Affinity Designer Customer Beta (1.6 - RC1)

[abarkalo]

Entire Affinity Team - thank you for your hard work.  Now enjoying the official MAS version of 1.6.  Only question I have is whether to use OpenGL or Metal as I know there were some issues  with Metal, and Matt and team spent some time updating OpenGL to match Metal.  I'm on High Sierra.

[MattP]

10 minutes ago, abarkalo said:

Entire Affinity Team - thank you for your hard work.  Now enjoying the official MAS version of 1.6.  Only question I have is whether to use OpenGL or Metal as I know there were some issues  with Metal, and Matt and team spent some time updating OpenGL to match Metal.  I'm on High Sierra.

On High Sierra right now I’d use OpenGL - it’s not quite as smooth but you’re guaranteed to get no strange things happening. I have to assume there’s a Metal fix coming in High Sierra soon as we aren’t the only developers to have found quite a few oddities that we can’t work around...

[tomn]

Cool  When the 1.6.1 is going to be released?  

[Bri-Toon]

1.6 is here, baby! Well done, team. How about a nice long coffee break now?

[abarkalo]

6 hours ago, MattP said:

On High Sierra right now I’d use OpenGL - it’s not quite as smooth but you’re guaranteed to get no strange things happening. I have to assume there’s a Metal fix coming in High Sierra soon as we aren’t the only developers to have found quite a few oddities that we can’t work around...

 

This thing is a Bugatti Veyron, so if you're telling me I can only drive 250 MPH, not 267 MPH, and it handles better around corners that way then I am quite OK with that.  

 

Please update a 1.6 video.  I would like to promote that to my friends and on FB and elsewhere.  

[Ferrysson]

Congratulations 

[A_B_C]

My congratulations, Matt. Thank you for all your hard work to get this released! As Brian said, I hope you all can take a few days off now … 

[A_B_C]

There is something that made me wonder. A snapping timeout message. Is that intended? 

 

 

 

[MattP]

1 minute ago, A_B_C said:

There is something that made me wonder. A snapping timeout message. Is that intended? 

 

 

 

I've seen this before too - but only ever on documents with complex structures and all snapping options turned on... I believe that Ben is already rewriting all of this to be dramatically faster in the future, so you should never see this message in the future...

[A_B_C]

Cool, thank you, Matt! 

 

And here is another tiny detail. Artboard labels, slice labels, and, yes, the snapping timeout message above do not seem to use the system font (San Francisco) on macOS Sierra, but the once beloved, yet outdated Lucida Grande. 

 

 

 

[MattP]

Thanks, Alex!  

[ianrobertdouglas]

Great work, Matt.

 

One concern, not sure it has been mentioned. When I select an object to move it, I used to be able to hold down the button on my trackpad with my thumb, and with my middle finger and third finger use the two-finger gesture to scroll around the artboard. In effect, the artboard would move around below the object.

 

Sometimes this was really important (like, hugely important) depending on the scale you're working. If I needed to drag something outside the physical space of the artboard on my screen, I could selected and scroll the artboard below the object.

 

This disappeared on Beta RC1. It's really important.

 

The ability to do this has been one of the joys of working with Affinity Designer! Please bring it back

[MattP]

11 minutes ago, ianrobertdouglas said:

Great work, Matt.

 

One concern, not sure it has been mentioned. When I select an object to move it, I used to be able to hold down the button on my trackpad with my thumb, and with my middle finger and third finger use the two-finger gesture to scroll around the artboard. In effect, the artboard would move around below the object.

 

Sometimes this was really important (like, hugely important) depending on the scale you're working. If I needed to drag something outside the physical space of the artboard on my screen, I could selected and scroll the artboard below the object.

 

This disappeared on Beta RC1. It's really important.

 

The ability to do this has been one of the joys of working with Affinity Designer! Please bring it back

Hi!

 

This was deliberately removed a few beta versions ago - and we did talk about it a fair amount because I used to like it but we rationalised that maybe I was the only person who actually did this, so removing it wouldn't be a problem... Basically it was to fix issues with the Apple Magic Mouse which generates sporadic gesture scroll events at random during mouse drags. These events look identical to those that are generated deliberately during the interaction you describe, so we had no way at all to tell whether to scroll the view or not, and Magic Mouse users were getting infuriated that their view was incessantly moving around without them asking for it... It looks like we can just add this back in but put a preference item to disable the behaviour so that we have both camps happy, maybe?   

 

Thanks,

Matt

[ianrobertdouglas]

11 minutes ago, MattP said:

It looks like we can just add this back in but put a preference item to disable the behaviour so that we have both camps happy, maybe?   

 

That would be fantastic!

 

I don't have a magic mouse, so I don't understand their problem, but this capacity to hold and do gestures at the same time has been so important to me.

Right now, I can see that I can hold and move with one finger. But when I reach the edge of the view, I need to wait for the auto scrolling to kick in. I much preferred it as it was.

 

So if an option is possible in a beta soon, that would be great.

 

Thanks Matt

[Ben]

2 hours ago, A_B_C said:

There is something that made me wonder. A snapping timeout message. Is that intended? 

 

 

 

 

Yes - it is entirely intentional.  Due to the nature of snapping it is not possible to predict how much time snapping will take.  I added a timeout so that if you mouse over a really complicated area of the document, it would time out rather than hanging the app.

 

This is a compromise for people who like to leave all the snapping options turned on.

 

I've already done some work on snapping improvements which will feature in 1.7 - that includes using multi-threading to split up and order snapping calculations, and optimisation of inputs to the snapper. This will make a huge difference to performance, and as Matt says, will reduce the chances of snapping timing out. Expect that as soon as we enter the next round of Betas.

 

[Dazmondo77]

Awesome work guys - the FREE bonus content is ACE!

 

Although I did do something really stupid - I was so enthused to get cracking with the official release that I downloaded and installed from the App Store before exporting a load of assets from the beta that I've been using for a children's book - and once you have the latest app store version the beta ceases to function - (which I've done before) - yes I'm a thick twat at times - couldn't figure out where assets are stored - tried all the obvious places in the user library but gave up but luckily I was able to boot up from last weeks CCC backup, exported my lovely assets and Bobs ya dad 

 

ACE STUFF

[A_B_C]

Somehow it looked intentional, Ben. 

 

Maybe I would suggest to add a more descriptive message, “descriptive” to be understood as “descriptive in laymen terms.” What precisely is meant by a “snapping timeout”? It sounds as if snapping gets temporarily disabled, when a snapping timeout occurs. So why not say just this? Hmm … 

[Ben]

Yes - snapping is temporarily disabled...  until you move the mouse to somewhere that is less busy and snapping can be done.  But, snapping is not disabled as such - if you move the mouse it will continue to attempt to snap.

 

If it says Timeout, then snapping has not been performed at all as the calculations were aborted.  It didn't get to the point of deciding on the final snap offset.  There is no part-snapped situation as that would lead to less helpful results than just aborting snapping.

[A_B_C]

I see. Thank you for this clarification, Ben. 

 

(And Matt, the Booleans are now super-fast with these grit textures … it’s a joy … )

[lenogre]

Number of selected objects has been removed ?

It's very useful when you have a surface with a lot of diamonds. The customer asks "How many diamonds on this dial ?". In AD 1.5, I select all diamonds and just read how many diamonds have been selected. In AD 1.6, wait few minutes, I must count one by one…

Very bad workflow.

[MattP]

56 minutes ago, lenogre said:

Number of selected objects has been removed ?

It's very useful when you have a surface with a lot of diamonds. The customer asks "How many diamonds on this dial ?". In AD 1.5, I select all diamonds and just read how many diamonds have been selected. In AD 1.6, wait few minutes, I must count one by one…

Very bad workflow.

No it hasn't - this has not changed... The Shape Tool does not tell you how many objects are selected as the status bar is already far too full telling you what the modifier keys do, but the Move Tool tells you how many objects are in your selection

[lenogre]

OK, thanks.

[A_B_C]

Is it intended that deleting a slice that is linked to an artboard using the backspace key will delete this artboard itself? 

 

Steps to reproduce:

• Create new artboard.
• Add a rectangle (or any other object).
• Go to Export Persona > Slices List.
• Select slice linked to the artboard in the Slices list.
• Hit Backspace key (not visible in my video).
• Artboard is going to be deleted. Warning message shows up.

Clicking the Trash icon in the Slices List doesn’t have the same effect, but will only delete the slice.

 

Deleting-Slice-Deletes-Artboard.mov

 

[Frank Jonen]

Possible bug with export persona.

 

My setup:

• I have a two artboard file.
• Output is a PNG overview of the whole thing and two SVG files (of the respective artboards) 

What happens:

1. I click on Export Slices (3)
2. Spinner goes on forever
3. I force quit
4. Same dance again.
5. Click Export Slices, it works.

 

Sometimes it works right away, sometimes I have to force quit. Smells like a bug.

[Figmatt]

Congrats!

 

The OpenGL mention reminded me to switch back to Metal. I'd switched to OpenGL after I saw issues in an early 1.6 beta.