My „must have” list, if met in V2, will make me stay on this boat.

[bbrother]

My „must to have” list, if met in V2, will make me stay on this boat.
Straight from the head without any prior writing down.
Kidding. I have been building it for the last half a year, working intensively with the V2 version.

Higher on the list = higher priority

 

Common for all apps (ADe | APh | APub)↓

1. Less bugs, better performance
   Finally take control of the redrawing process so that this problem doesn't keep coming back

2. Better UI
   More readable (better contrast)
   Better dialog layouts (size, alignment, well grouped options etc).

3. More advanced guides
   Selecting individual or multiple guides
   Change their position using transform panel
   Align them to page, spread selected object

 

Distinct for each app↓

Affinity Designer

1. Better svg export/import
   The svg structure must be better organized,
   Better support for feaures of an svg format is needed,
   Unwanted elements such as <rect> representing artboard surface shouldn't be created

2. True vector brushes

3. Vector pattern / fill objects with created vector pattern

4. Blend tool

5. Mesh gradient

6. Symbols panel
   Ability to create and manage symbol libraries.
   Making it global for every document.

Affinity Photo

1. Better rendering engine
   Smooth zooming in/out when in quick mask mode or when activ pixel selection present

2. Instant refresh | update of regular and mask thumbnails after changes made

3. Better procedure for resizing selected pixels (no need to be in quick mask mode)

4. Align to pixel selection (marching ants) bounding box.

Affinity Publisher

1. True, professional object styles
   Dedicated dialog
   Clear | replace all object settings or just specific ones
   Setting for position
   Setting for choose (honour) first and next text style in a text frame
   Setting for text frame size

2. Span | split text across columns

3. Span | split footnotes across columns

4. GREP styles inside paragraph styles

5. Muliple spread managment

6. Move page(s) command with dialog
   Moving page inside current document
   Moving page to other opened documents

7. Move master pages to other documents feature

8. Support for Variable fonts

9. Insert tables in text frames
   option to set „space before” & „Space after” for such a table

10. Tables across multiple pages
    option to repeat table headings

11. Find and Replace the attributes and effects applied to objects, graphics, and text frames.

12. Find and Replace — replace text with contents of clipboard for allowing Replacing text with icons

13. Table styles accesible for every document (global)

14. Story Editor for proofreading

It's an ambitious list, but that's probably a good thing.
So, dear team, now Canva team, the ⚽ is on your side. What will you do about it?

[Alfred]

18 minutes ago, bbrother said:

So, dear team, now Canva team, the ⚽ is in your court. What will you do about it?

<pedantry>
Soccer is played on a pitch, not a court. I think you mean “the 🎾 is in your court”. 😉
</pedantry>

[bbrother]

1 hour ago, Alfred said:

I think you mean “the 🎾 is in your court”. 😉

<pedantry>
→→→→edited the post and changed to "side"
</pedantry>

 

P.S As a full stack dev @alfred, I would like to point out that you were not pedantic enough and forgot to use indentation for the text between the <pedantry> tag, necessarily 4 spaces.

Just kidding, have a nice day @Alfred🖐️

[Dazmondo77]

bbrother -- pretty much nailed it.

Off the top of my head I'd also add a printable slug area, proper separation preview and a shortcut to view thumbnails of all open documents similar to how it used to work in V1 (see screen grab vid) if you have 20 documents open, it's a total pain in the arse to find what you want by either control tabbing or clicking through all your document tabs. Also the ability to print CMYK vector work direct to a rip that expects CMYK, without Affinity first rasterising at 300dpi and converting to RGB, leaving the rip to convert back to CMYK and ballsing up all your colours 

[bbrother]

1 hour ago, Dazmondo77 said:

bbrother -- pretty much nailed it.

Thanks

 

1 hour ago, Dazmondo77 said:

proper separation preview

Nice to have, but not really necessary for a skilled designer.
Sunday designers won‘t need it at all, because they probably don't know anything about it.

1 hour ago, Dazmondo77 said:

proper separation preview and a shortcut to view thumbnails of all open documents similar to how it used to work in V1 (see screen grab vid) if you have 20 documents open, it's a total pain in the arse to find what you want by either control tabbing or clicking through all your document tabs

It's not on my list, honestly I haven't thought about it because I rarely have more than 3 documents open at the same time and the shortcut Ctrl+Tab (Switch Document/View) works perfectly for me (I work on Windows 95% of the time)

 

1 hour ago, Dazmondo77 said:

Also the ability to print CMYK vector work direct to a rip that expects CMYK, without Affinity first rasterising at 300dpi and converting to RGB, leaving the rip to convert back to CMYK and ballsing up all your colours 

I understand you. I've seen issues a few times where RIP profiles ignored strong RGB colors, resulting in green appearing as light gray.

[Insider]

I can no longer believe in significant improvements, so I've switched to Pixelmator Pro, Raw Power, VectorStyler and QuarkXPress. And on the iPad Pro Photomator, Amadine and Fresco without a subscription. All lifetime licenses and Fresco free

[bbrother]

4 hours ago, Insider said:

I can no longer believe in significant improvements, so I've switched to...

I, too, am skeptical whether there will be any significant progress, but after Canva entered the game with their financial resources and after careful consideration, I decided that it would be unwise not to give them and myself a chance for two simple reasons:

1. Them, it's simple, so they could have a chance to prove that i was wrong.
2. For me, to be sure that I made the right decision not based on negative emotions and prejudices, but on facts.

I know this may sound naive, or like someone in PR paid me to write post-takeover feel-good posts, but that's what I think.
Oh, and of course no one paid me for this, just to be clear😇

So we will see what they will present in the upcoming beta version (2.5).
If there is no noticeable progress, I will have to start looking for an alternative because:

Quote

Those who do not develop and progress, in fact, are rolling up ← I don't know if that's how it should sound in English but I think so 🤔
If not, sorry, I'm a foreigner👽

 

[Boldlinedesign]

On 4/12/2024 at 9:36 AM, Dazmondo77 said:

bbrother -- pretty much nailed it.

Off the top of my head I'd also add a printable slug area, proper separation preview and a shortcut to view thumbnails of all open documents similar to how it used to work in V1 (see screen grab vid) if you have 20 documents open, it's a total pain in the arse to find what you want by either control tabbing or clicking through all your document tabs. Also the ability to print CMYK vector work direct to a rip that expects CMYK, without Affinity first rasterising at 300dpi and converting to RGB, leaving the rip to convert back to CMYK and ballsing up all your colours 

@Dazmondo77are you still using vectorstyler? I've been trying to reach you for a while now. Reach out sometime!

[Patrick Connor]

21 hours ago, bbrother said:

So we will see what they will present in the upcoming beta version (2.5)

What? This deal was done 3 weeks ago and you seriously think "noticeable progress" (by which I assume you mean new features) will be beta ready by the very next cycle, as a consequence of Canva influence or involvement? It's hopefully starting this week. The contents of 2.5 are no way to judge any influence in my opinion as it's really early days. But I do love your thread and the scope of it's ambition.

[PaoloT]

On 4/13/2024 at 11:00 AM, Insider said:

I can no longer believe in significant improvements

"I find your lack of faith disturbing!".

[Affinityconfusesme]

I think we should see what 2.6 brings, as development takes time. I think by then it will be 2-3 months, and then we will see better the effects of pledge #2.

[anto]

3 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

"noticeable progress" (by which I assume you mean new features)

I think that if Serif's "priorities" are included in 2.5, there will be no "noticeable progress", it will be something like a "spiral" tool again. If Сanva wants to seriously develop the product, then there will be something more in demand and useful.

[bbrother]

8 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

What? This deal was done 3 weeks ago and you seriously think "noticeable progress" will be beta ready by the very next cycle, as a consequence of Canva influence or involvement?

Not what I meant @Patrick Connor. I think you misunderstood me or I expressed myself imprecisely.
I don't expect miracles from the next cycle 2.5, but progress that will be felt, even a small one. Because that's what's been missing lately.
First of all, I will pay attention to whether any regressions will appear again. If not, I will already consider it as a noticeable progress🤭.
You see, not excessive expectations, right Patrick?

8 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

The contents of 2.5 are no way to judge any influence in my opinion as it's really early days.

This is obvious. And I know that it will take some time.
But as your CEO Ash told↓ — great updates are already in the work and nothing will be held back. So he woke up the users appetites🍗.
Patrick your CEO @Ash should be more careful with his words. 

On 3/26/2024 at 10:11 AM, Ash said:

I honestly think you'll all be pleased with the outcome of this. With the additional financial backing we have no pressure at all to release a V3 anytime soon, so can be 100% focused on ploughing all our efforts into free V2 updates for the foreseeable future - and we've got some great updates in the works. 

On 3/28/2024 at 6:55 PM, Ash said:

What's more I will say with Canva's backing we are not under the same financial pressure we would have been to release a V3 anytime soon, meaning those of you using V2 will actually benefit from more features as free updates which may previously have been held back for a V3 if that makes sense

-----------------

P.S And here's a short request to you, Patrick, as the head of QA.
Keep pressure on developers to avoid situations like the ones below↓

 

[Dazmondo77]

PUPPET WARP could have saved me loads of time today

[Frozen Death Knight]

On 4/12/2024 at 11:46 AM, bbrother said:

Symbol libraries
Ability to create and manage symbol libraries.
Making symbols accesible globaly for every document.

The Assets panel can save Symbols and be reused in other documents. Isn't it sufficient?

[bbrother]

39 minutes ago, Frozen Death Knight said:

The Assets panel can save Symbols and be reused in other documents. Isn't it sufficient?

Good point @Frozen Death Knight, but I would still prefer to manage symbols from the "Symbols" panel, which has the advantage over the "Assets" panel of having options like create, detach, and sync. Adding the ability to create libraries in this panel and making it global would make it a complete one place to manage and create symbols.

I edited that point in the list to be more precise. Thx to bringing it up to my attention @Frozen Death knight👍