Affinity Designer Customer Beta (1.5 - Beta 5)

[MattP]

Status: Beta Release

Purpose: New features, fixes

Requirements: Purchased Affinity Designer

Mac App Store: Not Submitted

Download: Here

 

This is an early beta of a substantial change to our codebase and as much as we have tried to ensure the quality of the code, it should be considered to be not suitable for production use. This means that you should not attempt to use it for commercial purposes or for any other activity that you may be adversely affected by the application failing. In addition it is definitely worth noting that files created in Affinity 1.5 cannot be opened in 1.4 so always make a copy of your important documents before opening them in 1.5 to ensure you do not accidentally overwrite them and are unable to open them in your 1.4 version.

 

To use this beta, simply download the file from the link given above and double-click on the file to open the installer. Follow the instructions to install the beta version. The beta sits alongside the Mac App Store version and will not interfere with it.

 

Fixes/Improvements:

• Open, Save and Export dialogs will now remember the last locations they were browsing
• Snapping and measurements work properly with Group nodes now, plus numerous other Snapping fixes
• Numerous Symbol fixes
• Fix for Embedded documents invalidating the incorrect areas in the containing document when they are modified
• Remember the currently selected palette in the Swatches panel between app sessions
• Raster Pixel tool (in Pixel Persona) can now clamp to horizontal/vertical and join lines by using Shift
• Miscellaneous Font fixes.
• Minor bug fixes and stability issues.

[00Ghz]

Download link ain’t working :)

[MattP]

Download link ain’t working :)

Sorry! Spelling error - should be fixed now!  :rolleyes:

[VIPStephan]

Oh noooooo! I just finished downloading Beta 4 – took me quite a while. :(

Well, I might skip this version.

[anon1]

Do you plan to switch to a 1.6 beta cycle even before releasing 1.5 to the MAS or how is AP sopposed to be cross compatible with AD?

[Nana]

Hi Matt,

 

Thanks for the new beta. You must be working overtime  :) to churn out these new builds.   I hope you haven't forgotten my request for the panel collapse here https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/21294-affinity-designer-customer-beta-15-beta-2/?p=100185.

 

Thanks mate.

 

Nana

[MattP]

Hi Matt,

 

Thanks for the new beta. You must be working overtime  :) to churn out these new builds.   I hope you haven't forgotten my request for the panel collapse here https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/21294-affinity-designer-customer-beta-15-beta-2/?p=100185.

 

Thanks mate.

 

Nana

 

Not forgotten - but it's more about whether the dev in charge of UI has chance for this cycle to implement the change or whether it'll end up being after release... :S

[MattP]

Do you plan to switch to a 1.6 beta cycle even before releasing 1.5 to the MAS or how is AP sopposed to be cross compatible with AD?

Photo 1.5 is coming along soon, never fear! ;)

 

We share a back-end across all products on all platforms, so once we get ANY of the products into testing, it effectively means we've started testing ALL the products - the only things it doesn't test are the specific additions that can't be accessed in the other program. Right now, that means you're testing all the main architecture for Photo without even realising it, but the HDR Persona and unbounded float format, focus stacking etc are not getting exercised - so when Photo 1.5 comes out, it'll already be generally stable, but we'll need specific testing around those areas. If that makes any sense? :)

[n0rmand0]

I like the new "Add to pallete" addition to the eyedropper tool.

 

In practice, it would be much more useful to be able to toggle to the move tool to quickly select other elements and change their color with the modifier key.

See Adobe Illustrator's CMD modifier behavior.

[anon1]

Yeah of corse it does make sense but in the new video in Vimeo AP 1.5 said to be released as a beta in 4 weeks and hit the MAS in September/ Oktober which are two more months of beta testing so that would be something like AD 1.5 beta 15 as a GM..... when ph

 

Are you planning to continue AD 1.5 beta until September October so that both MAS releases will happen at the same time?

[MattP]

Genuinely not 100% certain about when things will happen - we've got a whole iOS Mirror app sitting nearly ready to enter Beta and that means I could activate the Links panel in Designer and they'd both need serious testing... If that was the case, then we'd need all of that time to make sure Designer 1.5 was working correctly and bug-free with the Mirror app. Alternatively, if that doesn't look like it'll happen, we can look to disable features that haven't been sufficiently tested in Photo 1.5 and ship it early to keep compatibility with Designer 1.5, then do a 1.5.1 patch to both that contain bug fixes and enable most of Photo's bigger features. We need to see how things pan out - we have a number of different courses we could follow and the next few weeks will show us which to choose, I think :)

[smallreflection]

Hmm, I got this working at work fine, and tried at home and got it to open up a hefty size project once, but after one in-project crash now I'm getting a repeated crash when I attempt to open it, getting nowhere. I attempted a reinstall but I still can't get it to open. Attaching a crash log here.

 

I attempted to go back to 1.5 beta 4 and even beta 3 but for some reason on this machine even those are crashing on every attempt at opening now. Any clues or help would be appreciated!

affinity-1.5-beta5-repeated-crash-log.rtf

[MattP]

Hmm, I got this working at work fine, and tried at home and got it to open up a hefty size project once, but after one in-project crash now I'm getting a repeated crash when I attempt to open it, getting nowhere. I attempted a reinstall but I still can't get it to open. Attaching a crash log here.

 

I attempted to go back to 1.5 beta 4 and even beta 3 but for some reason on this machine even those are crashing on every attempt at opening now. Any clues or help would be appreciated!

Did you possibly install a font before it crashed? The crash log seems to be suggesting there's a problem building the font list... That's why the beta 3/4/5 are all having problems as they're all getting the same failure. If you did install a font, can you try uninstalling it and running again - and then letting us know what the font was so we can fix whatever is going wrong!?! Thank you! :)

[wiredfractal]

Crashes every time I open it. Running on MBP MacOS Sierra Public Beta 1. Would like to send my crash log but don't know where or how to attach here.

[Wiredframe]

Thanks for the new beta! Don't know if it happened before, but when I try to duplicate a group that has a constraints compound group inside, everything duplicates except of the constraints compound group. Also when I try adding it as a symbol the constraints compound group gets lost. ^^

 

Thanks in advance. 

[MattP]

Crashes every time I open it. Running on MBP MacOS Sierra Public Beta 1. Would like to send my crash log but don't know where or how to attach here.

If you wait for the crash dialog to appear there should be a button that says 'Report...' - just click it, select the text in the middle and save it as a text file and attach it here - that's probably the easiest way :)

 

Thanks,

Matt

[smallreflection]

Did you possibly install a font before it crashed? The crash log seems to be suggesting there's a problem building the font list... That's why the beta 3/4/5 are all having problems as they're all getting the same failure. If you did install a font, can you try uninstalling it and running again - and then letting us know what the font was so we can fix whatever is going wrong!?! Thank you! :)

 

I noted that in the error log, but can't think of anything I installed new just before the crash (I had installed several fonts a few days ago, but it was working fine with them, my MAS version seems fine with them too, so it's strange if that's doing it. My install on my work machine has a lot of the same fonts installed as well and seems fine—it seemed to go haywire when I was trying to move around in a huge file (~500mb+), and it hasn't opened since. At home later I'll try disabling my whole font library via FontExplorer X and see if it will work.  :blink:

[MattP]

I noted that in the error log, but can't think of anything I installed new just before the crash (I had installed several fonts a few days ago, but it was working fine with them, my MAS version seems fine with them too, so it's strange if that's doing it. My install on my work machine has a lot of the same fonts installed as well and seems fine—it seemed to go haywire when I was trying to move around in a huge file (~500mb+), and it hasn't opened since. At home later I'll try disabling my whole font library via FontExplorer X and see if it will work.  :blink:

 

Thanks - it'll definitely be worth a go because there has been work in the area of fonts since the App Store version so it's entirely possible the new code has a flaw... It really does look like something font-related is the root cause of the problem... :)

[KipV]

While you are making changes to save and open could you also incorporate the standard way that Mac apps let you save from the menu bar? Also the duplicate, rename, move to, revert to, features are enormously helpful rather then having to switch over to the Finder to search for those files and then work with them. Tagging files seems especially problematic since when I save them from the save as menu they don't get saved. I usually have to go into the Finder to save those tags.

Schedule

[BrianH]

Yea, crashing for me on startup as well. Was using beta4 earlier today just fine, installed beta 5 and, well, Crashy McCrashface showed up.

 

Created a new User account and it WORKS FINE there. Back in my standard account, completely removed app and affinitydesignerbeta files from Library (using AppCleaner). Tried reinstalling several times here as well. Also tried holding CTRL at launch to clear user data, no dice.

 

Couldn't see where to attach so here's my crash log: 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/m5jku6su7mbfciw/crash-report.txt?dl=0

[Seneca]

Slides on steroids!

 

I don't recall seeing so many options in the Slices Tab before, especially when you click on the triangle left to the name.

Have they been there before or is it a new addition to Beta 1.5 release? JSON? Wow.

 

That would merit a good video tutorial from the Affinity Team.  :)

 

Regards

[wiredfractal]

If you wait for the crash dialog to appear there should be a button that says 'Report...' - just click it, select the text in the middle and save it as a text file and attach it here - that's probably the easiest way :)

 

Thanks,

Matt

 

Didn't notice the More reply option. I'm attaching the crash log I got.

AD-1.5beta5-crashlog.rtf

[smallreflection]

Thanks - it'll definitely be worth a go because there has been work in the area of fonts since the App Store version so it's entirely possible the new code has a flaw... It really does look like something font-related is the root cause of the problem... :)

 

So it does look like the crash is definitely font-related (for me, anyway)—I disabled all of my active fonts (about 800, since I don't know exactly what was going off), and Beta 5 opened up just fine again. I reactivated all of the fonts from my last doc without problems, so I'll have to keep an eye out to tell what exactly was causing the issue. :)

[MattP]

Thanks for the report, BrianH - it looks like you've got the same font issue as well... When you make a new user, you don't get any of the user-installed fonts, so that's circumventing the problem. I'll ask the guys what has changed here with regard to font enumeration and see if we can get something sorted out asap.

 

Sorry for the inconvenience guys :(

Matt

[MattP]

Didn't notice the More reply option. I'm attaching the crash log I got.

Hi wiredfractal,

 

Your crash report is also suggesting there's a problem with font enumeration (notice a theme going on here? *sigh*)

 

Thanks - we'll try to get something released to fix this as soon as we can :)

Matt