Advanced Page Management: General Improvements

[Patrick Connor]

"Advanced Page Management" has been split into 4 New Feature threads (this is one of those 4). If you want to discuss a change to page management please check out each of these threads and choose the best one to discuss the change you are observing

1. Multiple Pages Feature 
   • Add Pages: Flow Pages
   • Add Pages: Extend Spread
   • Add Pages: New Spread
   • Dragging to create/change layout
2. Page Migration Improvements 
   • Page move options
   • Split Masters
   • Move Master Content
   • Reapply Masters
   • Anchor Toward Spine
3. Page Reflow Control
   • New drag drop interactions
   • Reflow on a per-spread basis
   • New options where to add pages
4. General Improvements (this thread)
   • Page Thumbnails
   • Master Tags
   • Bug Fixes / Improvements

====================================================================================

General Improvements

Apps: Affinity Publisher
Platforms: All

IMPORTANT. PLEASE READ FIRST

The implementation of this feature (and the many associated improvements listed at the bottom of the post) involved a rewrite of much of the existing page, spread and master code, as such 2.6.0 cannot support backward compatibility to 2.5 for page operations. Any undo history saved with a document that was created in 2.5.5 or earlier, which involves page or spread manipulation, will be truncated. You won't be able to undo back past the last page operation you did. If your 2.5.x document was saved with history and it includes any page action you will be told when you open in 2.6.0 that the history has been truncated. Any changes made using 2.6 will save and load their history going forward, and this restriction only relates to page functions whose history was created in earlier versions. Additionally you should take particular care to backup your old documents when trying them out in the new beta in case there are bugs converting from the old file structure to the new.

---

Page Thumbnails

An extra large size for page thumbnails is available on the Pages Panel’s preferences menu.

However wide you make the panel – perhaps undocked on a second display – thumbnails are scaled so the widest spread pretty much fills its width.

Master Tags

If you right click on a master you can select a tag colour. The tag colour is displayed as a circle on the master thumbnail and a bar above all the pages where it is used. This makes it easier to identify which master is used where.

You can hide tags by unticking Show master page tags in the panel preferences menu.

Bug Fixes / Improvements

• Improvements to auto-flowing of text frames to more consistently add the right number of pages and choose the right template pages.
• Fixes and improvements in consistencies between Add, Delete, Copy and Move page operations.
• Layers panel now hides master objects that are not part of the applied page range.
• Spread Properties now highlights selected page in spread (added in 2.6.0.2831)

[Affinity Info Bot]

Known Issues in this feature
A list of unresolved issues for this feature, reported by users

• AF-4769 - Pages Panel set to Extra Large Thumbnails always centres the Spine with the Panel leading to wasted thumbnail space
• AF-4774 - Master Tag colours are muted making them difficult to differentiate
• AF-4975 - Jump Line Appears When it Should be Hidden
• AF-5232 - Moving Offset Pages Before a Right-Facing Page Results in a Page Mismatch on Opposing Sides of the Spine

Released Fixes
A list of issues for this feature, available in the current beta build

• AF-4850 - Inserting Facing Pages with Master Page Set to None Displays a Margin on Left Facing Pages
• AF-4905 - Large and Extra Large Page Panel Thumbnail Previews Fail in Non Facing Page Documents When the Pages Panel is Set to its Minimum Width

[Return]

The extra large thumbnails is a bit taken up UI real estate on the left site ,see image.

[Return]

Also after deleting pages from a multipagespread there are ghosts of those pages left in the pages panel.
These also will take up UI real estate, see image.

[fde101]

32 minutes ago, Return said:

extra large thumbnails is a bit taken up UI real estate on the left site

It looks like it is trying to keep the center of the spread (the spine position) centered in the panel.  Your extra pages are all off to the right so there is nothing to balance them on the left.

 

EDIT: yes, this appears to be the case, because I can make the same thing happen in the other direction if I add pages to the left side of a spread.  Whether a good thing or not, it is keeping the spine centered.

[Return]

Found it also after some experimenting

[Patrick Connor]

I think the waste of space is unhelpful. A single multi-page pull/fold out in a book is going to create a huge swathe of empty space on the other side of the spine, so understandable but not nice experience, thanks @Return

[MikeTO]

Layers panel now hides master objects that are not part of the applied page range: Yay!!

Extra Large Thumbnails: This works great. However, the master zone is a fixed height so users who want XL thumbs for their pages may find it awkward for masters. Ideally we'd be able to resize the master zone or set their size separately. Not hugely important.

Master Tags: This is a great addition and works well even with multiple masters applied. People will love this feature and I love how they fade in and out.

I do find the colours a bit too muted - the second and third colours are hard to differentiate as are the blue and grey colours. Perhaps you could use this palette in dark mode but brighter colours in light mode? I realize these are the same colours used for layers.

Thanks!

[MikeTO]

Thumbnail scaling: Multi-page spread thumbnails are scaled separately from other thumbnails. For horizontal spreads, it doesn't happen often and it's not particularly obvious. It always happens and is very obvious with vertical spreads.

Also the gap reported by @Return is above or below the spread when it's vertical so it makes the panel less usable, especially on smaller screens. In particular, note the page numbers floating in the middle of this double gap.

 

[Bryan Rieger]

I don't seem to be able to use Page Up and Page Down to navigate between pages/spreads like I could in every other version, and the specified keyboard short cuts ⌘↑ + ⌘↓ don't seem to work either (but the menu items work fine). 

Also, the massive icons that appear when you interact with the page thumbnails are really unintuitive. They're SO BIG, but still unintelligible.

[MikeTO]

4 minutes ago, Bryan Rieger said:

I don't seem to be able to use Page Up and Page Down to navigate between pages/spreads like I could in every other version, and the specified keyboard short cuts ⌘↑ + ⌘↓ don't seem to work either (but the menu items work fine). 

Also, the massive icons that appear when you interact with the page thumbnails are really unintuitive. They're SO BIG, but still unintelligible.

I can't duplicate the problem with Page Up and Down on macOS. Are you sure you have the beta's shortcuts set to Cmd + Up/Down Arrow? The menu will look like this if you have, but if you see arrows there instead of triangles it's not correct. Go to Settings > Shortcuts and re-type the shortcuts. Note that the wrong symbols are shown in macOS menus due to a bug in the OS. This isn't an Affinity problems and will happen in all Mac apps. The bug was introduced when Apple switched the OS font and forgot to change the glyph shown in the menus. It's been this way for years.

The icons in the Page panel cursors are part of this other thread:

 

[Bryan Rieger]

Ah, thanks @MikeTO that was it. I didn't realized I had changed them ages ago. this is what my Settings > Publisher > Document > Shortcuts looks like now.

Wouldn't it make sense just to make these the defaults, instead of requiring users go in and set them themselves?

[MikeTO]

43 minutes ago, Bryan Rieger said:

Ah, thanks @MikeTO that was it. I didn't realized I had changed them ages ago. this is what my Settings > Publisher > Document > Shortcuts looks like now.

Wouldn't it make sense just to make these the defaults, instead of requiring users go in and set them themselves?

There are a few shortcuts including these that were created for extended keyboards that don't work out of the box on non-extended keyboards.

[Sean P]

18 hours ago, MikeTO said:

Layers panel now hides master objects that are not part of the applied page range: Yay!!

Extra Large Thumbnails: This works great. However, the master zone is a fixed height so users who want XL thumbs for their pages may find it awkward for masters. Ideally we'd be able to resize the master zone or set their size separately. Not hugely important.

Master Tags: This is a great addition and works well even with multiple masters applied. People will love this feature and I love how they fade in and out.

I do find the colours a bit too muted - the second and third colours are hard to differentiate as are the blue and grey colours. Perhaps you could use this palette in dark mode but brighter colours in light mode? I realize these are the same colours used for layers.

Thanks!

Not sure if I misunderstood what you're saying about the Master Zone height, but that can be adjusted by dragging the bar containing the 'Pages' text (see cursor position below). With that said I would agree it should be on the black line you would think that would do it and also show a resize indicator. I'll pass that over.

Lastly with regards to the colours this is something we have logged. They should be the same as those used in the Layers Panel, but are actually ever so slightly off compared with them. Those Layer Panel colours were also based on the default set of macOS Tag colours, however they're actually desaturated when compared with those, so that makes them even worse. I'll pass these comments on.

[MikeTO]

3 hours ago, Sean P said:

Not sure if I misunderstood what you're saying about the Master Zone height, but that can be adjusted by dragging the bar containing the 'Pages' text (see cursor position below). With that said I would agree it should be on the black line you would think that would do it and also show a resize indicator. I'll pass that over.

That's what I meant. I have always assumed that the master page section of the panel wasn't resizable because the mouse didn't change to a resize cursor when mousing over the divider. A textbook example of how cursor changes help with discoverability. But I feel really, really dumb. 🙂 

[Hilltop]

On 10/23/2024 at 3:33 PM, MikeTO said:

That's what I meant. I have always assumed that the master page section of the panel wasn't resizable because the mouse didn't change to a resize cursor when mousing over the divider. A textbook example of how cursor changes help with discoverability. But I feel really, really dumb. 🙂 

Ah, I hadn't discovered that either. Nice to know!

[Patrick Connor]

Improvement Spread Properties now highlights selected page in spread (added 2.6.0.2831)
 

The Spread Properties dialog has been updated to highlight the page that is currently selected in the list of Spread Pages.

The benefits of this now mean you no longer have to guess what page you're editing. Whilst this wasn't an issue when spreads only had left or right pages, it became much more of an issue when spreads contained multiple pages.

As mentioned you can select the page in the list and it will show a highlight on the left of the Spread Properties dialog. Alternatively you can click directly onto the preview and it will become highlighted and change the selected page on the right.

[MikeTO]

Thank you, this is great!

[Dazmondo77]

2 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

Improvement Spread Properties now highlights selected page in spread

ACE

[Return]

Perhaps it's a good addition to the new tagcolor targeting for masterpages to also target the masterpage label name.
At the moment this would only give 7 (color) options to target all masterpages in a document.
Since one can have multiple masterpages on a page, it would also be nice to target its labelname in the layersname field.
 

[Return]

6 minutes ago, Hangman said:

The only thing that changed is how the two Master Pages are applied to the spread, no name changes have been made to the Master Pages...

I've both applied Master A and Master B directly to the spread rather than applying Master A to Master B and then applying Master B to the Spread...

What is your expectation if the Master Name were added to the States panel, that's perhaps the part I'm missing, what is it you're looking to achieve by doing that?

In your first states file master A is a child of master B and probably treated as  Layer instead of a mp.

In your second states file all the objects on the masterpages were renamed to the parent aka the masterpagename and those are already targets but not the mps itself.

 

[Hangman]

One of the improvements listed for the 2.6 Beta is:

On 10/21/2024 at 1:56 PM, Patrick Connor said:

Layers panel now hides master objects that are not part of the applied page range.

Even though the Text Frame for the left page of a right-facing Master is no longer shown, in certain circumstances, the jump line still appears:

Steps to Reproduce

1. Create a new facing-page Publisher document
2. Add two text frames to the left Master page and link
3. Move the second text frame to the right facing Master page
4. Select the text frame on the first Publication page
5. The jump/continuation line still appears

Note: This equally happens in the 2.5.5 Retail version but with the addition of the Text frame because the Master page object isn't hidden.

[Patrick Connor]

From build 2.6.0.2861 onward, a new option has been added to the Pages panel's right click menu (on desktop) to Move Pages (with an option to Copy pages). You can therefore move page selections much easier in longer documents without needing to use drag/drop. The functions behind this new dialog are a work in progress but feel free to report what you find in this thread.

[bbrother]

5 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

From build 2.6.0.2861 onward, a new option has been added to the Pages panel's right click menu (on desktop) to Move Pages (with an option to Copy pages).

I'm glad this option is finally here to test. I hope you won't just stop at the "Right-Click" menu in pages panel and in future iterations of the beta release there's a chance it will also be available from Menu→Document and that you'll be able to assign a keyboard shortcut to it.

First suggestion:
I think the panel title for this option should be simply "Move Pages" for consistency with the name in the right-click menu, even though it does allow to perform `copy page` operations. No need to be so specific with the title. Short and simple names are easier to associate and are remembered faster

[MikeTO]

Thank you for adding this and I agree with the points above.

However, if the dialog title is going to contain two words, I think it and the Move / Duplicate (object) dialog should have a consistent naming approach. They should both have slashes or both use "or". And if I choose a command named Move it might be better to name put Move first in the dialog name.

Also, if I use Move / Duplicate I select a Duplicate checkbox to copy the object rather than duplicate it, but with this dialog I use a Move/Copy toggle. I don't have strong feelings on whether it should be a checkbox or toggle but they should be the same. I understand why you didn't use the term Duplicate for copying pages - there is already a Duplicate command - but it seems inconsistent with Move / Duplicate for objects.

But it all seems to work well. I tried moving non-contiguous pages, multi-page spreads, spreads with reflow off, and it all seemed to work as expected.