

Cecil

AfinityCreateTopic.jpg

Cecil 

iMac Retina 5K, 27”, 2019. 3.6 GHz Intel Core 9, 40 GB Memory DDR4, Radeon Pro 580X 8 GB, macOS,iPad Pro iPadOS

 

Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection 

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I am not sure that is a capability provided by the 3rd-party forum software that Serif uses to run these forums.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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2 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

I am not sure that is a capability provided by the 3rd-party forum software that Serif uses to run these forums.

Adding one additional box, I hope someone from Serif will respond, that knows if it’s possible or not.  May not be a high priority.  I think it’s beneficial and a simple fix to numerous post concerning this issue.  No losers in this suggestion, it just adds a single feature.

Cecil 

iMac Retina 5K, 27”, 2019. 3.6 GHz Intel Core 9, 40 GB Memory DDR4, Radeon Pro 580X 8 GB, macOS,iPad Pro iPadOS

 

Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection 

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20 minutes ago, Cecil said:

Adding one additional box,

And a shed load of code.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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2 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

And a shed load of code.

Not disagreeing concerning coding, as I don’t know the answer.  However, compared to all the other options currently available, especially in Features Requests & Suggestions and Report a Bug (by program), I think it could be done and also provide users to identify questions by appropriate program.  It may also, improve search, if that can be enabled to search by program - and/or, hit or miss for many.  I hope it is evaluated on merit and users benefits.

Cecil 

iMac Retina 5K, 27”, 2019. 3.6 GHz Intel Core 9, 40 GB Memory DDR4, Radeon Pro 580X 8 GB, macOS,iPad Pro iPadOS

 

Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection 

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AFAIK this forum software allows to create at least custom buttons for the content editor ...

Quote

Create Custom Buttons

Need some custom-formatted content? Create custom editor buttons using simple HTML. Add it to your community's editor, and now it's easy to insert into content.

... thus it's maybe also possible to add a custom button beside (or selection box on top) of the message title field, which then adds choosable/selectable information. Another possibility is to make the tags field  usage mandantory. - A custom button etc. could also be made to operate the way to enable/activate a so far then disabled title field, just until some choice is made from the button etc. - However as always there are in theory different widget usage scenarios possible, though in practise the whole depends on the forum software's internal customization flexibility.

 

☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan
☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2

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4 hours ago, Cecil said:

The following suggestion would only apply to:

Affinity Support & Questions

--- Frequently Asked Questions [FAQ]

  • Affinity Desktop Questions (Mac and Windows)

I believe a lot of confusion, repetitive post and increase viewers ability to visually screen forum post by pre-populated User Selected Affinity Program. The media file provided, as example, would populate the applicable Affinity program selected.  ALL could be added, as failsafe, if Serif has concerns USER is not familiar or confused to which Affinity program to choose. This would not eliminate the User from reviewing all posts to increase their knowledge, basically, highlighting the Affinity Program first, followed by the question.  

I believe if implemented, adding the appropriate program and then clicking Continue and then Topic. As an example the thread would show: 

Affinity Photo (any program selected or ALL) - Please help, Cannot find curve filter.   

Thank you for your review.

Cecil

I understand your request very well.

It is quite obvious that the forum groups are somewhat confusing for some. Feedback for individual programs - questions for all fx. I see questions everywhere, but in the feedback for Designer fx, I know it is all about Designer. 'Affinity Support & Questions' evolved into a strange 'catch all' bucket. So I understand your suggestion. It would require users to tag their posts, though and ... well hm. I just think Affinity Support & Questions became more of a bucket than Serif anticipated. Or we did.

Perhaps another forum structure in the future is desirable. Something else that would be cool now several individuals seems to practically live in this forum could be a FAQ Wiki maintained by users. Tips, tricks, workarounds (yikes), suggested workflows etc. Instead of the many redundant posts in here. And while every posts about problems with expand strokes evolves into a heated debate, the Wiki could answer the question cleanly and without sighs.

In general a forum like this suffers from the Blade Runner effect... "all those posts will be lost... in time... like... tears in the rain". 

  • "The user interface is supposed to work for me - I am not supposed to work for the user interface."
  • Computer-, operating system- and software agnostic; I am a result oriented professional. Look for a fanboy somewhere else.
  • “When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger.” ― Confucius
  • Not an Affinity user og forum user anymore. The software continued to disappoint and not deliver.
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31 minutes ago, Jowday said:

In general a forum like this suffers from the Blade Runner effect... "all those posts will be lost... in time... like... tears in the rain". 

Sir, note a single post, per my suggestion would be lost. Each post to the current Affinity Desktop Question (MAC & Windows) would be printed as is now.  The only discernible difference is that the users specifies the program, which would precede the question and/or/if/unknown ALL could be specified.  It is not that the forum is confusing to some, not all want/need, desire, to their benefit or not, to review pages of questions, for one or two clearly of interest. 

Redundant post may be reduced if suggestions allows user to search program/question in the future, as the program name would be in the data base.  As many have posted in the past, newer users likely do not use or know how to apply tags, if they fail to identify the program, their desktop, file, screenshot or video.  
 

The bucket has runneth over...two major Desktops and three programs, one combined topic, trench warfare to be avoided, if possible. If Serif can implement, would you be offended if the question begun with Affinity Publisher, followed by the question?  Is it possible that new users would benefit?  Would old users be offended?

Cecil 

iMac Retina 5K, 27”, 2019. 3.6 GHz Intel Core 9, 40 GB Memory DDR4, Radeon Pro 580X 8 GB, macOS,iPad Pro iPadOS

 

Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection 

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We do not disagree at all. And who would be offended by what? I am not sure I follow you. With lost I mean impossible or hard to find deep down on page 346 in a year old post. If you are searching for expand curve and posts are about expand stroke, users will probably not find it what they are looking for.

At this point in time I do think though that a supplementing FAQ Wiki would help and offer a indexed approach and articles that could be linked to from posts in the forum. Without intelligent search engines like Google .... and... and... Google.. tons of knowledge never resurfaces again.

  • "The user interface is supposed to work for me - I am not supposed to work for the user interface."
  • Computer-, operating system- and software agnostic; I am a result oriented professional. Look for a fanboy somewhere else.
  • “When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger.” ― Confucius
  • Not an Affinity user og forum user anymore. The software continued to disappoint and not deliver.
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28 minutes ago, Jowday said:

We do not disagree at all. And who would be offended by what? I am not sure I follow you. With lost I mean impossible or hard to find deep down on page 346 in a year old post. If you are searching for expand curve and posts are about expand stroke, users will probably not find it what they are looking for.

At this point in time I do think though that a supplementing FAQ Wiki would help and offer a indexed approach and articles that could be linked to from posts in the forum. Without intelligent search engines like Google .... and... and... Google.. tons of knowledge never resurfaces again.

Sorry, I should had stated, would anyone be offended, as negative post have always seem to outnumber any suggestion to change the current forum. My intention was to identify a simple, yet potential and satisfactory solution to bridge the gap between the never, too hard, not in the best interest of new users, etc.  So many questions are answered by a question: “What program?”

I for one, often search Google or YouTube, before searching forum.  

Cecil 

iMac Retina 5K, 27”, 2019. 3.6 GHz Intel Core 9, 40 GB Memory DDR4, Radeon Pro 580X 8 GB, macOS,iPad Pro iPadOS

 

Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection 

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6 hours ago, Cecil said:

 It may also, improve search, if that can be enabled to search by program - and/or, hit or miss for many.

Considering how many features & functions are common to all the apps, it equally well might result in users missing some of the best/most relevant topics if they restrict their searches to one app only. Contributing to this, the advent of StudioLink in Affinity Publisher means a lot of topics that might be viewed by many as clearly only about AD or AP & marked as such might actually be equally relevant to some but not all APub users.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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R C-A IMHO those with multiple programs and seeking to advance their knowledge will know how to search the limited, hit or miss search engine.  Additionally, all post are available daily to read for all programs, including ALL.  Please see Jowday remarks.  If we continue to ignore the problem, we miss a solution to improve the problem.  Searching is just one possible improvement to suggestion.  Focus is primary for new users and also means to allow those reviewing post, they considered relevant to their needs. Structure.

Cecil 

iMac Retina 5K, 27”, 2019. 3.6 GHz Intel Core 9, 40 GB Memory DDR4, Radeon Pro 580X 8 GB, macOS,iPad Pro iPadOS

 

Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection 

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Agree with Cecil

The answer to the problem is already available. Why not make each post compulsory in the selection of use. There are already the requisite locations, but with the addition of another, all would be resolved

Affinity programmes - general 

Affinity Designer

Affinity Photo

Affinity Publisher 

Like me, there a many who use only one programme. We tend to search for the heading or something that designates that programme in our search. The fact that the problem and answer may be resident in the other programmes posts is of no help to me. Publisher is radically different in its user base. We are rarely producers of the inserts. A poster or photograph to me is just something I insert. If I have a problem, and I often do, as a novice. I have to begin to search through 205,000+ posts looking for 'Publisher' headings. I nearly always give up reading the posts past the 10th page. It's easier for me to make a new post. Members are extremely helpful and provide plenty of expertise.

With the headings visible, all I would need to look for is 'Publisher'.

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3 hours ago, Cecil said:

Focus is primary for new users and also means to allow those reviewing post, they considered relevant to their needs..

I think the focus should be on all users, not just new ones, & on any information relevant to their questions, regardless of which (if any) Affinity app they currently own (or are trialing). Besides, there are so many features, functions, & techniques that are common to all three apps that which app is being used is often irrelevant, & new users in particular are less likely to be aware of that than more experienced ones.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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24 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I think the focus should be on all users, not just new ones, & on any information relevant to their questions, regardless of which (if any) Affinity app they currently own (or are trialing). Besides, there are so many features, functions, & techniques that are common to all three apps that which app is being used is often irrelevant, & new users in particular are less likely to be aware of that than more experienced ones.

I don’t disagree with your position and any points you made.  I’ll just add, the forum remains the same, all post, as now, will be posted.  No lost features, functions, & techniques.  My suggestion simply adds the ability to select the appropriate Affinity program.  This will eliminate the numerous responses I read daily, which program?  

Cecil 

iMac Retina 5K, 27”, 2019. 3.6 GHz Intel Core 9, 40 GB Memory DDR4, Radeon Pro 580X 8 GB, macOS,iPad Pro iPadOS

 

Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection 

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3 hours ago, Rossjackson01 said:

Agree with Cecil

Me too! It's not more then common sense to organize the forum like any other forum I know!

And about the coding (it's my profession) that should not be relevant it's a peace of cake, more important  is how do you get all the old topics sorted in the proper matter! And who is going to take care of that? The longer they wait the more chaos it becomes.

Maybe a nice student job for in the next year?;-) Moving topics to the the proper forum place!

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14 minutes ago, Cecil said:

I don’t disagree with your position and any points you made.  I’ll just add, the forum remains the same, all post, as now, will be posted.  No lost features, functions, & techniques.  My suggestion simply adds the ability to select the appropriate Affinity program.  This will eliminate the numerous responses I read daily, which program?  

The forum would most certainly not remain the same. Adding anything to it that even suggests that one or another of the apps is likely to be the "appropriate" one for some topic (which surely will mean different things to different people) would significantly change its focus. There is a compelling reason for avoiding that: the apps are much more alike than they are different, even to the point that any of them can open documents created by any of the others without conversion or loss of any data.

Besides, considering all the new topics that are started per day, week, or whatever, what specifically do you mean by "numerous"? What fraction of them actually require a which program? -- or for that matter a which platform? -- reply before other users can or should begin to offer help or otherwise contribute to the discussion? What fraction actually are started by users new either to the Affinity apps or to graphics editing apps in general?

Topics posted to this forum are started by people ranging from absolute beginners (including those with very little knowledge of the basic features of the OS they are using) to users with decades of experience with this kind of software, & everything in between. Moreover, people besides the OP's often post replies to existing topics (including ones that have seen no activity for months or years) that may include content that ranges from completely unrelated to the topic's original focus to at least as relevant to it as any existing replies.

There is nothing simple about any of this, nor do I think there can be anything that simplifies it in the way you or other users suggest that it could. 

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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R C-A I respect your point of view, I don’t agree, but respect your response. 

3 minutes ago, R C-R said:

, nor do I think there can be anything that simplifies it in the way you or other users suggest that it could

I believe in the impossible, I think Serif can and will, at some point, make changes.  It’s Christmas and Santa is on his way.

Cecil 

iMac Retina 5K, 27”, 2019. 3.6 GHz Intel Core 9, 40 GB Memory DDR4, Radeon Pro 580X 8 GB, macOS,iPad Pro iPadOS

 

Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection 

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1 minute ago, Cecil said:

I believe in the impossible, I think Serif can and will, at some point, make changes.  It’s Christmas and Santa is on his way.

I am still trying to figure out why Santa always seems to visit one house & then flies away high into the sky instead of just going to the next nearest house; or how he, his sled, the gifts, & the reindeer don't burn up from atmospheric friction at the speeds he must reach to visit all those home in one night.

More seriously, I believe that while a great many things are within the realm of possibility, most of them turn out to be far from the "magic bullet" solutions their proponents hope for them to be.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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Gee R C-R I hope Santa doesn’t skip your house, your a master at solving forum questions.

Seriously, 
“The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again.” 
 Steve Jobs

Magic bullets are those not used in practice, “Cecil.”  The result can be deadly.

Cecil 

iMac Retina 5K, 27”, 2019. 3.6 GHz Intel Core 9, 40 GB Memory DDR4, Radeon Pro 580X 8 GB, macOS,iPad Pro iPadOS

 

Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection 

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I am not a master of many things but one of the few I have mastered is the difference between "your" & "you're." :P

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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How about its and it's? I have been reduced to using its and it is. 

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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49 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I am not a master of many things but one of the few I have mastered is the difference between "your" & "you're." :P

Thanks R C-R you’re correct.  Wrong forum to be concerned...

39 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

How about its and it's? I have been reduced to using its and it is. 

Old Bruce I do beg forgiveness.

Cecil 

iMac Retina 5K, 27”, 2019. 3.6 GHz Intel Core 9, 40 GB Memory DDR4, Radeon Pro 580X 8 GB, macOS,iPad Pro iPadOS

 

Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection 

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5 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

How about its and it's? I have been reduced to using its and it is. 

Your write about that. It's hard four mi too no witch word two use, to.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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