Give me the "Separated Mode" back and fix the UI!

[Andrei_]

Hi!
I have Photo and Designer v1, and a full set of v2. I"m a professional designer and I have been an Adobe user for about 18-20 years and still am. And in version 1 of your app there was an option to use it as  photoshop or illustrator without the background of the app. Adobe calls it "application frame", you call it "split mode". And in v2, you don't have that. You have "float view," but it doesn't make sense. In "float view" the toolbar constantly wants to jump to the file window, and the file window can be positioned above the "studio" panels, and that's very strange. I really think Designer v1 and its FX add-on aka Photo v1 is the best illustrator/photoshop alternative on the market. But not v2. Give me back the "separated mode" and fix the weird UI behavior.

Best wishes,
Your disappointed user.

[chessboard]

That may or may not be a legitimate request. I personally hate the Mac way to have no application frames and the ability to see other app palettes or windows behind the app in front and was really glad about Adobe introducing the application frames. But if it would be optional, I would have no problem with this.

I'm sorry to take your request here as a reason for another topic, but it is another example of this, that the tone here on the forum lately leaves a lot to be desired. At least a "please" would not have hurt the desire. "Give me back" reads like it was yours before and Serif stole it from you.
A great many users here are very demanding and formulate their criticism in a way as if Serif had personally insulted them with the appearance of V2.

[Andrei_]

Nope, it was a useful feature of the app, and it is important for me, now this it is removed. Do all users should use it? No. But for me, as one of the users/customers it was one of the main features in every day work. So, yes I want it back.

[gricko]

On 11/20/2022 at 11:56 AM, chessboard said:

That may or may not be a legitimate request. I personally hate the Mac way to have no application frames and the ability to see other app palettes or windows behind the app in front and was really glad about Adobe introducing the application frames. But if it would be optional, I would have no problem with this.

I'm sorry to take your request here as a reason for another topic, but it is another example of this, that the tone here on the forum lately leaves a lot to be desired. At least a "please" would not have hurt the desire. "Give me back" reads like it was yours before and Serif stole it from you.
A great many users here are very demanding and formulate their criticism in a way as if Serif had personally insulted them with the appearance of V2.

"I personally hate the Mac way to have no application frames..."

that is your opinion
if you spend your whole day in just one app - it is a 100% legitimate one.

on the other hand - if you use 2-3-4 apps in parallel, dragging and dropping objets from one to another, taking files from folders and dropping them on the artboard....

whatever you think is not important. window mode has been an industry standard for 30 years. same as cmd+C/cmd+V/cmd+X... space for hand, cmd+space for zoom, option [alt] button for modifiers....

if window mode was not an option in v1, i would not have bought it, switched my workflow from adobe to affinity etc...
now, updated to v2, strips me off a basic app functionality.
how to use dual screen setup without separated mode?
 

whatever....

 

[LCamachoDesign]

On 11/20/2022 at 10:56 AM, chessboard said:

that the tone here on the forum lately leaves a lot to be desired.

Indeed. The toxicity around here, especially after the 2.0 release, is increasingly off-putting.

I wish Serif would do what I already suggested years ago. Close these forums. Keep the forums as a community thing only. In their place, For bug reporting and tracking have a UserVoice page, or any of the other alternatives like Nolt or SleekPlan. Something that allows us to easily search and post bugs, but greatly limits all social interaction, and as result limits the toxicity.

And it isn't just for their employee's sake, that have to navigate these forums daily. It's for our own sake too. We have to browse and search these forums in order to find out if a bug has already been reported or solved. That means we also have to read and navigate this toxicity. That's something I'd like to avoid, it's unhealthy, and frankly something that reduces my willingness to post any bug findings.

Do us all a favour Serif, close these forums. have a separate bug reporting system away from forums.

[PaoloT]

33 minutes ago, LCamachoDesign said:

I wish Serif would do what I already suggested years ago. Close these forums.

Or, without imposing your will to the others, you could simply limit your visits to the Bugs subforums. Assuming you don't find it too complicate.

 

[deeds]

1 hour ago, PaoloT said:

Or, without imposing your will to the others, you could simply limit your visits to the Bugs subforums. Assuming you don't find it too complicate.

A straw man, misdirection, passive aggression and insult.

Did I miss anything? 

[Adalbertus]

2 hours ago, LCamachoDesign said:

Indeed. The toxicity around here, especially after the 2.0 release, is increasingly off-putting.

I wish Serif would do what I already suggested years ago. Close these forums. In their place, have a UserVoice page, or any of the other alternatives like Nolt or SleekPlan. Something that allows us to easily search and post bugs, but greatly limits all social interaction, and as result limits the toxicity.

And it isn't just for their employee's sake, that have to navigate these forums daily. It's for our own sake too. We have to browse and search these forums in order to find out if a bug has already been reported or solved. That means we also have to read and navigate this toxicity. That's something I'd like to avoid, it's unhealthy, and frankly something that reduces my willingness to post any bug findings.

Do us all a favour Serif, close these forums.

Beside that deleting/closing forum, where is tons of knowledge and good discussions isn't in my opinion the best way to do, I think that I can agree with some of your points.

Our community is growing, Affinity is more and more popular among hobbyists, and professionals.
More users = more problems and more ideas.

I have sometimes also a problem with finding here a relevant topics, and I don't know if someone have posted it before.
I think that construction of the forum isn't the best for developing and maintaining software with big group of users.
Some other solutions LCamachoDesign have mentioned.
Surely there is more of it - in the case of making so, Serif would have to choose not only the best functionality, scalability, but also price of it.

If we are talking what to improve:
Also I see that often we can destroy short specific topic about some bug or missing feature with long discussions, digressions and arguing... well in some way it may be good, but...
Some way to solve that is creating a separate space for general discussions.

Also I see, that we have more users with other than English language in their posts. Language barrier may destroy community and limit support what in the end may have negative impact on brand, so it would be great to have an option to translate posts.

Look for example at the communities of Adobe or Clip Paint Studio (don't pretend they don't exist ;)).
They have it build and organized a bit different.

Adobe:

https://community.adobe.com/

 

 

Clip Paint Studio:

https://ask.clip-studio.com/en-us/

 

It would be great to have an option to quick categorize topics, to quick search solved/unsolved bugs, to search future requests and be able to quick voting or adding as followed topic.

But I think, that the most important is to solve current problems with V2, and next discuss future of the apps.

[deeds]

The JetBrains Youtrack facility is probably the ideal next level product for community engagement with regards how to and what to do next. It scales nearly infinitely, such that they open up their inhouse Youtrack systems for their own software to all their users, for all their products.

47 minutes ago, Adalbertus said:

It would be great to have an option to quick categorize topics, to quick search solved/unsolved bugs, to search future requests and be able to quick voting or adding as followed topic.

 

https://www.jetbrains.com/youtrack/features/

 

 

[LCamachoDesign]

2 hours ago, Adalbertus said:

Beside that deleting/closing forum, where is tons of knowledge and good discussions isn't in my opinion the best way to do

Ok. That's fair. These forums could be a community only thing where people can talk about stuff and share resources. I've edited my post to reflect this.

 

2 hours ago, Adalbertus said:

Some way to solve that is creating a separate space for general discussions.

Yes, I agree with that. This very forum could be kept for that.

 

2 hours ago, Adalbertus said:

It would be great to have an option to quick categorize topics, to quick search solved/unsolved bugs, to search future requests and be able to quick voting or adding as followed topic.

Pretty much this.

That's exactly what UserVoice, SleekPlan, Nolt, Fider, and others do.

 

2 hours ago, deeds said:

https://www.jetbrains.com/youtrack/features/

At first glance that seems targeted at internal task tracking, not so much user feedback collection? In any case, there's a lot of services like this. Serif can pick and choose. Just don't do forums, it wasn't working before, and now it's really not working.

[GeGr]

On 11/20/2022 at 10:12 AM, Andrei_ said:

Give me back the "separated mode" and fix the weird UI behavior.
Best wishes,
Your disappointed user.

completely agree on this as a macos user.

the seperated mode is a completely basic macos function, immanent to the possible workflow in macos - and as such, programms that are sold for macos, that are lacking this feature, are somehow incomplete regarding the os support.

so please make the seperated mode possible again. thank you

[Napkin6534]

On 11/20/2022 at 11:56 AM, chessboard said:

I personally hate the Mac way to have no application frames and the ability to see other app palettes or windows behind the app

This.

[Tia Lapis]

2 hours ago, GeGr said:

completely agree on this as a macos user.

the seperated mode is a completely basic macos function, immanent to the possible workflow in macos - and as such, programms that are sold for macos, that are lacking this feature, are somehow incomplete regarding the os support.

so please make the seperated mode possible again. thank you

Hate to say it, but macOS development removes this for some time now and moves in the direction of all-in-one windows.

[deeds]

On 12/20/2022 at 4:01 PM, Tia Lapis said:

but macOS development removes this for some time now and moves in the direction of all-in-one windows

untrue and incorrect.

The misnomer of "Separated Mode" is the error. Floating Panels are an important and foundational aspect of good creative apps, still... if developers choose... which they definitely should for something like image based works. And is quite easy to work with, thanks to a single property being able to be set to "float" a NSPanel (NextStep Panel).

From Apple's own docs on 'isFloatingPanel', a boolean, you can easily see that most Panels in Affinity are exactly as described, therefore suitable to floating in "Separated Mode":

 

Quote

Discussion

The value of this property is true when the receiver is a floating panel, false otherwise.

By default, panels do not float above other windows. It’s appropriate for a panel to float above other windows only if all of the following conditions are true:

• It’s small enough not to obscure whatever is behind it.

• It’s oriented more to the mouse than to the keyboard—that is, if it doesn’t become the key window or becomes so only when needed.

• It needs to remain visible while the user works in the app’s standard windows—for example, if the user must frequently move the pointer back and forth between a standard window and the panel (such as a tool palette), or if the panel gives information relevant to the user’s actions in a standard window.

• It hides when the app is deactivated (the default behavior for panels).

 

https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/components/presentation/panels/

[debraspicher]

On 12/19/2022 at 4:27 AM, LCamachoDesign said:

Indeed. The toxicity around here, especially after the 2.0 release, is increasingly off-putting.

I wish Serif would do what I already suggested years ago. Close these forums. Keep the forums as a community thing only. In their place, For bug reporting and tracking have a UserVoice page, or any of the other alternatives like Nolt or SleekPlan. Something that allows us to easily search and post bugs, but greatly limits all social interaction, and as result limits the toxicity.

And it isn't just for their employee's sake, that have to navigate these forums daily. It's for our own sake too. We have to browse and search these forums in order to find out if a bug has already been reported or solved. That means we also have to read and navigate this toxicity. That's something I'd like to avoid, it's unhealthy, and frankly something that reduces my willingness to post any bug findings.

Do us all a favour Serif, close these forums. have a separate bug reporting system away from forums.

These are arguments for outright closing. I would not mind an environment to interact more personally, but it would probably be harder to moderate than how it is now if it becomes too "community-based" (internet speak: "mob rule") since the brand name will be directly associated and any bad actors will reflect on that brand. As long as moderators are tagged as "staff members", they're even bigger targets for abuse in this less formal setting. "Oh they 'censored' my post? Must be reflective of their stance as a company!", etc. So say goodbye to direct interaction between staff and their users. They'll either be too busy quietly chasing trolls, gathering data from the bug tracker and too exhausted to deal with the minutia of internet "etiquette". I can't see it staying friendly for long.

A bug-tracker attached to the forums could work wonders though for sending users a productive direction, especially if they can find one that would fit in relatively seamlessly with the forum's software/registration.
 

Also, +1 bring back separated mode. I'm not a Mac user, but I have seen the appeal of that workflow.

[fde101]

28 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

How strange, then, that Apple's Final Cut Pro does not have it.

Final Cut Pro is not really document-based.  Most document-based applications from Apple do open separate windows for each open document - such as Pages (their word processor) for example.  Logic does the same thing: you can open more than one session in Logic, and each gets its own window.

While these apps do not "float" their toolbars, the important distinction between what they do and the rather horrible behavior of the Affinity v2 apps is that they duplicate the toolbars and other window framing components for each document: each document window has its own copy of everything the others have, keeping all of the controls similarly accessible for each individual document.

What the Affinity v2 apps are doing which (in my opinion) is flat-out wrong is that they are not offering any option at all to keep the context toolbar, status bar, etc., equally accessible to all open windows - you can set the tools (from the left side of the main window) as floating, and you can float the studio panels, but there is still one "main" window which is the only one which can have document tabs, and which is the only one which has the context toolbar and the main toolbar.  They do manage to get this correct with the status bar at least.

Duplicating the context toolbar and main toolbar across all windows would be a positive step, as someone could then float the tools and the studio panels and get nearly all the way there, but the "correct" way to handle this if they are not going to use the "separated mode" approach is to make all of the document windows 100% equivalent and interchangeable by duplicating ALL of the docked window components across all of them.

[Tia Lapis]

3 hours ago, fde101 said:

Most document-based applications from Apple do open separate windows for each open document - such as Pages (their word processor) for example.

iWork suite (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) opens new documents as tabs.

[PaoloT]

1 hour ago, Tia Lapis said:

iWork suite (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) opens new documents as tabs.

They open separate windows, and can be docked if you like. Even on Mac there are users who can only think to one simple thing at a time.

Paolo

 

[Tia Lapis]

1 hour ago, PaoloT said:

They open separate windows, and can be docked if you like. Even on Mac there are users who can only think to one simple thing at a time.

Paolo

 

Just rechecked. All three applications (Ver 12.2.1 on macOS Ventura) open new documents on tabs.

[PaoloT]

42 minutes ago, Tia Lapis said:

Just rechecked. All three applications (Ver 12.2.1 on macOS Ventura) open new documents on tabs.

Probably, you have the "Prefer tabs when opening documents" option checked in the System Settings.

Paolo

 

[fde101]

2 hours ago, Tia Lapis said:

Just rechecked. All three applications (Ver 12.2.1 on macOS Ventura) open new documents on tabs.

I also have 12.2.1, though under Monterey (as some of my software is known to be incompatible with Ventura at this time), and for me Pages is definitely opening new windows by default.

[gricko]

On 12/20/2022 at 6:06 PM, LondonSquirrel said:

How strange, then, that Apple's Final Cut Pro does not have it.

can you use FCP with two screens? yes.
can you tear off panels and move them from screen to screen? yes.
can you use both of those functionalities also with logic pro x? yes.

can you use two screens with any of affinity v2 apps? no.

end of conversation.
limiting users in a professional graphic creative/production environment to a single screen is a deeply regressive decision.

with large screens being cheaper and cheaper, most professional users are accustomed to multiple screen setups, plus ipads for macos/ios environment.

as you try to paint it - this is not a windows vs. macos rant. this is a basic app/os functionality.
what is next? affinity v3 will not have a node selection tool? or layers?

also, whatever you prefer is not relevant.
from the beginning of GUI, macos has this functionality. if a developer introduces a different functionality in his software, it is his obligation to offer both options to users and let them decide which one they will use.

[fde101]

33 minutes ago, gricko said:

can you use two screens with any of affinity v2 apps? no.

You can, but some aspects of efficiency suffer somewhat unless you have the keyboard shortcuts for most of the tools memorized and even then some functions may require you to move the mouse pointer between screens so often that the benefits of doing so are minimal at best.

 

35 minutes ago, gricko said:

from the beginning of GUI, macos has this functionality

The original Mac OS could only run one application at a time - there was no multitasking support at all until part way into the System 5 version cycle, and then it was optional and turned off by default.  It wasn't until System 7 that it was integrated such that it is always enabled.

With only one application running at a time, the entire screen becomes an "application frame" - as only the documents from that application will be visible anyway (plus desk accessories such as the control panel or the calculator).

When multitasking was added on top of this behavior, we got the traditional Mac environment with the windows of all of the applications being intermixed with each other.

Thus the "separated mode" behavior exists primarily for historical reasons and due to the way that the system "grew up" over time, rather than being a result of a conscious "day 1" design choice.

That said, Windows originally started out with its "MDI" approach of having document windows inside of a single application window - something that does not scale to spreading an application across multiple displays the way that happens naturally with the traditional Mac behavior.  Even Microsoft has largely abandoned MDI, as the current versions of the Office products open separate windows per document under Windows, exactly as Mac apps have traditionally behaved.

When OS/2 introduced its "Workplace Shell" interface, a key aspect of its design (later cloned by Windows 95 and its successors) was the "document-centric" approach to organizing open applications - they tried to make the application itself disappear such that one window represented one document, one folder, etc., instead of having users focus on what application they were using.

While current macOS versions are still centered on the concept of the application, the way that the windows intermix with each other in an application which is designed correctly (aka not the v2 Affinity products) is similar in practice to the way that windows are arranged in the OS/2 or Windows 95 environments.

One key thing that has changed over time is the way that toolbars and the like are managed.  With the original Mac OS design handling one application at a time, and being designed for a single small screen, toolbars were separate from document windows, and could be positioned independently, as with "separated mode".

In more modern designs, they are most commonly attached to the document windows, often duplicated for each window.

Most Mac applications have switched to this approach of keeping toolbars and the like "docked" to the document windows, at least by default, but there are a few holdouts that still "float" them separately, and others that give the user the option.

 

The problem with the Affinity v2 apps, as I have already explained above, is that they keep many of the UI components docked to a single document window, and do not repeat them for any detached document windows or float them to let the user position them conveniently.  If you have three documents open in separate windows, one of them must always be tying up screen space to make several of the toolbars accessible, possibly in a sub-optimal position.

They either need to float them as they did in separate mode, or duplicate them across document windows, to keep them accessible.  Either of these options would be a valid solution, but what they have currently is just flat-out bad.

[PaoloT]

On 12/24/2022 at 1:55 PM, fde101 said:

While current macOS versions are still centered on the concept of the application

Actually, it's the opposite. The Mac has always been document-centric, so much that the tools of the inactive documents disappeared when in the background. And the desktop was not crowded by app frames, but by free-floating documents. Windows framed the documents in the app, that was hierarchically dominant over the documents. And it is what is happening with Affinity V2, where you can't focus on the documents, because they are hostage of the app frame.

Paolo

 

[fde101]

2 hours ago, PaoloT said:

The Mac has always been document-centric

The original Mac operating system was single-tasking.  The 128 KB of RAM in the original Macintosh simply wasn't enough to juggle a bunch of GUI-oriented applications at the same time.  One application at a time.

This resulted in user interfaces where the tools were right on the screen without any kind of window frame, such as in the original MacPaint:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacPaint#/media/File:MacpaintWP.png

 

Notice that the entire screen is the application frame.