AD: Table Tool

[Bri-Toon]

I don't want to overwork you guys, because I appreciate everything you're doing. I just want to share an idea I thought of for Affinity Designer; a table tool. Designer is for vector artwork and layout, right? Well whenever I worked with tables, I actually always used Microsoft Word, not Excel. The functionality that the tool could have is to align content and text more efficiently. You would be able to choose an alignment for rows, columns, and cells. You could merge cells, split them, distribute rows or columns evenly, and of course, hide the borders. Back when I used Yahoo, I came up with a make belief competitor called Tada. I used a table to make its directory (at least 7 years ago now).

 

 

So what do you think? Would a Table Tool make a good addition to Designer? I think it would come great for layout and UI designs.

[Guest]

So what do you think? Would a Table Tool make a good addition to Designer? I think it would come great for layout and UI designs.

This is a good idea, it would avoid having to manually align the text blocks, but I'm afraid that this function is implemented only in Affinity Publisher.

 

There is still a way to use the "Power Duplicate" tool in some cases.

[VIPStephan]

So what do you think? Would a Table Tool make a good addition to Designer? I think it would come great for layout and UI designs.

 

As web designers we have learned that tables are not meant for layout, or that layout tables are bad practice, respectively. Therefore I would say a table tool should really only be used to create actual data table mockups. However, I think a better way of thinking about this would be a “layout grid” or “grid layout” tool. Visually that’s probably very similar to a layout table but the thinking behind it is different because it doesn’t imply that using tables for layout is OK.

[Bri-Toon]

This is a good idea, it would avoid having to manually align the text blocks, but I'm afraid that this function is implemented only in Affinity Publisher.

 

It's actually being implemented? Well that's quite a shock. I'm relieved, yet bummed it won't be in Designer. I didn't think there was any official information on Publisher yet.

 

As web designers we have learned that tables are not meant for layout, or that layout tables are bad practice, respectively. Therefore I would say a table tool should really only be used to create actual data table mockups. However, I think a better way of thinking about this would be a “layout grid” or “grid layout” tool. Visually that’s probably very similar to a layout table but the thinking behind it is different because it doesn’t imply that using tables for layout is OK.

 

Fair enough. I suppose the terminology can cause controversy. Layout grid is something more on the lines of what I'm looking for.

[Guest]

It's actually being implemented? Well that's quite a shock. I'm relieved, yet bummed it won't be in Designer. I didn't think there was any official information on Publisher yet.

I'm afraid there's a translation problem on my part.

 

I only said that if this function were implemented one day, in my opinion it would be implemented in Publisher and only in Publisher, Designer would certainly not benefit from it. I think this because when someone requests a text function a bit more advanced than the one currently available in Designer, the answer is that it will be reserved for Publisher.

 

This is just my opinion and I hope that future updates will give me wrong.

[Bri-Toon]

I see. I'm not sure though. Pages will be coming to designer, and Affinity advertises Designer as also being a layout program. So you never know.