Affinity Designer Customer Beta (1.6 - Beta 1)

[A_B_C]

Oh, and you asked for the blurry and low contrast icons I had mentioned, Matt. 

 

I fear this is an entirely different matter, and I don’t think it can be regarded, for the most part, as belonging to the “bugs” category. Let me say, I *really* love the new light interface, but after playing around with the new version for some time, I hope there will be improvements to the user interface in upcoming versions. I am actually not sure, if it would make sense to mention my concerns at this early stage, but let me share just a few observations. Most importantly, I wonder if we could get a little more contrast on the UI.

• To my eyes, the selected tool highlight should definitely be darker. The contrast is just too low to see at a glance which tool is selected. By the bare numbers, the contrast is even lower than in the dark version (light version 86 : 83, dark version 61 : 39), though I am aware that the numbers alone are not very telling in this case.
• The main toolbar buttons are confusing to me. I cannot figure out at first glance which buttons are engaged and which are not engaged, which are interactive and which are “greyed out.” Again, the contrast seems too low. The grey level that is used for the active (“pressed”) state is very close to the grey level that standardly indicates a disabled state in macOS (“greyed out”). That is really confusing. In the dark version, you get at least the impression to press down a button by the background color change, but in the light version, you somehow get the impression that you are disabling a button by pressing it. Just compare the standard buttons of the OS to see what I mean by increased contrast. 
• In addition, the main toolbar buttons on non-Retina displays do not have very sharp and actually somewhat inconsistent borders (stray dark dots in the corners, divider color). And the same goes for other buttons and button combos, such as Cap, Join, Align on the Stroke panel etc.
• Finally, there are quite a few cosmetic issues. Do we really need to have such a marked gradient on the main toolbar? In that particular case, I would say the contrast is too high. In the dark version, the main toolbar is visually flat, though in the light version it has a very marked bevel (or how you may call the effect suggested by the gradient). And frankly, there are a lot of inconsistencies and alignment issues throughout the user interface that should be ironed out. Clearing up these inconsistencies will make, in sum, a huge impact on the appearance and the usability of the application.

But anyway, I hope this post won’t be received badly. Again, I like the new interface, but in my opinion there are still some issues that have to be resolved in order to make the user experience better. And maybe it makes sense to voice these concerns as early as possible …

 

Thank you again for all your hard work … :)

Alex

[MattP]

Thanks for all that Alex - we'll definitely work on it :) That's the whole point of the beta, to try to iron out the wrinkles :)

[VIPStephan]

I agree with everything A_B_C has said. The contrast of the UI could be stronger (and not just for the light UI, actually). And the studio panels could also get a drop shadow or something because at a quick glimpse they barely stand out from this website I have open behind AD (see screenshot).

 

Edit: For comparison, see the attached screenshot of my favorite UI design application that has unfortunately been discontinued.

[Dazmondo77]

AWESOME STUFF ----- Glyph panel is ACE - be even better if when you have selected text the glyph panel font would update the font to match -

 

Only problem I'm having so far is the massive fonts panel which now takes up half the screen which I can see might be quite handy in some situations but I've just started a ticket job where I'm looking for a suitable font using the arrow keys to quickly flip through the fonts til' I find something that works the only prob is I can no longer see the type I'm trying to change (see attachment) - it would be handy, with no distractions if you could just double click the fonts panel which would collapse but still allow the arrow keys to flip through all available fonts - alternatively a next font and previous font shortcut like QuarkXpress would be super super awesome -  :D

 

[Wiredframe]

I agree with everything A_B_C has said. The contrast of the UI could be stronger (and not just for the light UI, actually). And the studio panels could also get a drop shadow or something because at a quick glimpse they barely stand out from this website I have open behind AD (see screenshot).

 

Edit: For comparison, see the attached screenshot of my favorite UI design application that has unfortunately been discontinued.

 

Please don't listen to him  :D :lol:  :lol:  :lol:

[Tatyana]

Hello everybody!

Thanks to the developers for the release of the new beta version)) I'm certainly very much looking forward to the innovation of working with fonts, and that's finally happened))) for me it's very convenient, though a bit blurry hat, but you already know it))))

Special thanks !!! :)  :rolleyes: For my native language Russian, :D in fact, I already doubted that he would be))) for me it was very unexpected and pleasant)))) :)

There are some flaws, I attached a screen shot, where the red line showed that some words were hidden. And errors in the spelling, I have yet undetected :) )))

When working with glyphs, the program crashes, I sent the report automatically to the apple.

[SaucyWeeTart]

Fantastic, going to have a mess about with this later and report back  :)  :)  :)

[A_B_C]

Hi Matt,

 

since you said you were interested in “ironing out the wrinkles,” :) let me just quickly post a pretty self-explaining image detailing some more observations regarding the UI. I chose the context toolbar of the Text tools for demonstration, but similar observations will apply to the whole interface. You know, these are all minor issues, but taken in sum, they will add up and give the interface a somewhat busy look. Admittedly, I like interfaces that are very clean, straight and calm, such that I can concentrate on my work, and I believe your technically wonderful apps deserve the neatest UI on the market. So here are some additional ideas:

• I wonder if it was possible to make all interface elements of the button or menu type the same height. Currently, there are two heights, as far as I can see, which leads to a lot of baseline alignment issues. I wonder whether there are reasons not to use, say, 21 pixels for all of these elements.
• Then I would suggest that you clean up the border styles. Maybe these are just bugs, but it looks strange, for instance, that elements of the same type have different border styles.
• Maybe you can also introduce a spacing raster for UI elements, in order to remove the variety of whitespace sizes between the elements.

Anyway, I love the technical improvements of the new version. The font chooser is simply awesome, and the glyphs panel is great. So thanks again for your work! Highly appreciated,

 

Alex  :)

[VIPStephan]

Is it just me or is the “scroll object/layer into view” functionality (in the layers panel when clicking an object on the page) gone again?

[MEB]

Hi VIPStephan,

Check if you have it enabled in Affinity Designer Preferences ▸ User Interface, Show Selection in Layers Panel.

[Bri-Toon]

Hi bleduc,

1. Press and hold ⌃(ctrl) while launching the application from the Launchpad, keep the default checkboxes checked (first three) then press Clear. Did it fix the issue?

2. Go to menu Text ▸ Vertical Alignment and choose the option you want. You can also set shortcuts for this in the Keyboard Shortcuts section in Preferences.

 

Thanks, MEB. Those two resolved my problems. I am no longer a math book full of them.

 

Or from the Launchpad (i'm surprised nobody seems to use it!). From the dock also works but you have to right-click the application icon, mouse over the Open entry (don't click yet), press and hold ⌃(ctrl), then click on it.

 

Nobody uses Launchpad? Joke: You take that back. I am an organizational freak when it comes to LaunchPad.

[MEB]

Ah! someone really likes the original Affinity application icons :)

[A_B_C]

Oh, a small one … the glyph shapes of some fonts get distorted in the Glyph browser. I wondered if that is font-related, but I could not figure out a pattern … sorry.  :(

[WalterBeiter]

Hey AD-Team,

 

thank you so much for this one: vertical text alignment.

 

But please add a UI button. 

[ONSO]

Nice!

[VIPStephan]

Hi VIPStephan,

Check if you have it enabled in Affinity Designer Preferences ▸ User Interface, Show Selection in Layers Panel.

Ah, that was it! Thanks. Has been a while since I used a beta version so that might have been before the setting was implemented.

[Busenitz]

Light UI great for dark assets with transparency!!

[hubob]

Thanks for the new beta, great work! Unfortunately, the issue persists where pdf inserted via copy/paste (rather than "Place") will not retain their physical dimensions but their size will depend on the DPI settings of the target document.

hubob

[Bri-Toon]

I made a screencast of a bug with the layers. A layer disappears but still exists. This bug was in the previous version as well. This happens when layers are nested in layers.

 

20170519143615.mov

 

Edit: Here is another. There is a duplicate of a layer that expands another.

 

20170519172257(1).mov

[Inkwell]

Seems a bit smoother and faster than 1.5 on my iMac 27. Also works better (it seems) with my Wacom tablet. So far intial improvements are impressive.

[retrograde]

Not a biggie in the grand scheme of things but... still having this issue with the transparency tool I brought up a while back. 

 

Designer on the left, illustrator on the right. Designer transparency tool is not properly fading out the darker inner shadow on this shape to transparent as the illustrator opacity mask solution at right is. Designer seems to be stretching the inner shadow along the gradient of the transparency tool...

 

The expected result when using the transparency tool for a shape with an effect applied to it should be to fade out consistently.

[psaldari]

Oh, guys, the Stabilizer and the new text futures are awesome!

 

Thanks!

Paolo

[Jaxx]

Hi folks,

 

Found a bug.

I create a text, duplicate it, mirror it vertically and then use the transparency tool.

Then the program repels reproducibly.

 

Many greetings jaxx

[Timber]

Bug report: Love the new Font features... when one selects All fonts, there's a blue outline showing that it's selected. Moving left to right, selecting Recent, Used and Favorites, this blue outline does not appear to indicate they're selected. Though interesting, moving right to left from Favorites to Used to Recent, highlights the All incorrectly! Note: the selection is much more apparent otherwise in the Light UI vs the Dark UI.

 

Also, I really feel that the fonts should autoscroll as one's cursor hits the bottom or top of the font lists, as if one is trying different fonts in a long list of fonts, you'd have to scroll and auto-scroll via the cursor is far more efficient and expected. Additionally I'll join the voices asking for more contrast or visual cues when a tool is selected, or especially things like the close box on open documents - again mostly a problem on the Dark UI.

 

Cheers - Timber

[Timber]

Also, as noted in AP Beta forums, when I place some Artistic Text and then apply a gradient, and if I try to manipulate the gradient, most of the time I can get AD Beta to crash hard, it's worse IMHO in AP Beta, but I can reproduce it with fairly good reliability in AD Beta.

 

Cheers - Timber