Corgi Posted January 11, 2023 Share Posted January 11, 2023 Have you Serif folks considered having a Development blog? Delving deep into the Affinity forums, it's clear that there's a lot of dissatisfaction right now. Compounding the frustration caused by bugs and questionable v2 design decisions is the opaqueness of what's being worked on behind the scenes (In terms of an Affinity layer, Opacity is set to 97%, IMO). While I have broader criticisms of the communication from Serif to its user base, in this case I'm just focused on very short-term plans. It's so hard to know what's coming in the near future. The excellent forum Mods occasionally drop hints about certain things, but the info is scattered all over different topics. Today's example: I am awaiting the first MSI release of v2, which (AFAIK) will first appear with the 2.0.4 Beta. Patrick gave a useful tidbit a few days ago, but how would a typical user (or prospective purchaser) find out about this without lucky forum searches? I can appreciate that there are potential downsides to publishing extensive product roadmaps (although there are upsides, as well). But how is there any serious harm in giving us a tentative date for the next upcoming beta and release? Or informing us about what bug fixes or new features are targeted for the next release (with caveats that priorities can change depending on many factors)? Uncertainty is stressful, and there's plenty of it with Affinity products. If it's possible to reduce that uncertainty without harming the company (and with benefitting customers), then it's a no-brainer. The blog could also document things like the content of each new release. Yes, you can figure it out by going into the forums, but it's not straightforward (requires visiting the Beta forums) and necessitates browsing multiple web pages. The other day I was trying to recall the official release date for 2.0.3 and spent 10 minutes searching the forums without success. Would've been easy if it had been blogged. Beyond shedding light on (at least) very-short-term development plans and priorities, there could be articles about interesting aspects of the product design process. The Affinity apps must be astoundingly complex, and it would be interesting to learn about challenges, algorithms, and other aspects of the development process. Affinity Spotlight is great but seems predominantly oriented towards the artistic side of Affinity (e.g., how to create things; what can be done with the tools). While Affinity Spotlight also sports some recent articles that could have been on a theoretical Development Blog (such as the MSIX/MSI Installer troubleshooting/update), the Spotlight content isn't even close to providing the kinds of insights that would be helpful. Thanks in advance for considering this. 🙂 Adalbertus and Stepaan 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stepaan Posted January 12, 2023 Share Posted January 12, 2023 That would be great! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corgi Posted January 12, 2023 Author Share Posted January 12, 2023 18 hours ago, Corgi said: ... But how is there any serious harm in giving us a tentative date for the next upcoming beta and release? Or informing us about what bug fixes or new features are targeted for the next release (with caveats that priorities can change depending on many factors)? ... 26 minutes ago, N.P.M. said: Long story short, you want a roadmap again? No. Long story short, I want some insight into what's about to happen imminently, such as: what are the plans for the 2.0.4 Betas? Some of this information is already in the forums, but hard to find. So I'm suggesting that they turn on the headlights so we can see a tiny bit of the road ahead, as opposed to a map of the road. Plus it would also be interesting to learn something about the development process itself. APW-Design and Adalbertus 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stepaan Posted January 12, 2023 Share Posted January 12, 2023 Anything is better than silence as we know it. Adalbertus 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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