Save locatoon

[robinp]

I really like Affinity apps.

But whenever I use them I feel like I’m constantly being tricked / trapped by them. 

I work on a file then save or export and the location inexplicably defaults to the last location of save or export, not the location of the currently open file.

It’s a topic that’s been discussed at length here over the years. But I simply hate the current behaviour. It causes stress. It causes data issues. It causes embarrassment. It causes extra work. It’s entirely unnecessary. It’s terrible customer service  

All because someone at Affinity has a somewhat bizarre idea about how save dialogues should work that’s different from every other app. 

It’s just not good enough. Sort it out. I’m done with waiting patiently. 

[PaulEC]

Personally I prefer files to be saved to the same location I used previously, rather than wherever they were opened from. I don't want to have to keep changing it back to the location I've chosen.

[Bit Disappointed]

7 billion people can argue about whether A or B is relevant for as long as they can argue about whether coriander tastes good or bad. No one is right; everyone has a preference. But when it comes to this particular behaviour, it should be optional. For me personally, it is incredibly time-consuming as it is implemented now;

[prophet]

if you're a Mac user, I can not recommend DefaultFolder enough. Life saver!

https://www.stclairsoft.com/DefaultFolderX/

[robinp]

7 hours ago, Bit Arts said:

7 billion people can argue about whether A or B is relevant for as long as they can argue about whether coriander tastes good or bad. No one is right; everyone has a preference. But when it comes to this particular behaviour, it should be optional. For me personally, it is incredibly time-consuming as it is implemented now;

Yeah, it is like it is set up to intentionally trick you. 
 

I would say though that per your first part of your reply, there is a ‘right’ and a ‘wrong’ here.

When there’s a platform norm, that is the ‘right’ way because it is what everyone is used to and expecting. Anything else is a trap and leads to dangerous (yes, data security is a serious business) situations. 
 

If people want non-standard behaviour, then fine, let them have that as a user selectable option. Don’t inflict this absurd situation on everyone else. 

[PaulEC]

Like a lot of things in Affinity, it would be nice to just give the user the choice of default save locations!

[Bit Disappointed]

8 hours ago, robinp said:

Yeah, it is like it is set up to intentionally trick you. 

I would say though that per your first part of your reply, there is a ‘right’ and a ‘wrong’ here.

When there’s a platform norm, that is the ‘right’ way because it is what everyone is used to and expecting. Anything else is a trap and leads to dangerous (yes, data security is a serious business) situations. 

If people want non-standard behaviour, then fine, let them have that as a user selectable option. Don’t inflict this absurd situation on everyone else. 

Yes, of course you have to comply with platform standards, but they are often quite banal and generic for Mr. and Mrs. Steak. When you finally become a field marshal and get a conscript's uniform, happiness is not just around the corner for the expert. 🙂 

It's important to come up with alternatives, as workflow is king among professionals, people with similar needs and especially those who work with massive amounts of work every day, who have to go through these repeated unnecessary interruptions. Fortunately, in my truly professional programs, I see that they provide deviations or alternatives where the standards don't work with customers' professional practices. Save location is a classic example of something that's really annoying out there, and not just that it interrupts and annoys, it takes extra time, and time is money. 

My guess is that Serif's main motivation for implementing it this way is to make it easy for themselves with simpler functionality and easier to maintain cross-platform code. It's a sound philosophy to start with, but as I said, everything has to be weighted against customer needs.

[robinp]

12 hours ago, Bit Arts said:

Yes, of course you have to comply with platform standards, but they are often quite banal and generic for Mr. and Mrs. Steak. When you finally become a field marshal and get a conscript's uniform, happiness is not just around the corner for the expert. 🙂 

It's important to come up with alternatives, as workflow is king among professionals, people with similar needs and especially those who work with massive amounts of work every day, who have to go through these repeated unnecessary interruptions. Fortunately, in my truly professional programs, I see that they provide deviations or alternatives where the standards don't work with customers' professional practices. Save location is a classic example of something that's really annoying out there, and not just that it interrupts and annoys, it takes extra time, and time is money. 

My guess is that Serif's main motivation for implementing it this way is to make it easy for themselves with simpler functionality and easier to maintain cross-platform code. It's a sound philosophy to start with, but as I said, everything has to be weighted against customer needs.

Open / save dialogues are provided by macOS unless a developer decides to make additional work by completely implementing their own. 
 

I’m an iOS developer so I’ve not used them, but given every other app has the same behaviour when it comes to save location, its extremely likely that Serif did extra work to implement the non-standard macOS behaviour. 
 

Now we are several years down the line, they would have angry people either way if they suddenly changed it to the correct behaviour. So the only viable solution is to provide a toggle in the settings.

Heres a scenario where things can go really badly wrong:

You are working on multiple projects and have a shared folder with an external party (client, partner, whoever). As a well organised business, your projects have a standardised folder structure. Therefore every project kind of looks the same once inside the top level. 
 

Later in the same day, you re working on some sensitive, private information for another client. It’s the same day and you create a folder with the same issued date of today (because you’re organised and keep records). You save the file. Only it defaults to the save location of the other project, a folder that looks essentially identical at a glance. 
 

The big problem is that you’ve shared the folder with the other project already. So immediately there’s a data incident. 

 

 

This is entirely caused by Serif’s insistent that Affinity apps behave in non-standard ways. When people do common tasks like save a file, there are behaviours that are normal on a platform. These shouldn’t ever be messed around with. At least not without express consent from the user.