UI suggestions from a newbie

[TwangerMan]

This is First Impressions from a newbie.  And also an Oldie.  Decades of computing experience.  Am using Windows 10 version.

Very powerful software of course.  Probably the best vector based around in ultimate functionality.

However....I find the UI very limited.  Not everyone has young eyes.  And not everyone spends half their life playing video games and loves learning all the hidden secrets, in this case the keyboard shortcuts. 

I find the UI to be a throwback.  Meaning OLD.   And this is a 70+ senior telling you this (Computing since the 80's with the first PC's as an IT pro whose specialty is workflow and the user interface - all business, no games).

The UI seems conflicted - partly stuck on keyboard shortcuts while making a fainthearted attempt to accommodate working with a touchscreen graphics drawing display.

I should be able to have almost everything in icons on toolbars, and never go to my keyboard when I have a beautiful graphics tablet in front of me and a pen in hand.

You need to keep up with the times.  Users should be able to adjust the size of the icons and text.   The upper toolbar and toolbars in general should be fully customizable, including being able to create new dockable/moveable toolbars and panels.  (And my God, why isnt a Zoom ALWAYS available in the upper toolbar and in a side panel, and better yet a dedicated float with customizable zoom levels.)

 

[deeds]

I'd go one further and say that the entire app (for desktop operating systems) should be skin-able, that users (who are designers) should be able to skin the entire UI, and share those skins.

 

Reaper, a DAW for music production, allows this, and has to accomodate much animation and dynamic responsiveness. And it's on all platforms. Even Linux.

 

 

[debraspicher]

This isn't a debunk. I just don't have much to add to the commentary, atm, but I did want to comment on this one in case for people not aware...

There are "customizable" zoom levels. It's in Navigator and have to click the hamburger and it says "Save Viewpoint". These can be set to shortcuts in preferences, so the F-keys for instance...

[loukash]

1 hour ago, TwangerMan said:

should be fully customizable

There are benefits and there are drawbacks.

Since the Designer competitor VectorStyler is currently on sale, and my public beta of it has long expired, I actually bought it this week to have its tools handy for fancy & crazy vector manupulation when needed. (Rarely, but sometimes, and it gives me less reasons to ever look at Ill-Frustrator again.)
Literally everything is customizable in VectorStyler.
Boy, I don't even know where to begin with customizing! 
I'm totally stuck because I don't like its default interface, but there are so many options to customize that I don't even understand what they do! So after about two hours of "customizing" I got tired of VectorStyler and went back to do some actual design work in admittedly suboptimal but still workable Affinity…
But yes, I'd also like some options to be more customizable in Affinity. Probably not the same options as you, or you, or as the other guy lurking in this thread right now.
And that's the dilemma every developer and UI designer must cope with. 

[deeds]

32 minutes ago, loukash said:

And that's the dilemma every developer and UI designer must cope with. 

There is no UI Designer, nor ANY designer involved in the "design" of VectorStyler. It's been a one man band from get go, and he's a programmer (of truly mind bending ability, dedication, productivity and dedication. And dedication).

 

So the customisation abilities of VectorStyler are a choice, based on the self awareness of the lone developer, that he's not equipped to know what users want, so just gave them the ability to make as they want for themselves. 

The middle ground is that a brilliant designer make the default layout, design and operability of the UI and UX. Affinity surely has the money to hire such a person. And needs this person, desperately. 

They might even learn a little about using their own tool if they hired a master designer to serve in this role. 

 

 

[Boldlinedesign]

1 hour ago, loukash said:

Literally everything is customizable in VectorStyler.
Boy, I don't even know where to begin with customizing! 
I'm totally stuck because I don't like its default interface, but there are so many options to customize that I don't even understand what they do! So after about two hours of "customizing" I got tired of VectorStyler and went back to do some actual design work in admittedly suboptimal but still workable Affinity…

That's awesome that you purchased vectorstyler. It's been a year since it was last in beta! There have been a massive number of updates since then. Version 1.2 it's supposed to be released in the next few months with a lot of improvements as well - some involving the UI. There have been suggestions and ideas shared by users on the vectorstyler forum that are being considered and added. I'd encourage you to share your ideas for improving the Vectorstyler UI there. 

[ChopperNova]

I'm was really surprised that the V2 top tool bar has zero additional customizability over V1. Everything you can do in the menu that's feasible to do in a button should have its own icon allowed up there. I do think how customizing the tools bar on the left is much more intuitive than than Photoshop, although weirdly, there's a lot things there called "tools" that are really filters.

1 hour ago, loukash said:

I'm totally stuck because I don't like its default interface, but there are so many options to customize that I don't even understand what they do! So after about two hours of "customizing" I got tired of VectorStyler and went back to do some actual design work in admittedly suboptimal but still workable Affinity…
But yes, I'd also like some options to be more customizable in Affinity. Probably not the same options as you, or you, or as the other guy lurking in this thread right now.
And that's the dilemma every developer and UI designer must cope with. 

This is the reason I stick to FastStone Image Viewer instead of XNViewMP. FastStone is hardly customizable at all, and yet somehow doesn't need to be, everything is very intuitive. XNViewMP has more configurabilty, yet I never can get it just right.

[loukash]

2 minutes ago, Boldlinedesign said:

I'd encourage you to share your ideas for improving the Vectorstyler UI there. 

Hm… well, we're getting off topic here, but in short:
It's about priorities. VectorStyler can do things Designer can't (yet). But it cannot integrate into the Affinity StudioLink workflow. This was always the killer feature of the Affinity suite for me: one document format, multiple distinctively focused apps and personas that can seamlessly add features to it. Something that not even Adobe made possible so far.

So my priority at this time is to actively help improving Affinity because for the most parts, Serif's "big picture" largely matches my personal "big picture" of how this kind of app suite should work. It's not just about fancy vector warping and stuff. 

Even more that now with the Universal License I also have Affinity on the iPad. I haven't done any "mission critical" work on iPad yet though. Actually I will continue doing "mission critical" work on Mac in v1 for quite some time to come, until the v2 flaws are ironed out. Much like back in the day, I haven't upgraded from Adobe CS3 to CS5.5 until shortly before CS6 was released, getting CS5.5 in a heavy Black Friday discount: at that time CS5.5 has already matured, has gone through a bunch of bug fixes and was running mostly solid ever since. 
So I find the Affinity 2 iPad versions amazingly good. Since I'm already familiar with the basic Affinity concepts from the desktop version, it didn't take long to get used to the iPad UI in the past few weeks. (Now, if only I could have Light UI on iPad…)

12 minutes ago, ChopperNova said:

he V2 top tool bar has zero additional customizability over V1

That's because it mimics the standard MacOS toolbar concept, although Serif has possibly rewritten the code themselves to make the same UI available on Windows as well. Which is why on Mac, the Affinity UI elements are barely scriptable via MacOS UI scripting – which is a shame (accessibility!)

18 minutes ago, ChopperNova said:

I stick to FastStone Image Viewer instead of XNViewMP

I also have downloaded XNViewMP years ago. It doesn't do what I'd need it to do. And the UI is awful. So meh…  
I'm still using iView/Expression Media as my DAM, at least for as long as I continue to work in MacOS El Capitan. Even though it cannot even see Affinity documents.
Only earlier this week though, I bought the v8 upgrade to NeoFinder which is getting better and better at mimicking the original iView concepts; besides, I'm a CDFinder/NeoFinder user since 2000 while it still was a "simple" external media cataloging tool). In any case, NeoFinder's integration with Affinity documents is pretty good.

[ChopperNova]

@loukash Just to clarify, XNViewMP is a relatively new program. It's much more flexible than the older XNView.

https://www.xnview.com/en/xnviewmp/.

It's quite impressive, but somehow I always get the feeling I'm fighting the UI Configuration rather than refining it.

[loukash]

Just now, ChopperNova said:

XNViewMP is a relatively new program

XNViewMP has been on my Mac since years. In fact, while I was writing about it in my previous post, I launched it. The MacOS protection mechanism informed me that this is the first time I am launching this version, and that I have downloded and installed it in – no kidding! – June 2020…  

That said, on El Capitan I'm stuck with v0.9xy.something. Newer versions require High Sierra. 
But from what I can tell, there's nothing in XNViewMP that I couldn't do e.g. with the file browser in GraphicConverter, or with Bridge CS5.1.

What I need most are Sets, as they were called in iVew/Expression Media. NeoFinder already has that, it's called Albums.
I also need it to display all files, not just images, but also audio, text, younameit, and its metadata. 
I also need to display MacOS Finder labels/tags and comments. NeoFinder & GraphicConverter can do that, XNViewMP can't.

Anyway, we're getting off topic.  

[François R]

We're talking more about accessibility here than usability and Affinity v2 is a step back from v1 that had lots of issues.

Usability is the profession of making (software in our case) as usable as possible, while accessibility is the profession of making it usable for people with disabilities and age-related visual impairments, which will affect the vast majority with age to a greater or lesser extent. In other words, a fairly large percentage of customers and potential customers. 

Usability is subject to many interpretations and misinterpretations - but accessibility is entirely on the terms of individual disabilities, and so companies just have to follow the fairly simple guidelines: 
https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/non-web-ict/

For contrast, the guidelines are so easy to understand that children can learn and follow them.

The issues mentioned by @TwangerMan will strike us all.

It is precisely an issue of priorities. In this case, a mis-prioritisation. And if you can't prioritise, then you're not a good enough manager or employee. It's quite simple.

Someone ignores accessibility as if it were a company run by 20-year-olds. Whether it's profit maximisation or ignorance, I don't know, but it's a trivial mistake on Serif's part.

Technically, Serif can correct these issues relatively easily if their IT architecture is stringent and professional. But this requires Serif to simply take the discipline seriously, and recruit permanent expertise into the company for accessibility design and more general design principles. This is quite normal in the industry, by the way...

[Boldlinedesign]

2 hours ago, loukash said:

It's about priorities. VectorStyler can do things Designer can't (yet). But it cannot integrate into the Affinity StudioLink workflow. This was always the killer feature of the Affinity suite for me: one document format, multiple distinctively focused apps and personas that can seamlessly add features to it. Something that not even Adobe made possible so far.

So my priority at this time is to actively help improving Affinity because for the most parts, Serif's "big picture" largely matches my personal "big picture" of how this kind of app suite should work. It's not just about fancy vector warping and stuff. 

I agree with you that the Studiolink structure is revolutionary for Affinity and the structure can be built in an amazing cohesive way between the trio of Affinity programs. Vectorstyler is but one program and therefore does not offer that Studiolink option at all. That's certainly an advantage to Affinity right now. The fact that all resources and ideas have been focused on vector-only in VS is a negative in the lens of Studiolink and wanting to do raster and publishing work - but a huge bonus to those heavily involved in vector work itself. I don't ever seeing Affinity offering the vector capabilities VS holds - but I don't think either company is trying to be just like the other either. I don't see VS as a competitor to Affinity any more than I see Clip Studio paint as a competitor to Affinity Photo. I've always been a firm believer in artists being able to utilize the best attributes of many programs. This is why I try to be involved in multiple forums for different programs - because it benefits me in the long run to not be tied to just one.

I've supported Affinity since 2015 and always hoped they would excel and create a realistic Adobe replacement. I believe they are doing it but the process has been painfully slow - for whatever the reasons. I can completely understand your decision to invest in Affinity since your workflow utilizes the three Affinity programs.  

95% of my professional work is vector-based. I do use Photo some and Designer occasionally but because VS is so advanced in terms of vectors, and improving quickly, I invest most of my time there. VS does far more than fancy vector warping and stuff.

Affinity version 1 was basically a non-starter for me because the designer app cupboards were bare. I'm trying to give version 2 a fair shake since they added some new features. One of the Affinity guys commented in a tweet that they use their own suite for all their graphic needs - which surprised me actually. Realistically, I can't wait around another 8 years for Affinity to add the missing parts standard in most vector editing programs. If Affinity makes great strides quickly in improving version 2 going forward, I will find more use for it in my workflow and invest more in it.
Right now, because of the big update to version 2, the Affinity forum is flowing with contributions of new ideas and bug reports -which is awesome. Prior to the new update, the forum was essentially repeating the same unanswered questions waiting for answers and updates. If Affinity is not communicating much on the forum again and not adding new solid  updates consistently, there leaves a lot of time to invest in other forums where things are going faster and come back to Affinity when updates come out again, etc