Alignment Options greyed out in Affinity Designer 1.8.1

[bbrother]

Hey @Dan C,

Could you tell us one reason why this behavior has been changed and it is no longer possible to set the "Align to:" parameter first before choosing the alignment type.

And the second more important question is why you don't want to restore the previous behavior if users ask for it, because I can't understand this.

If user has problem how to understand what is parameter and what is action, what's the difference and how you use a parameter dropdown with an action button in Alignment panel the staff should explained it to them and not change well-made functionality for worse one. In fact, the first implementation by the Windows development team was the best, they did a good job unlike the devs from MacOS and due to the numerous arguments given it should be reverted back to.

[Dan C]

Apologies for the delayed response here,

On 3/6/2024 at 11:06 PM, bbrother said:

Could you tell us one reason why this behavior has been changed and it is no longer possible to set the "Align to:" parameter first before choosing the alignment type.

Our developers changed the behaviour of this option in a previous build, unfortunately I cannot see an official 'reason' provided for this - and I would not wish to speak on another's behalf, so I cannot directly confirm this at this time.

Our developers typically make changes in the app either based on their intentions for the software (ie our design team decided this is the way it should work) or from direct user feedback.

On 3/6/2024 at 11:06 PM, bbrother said:

And the second more important question is why you don't want to restore the previous behavior if users ask for it, because I can't understand this.

I have not seen any confirmation that we are, or aren't returning this behaviour to the previously available behaviour.
I can confirm that we are tracking the users that request this behaviour is returned, and Ash has previously confirmed in the beta section (here) that our team is looking to make further changes in a later build:

On 1/31/2024 at 10:43 AM, Ash said:

this feature has put focus on some of the improvements to the drop down as a whole. We agree with a lot of what is being said, and will look to make some changes - but these will come in a future update...

Though again, there is no confirmation yet as to the exact changes being made, before they are available in a future beta version.

I hope this clears things up.

[bbrother]

2 hours ago, Dan C said:

Our developers changed the behaviour of this option in a previous build, unfortunately I cannot see an official 'reason' provided for this

You can call me a weirdo, but:
You don't change something that works well, that users are used to and that they haven't asked to be changed, and all this based on undefined intentions.

2 hours ago, Dan C said:

I have not seen any confirmation that we are, or aren't returning this behaviour to the previously available behaviour.

I'm glad to hear that, mainly because there is a chance to return it to a more intuitive, logical behavior that allowed the user more freedom and saved him from seeing things being arranged/aligned first in a way he didn't want, until he will be able to set the "Align to:" parameter as desired.

Thank you for your response.