Affinity Designer Customer Beta - 1.6.5.112

[Mark Ingram]

Click here to download the latest beta

 

Status: Customer Beta
Purpose: Stability
Requirements: A valid product key (for Affinity Store purchases), or an installation of the full retail version from the Microsoft Store

As this is a beta it is 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, including the total loss of any documents. 

We hope you enjoy the latest build, and as always, if you've got any problems, please don't hesitate to post here and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. Thanks once again for your continued feedback.

If you have a general question about the software, please head over to the Questions Forum, or if you have any suggestions, please head over to the Feature Requests forum.

 

Fixes

• Fixed Space bar panning with the paintbrush tool placing nozzles

• Added Dial support for Shadows / Highlights adjustment 

• Added Dial support for Shapes 

• Fixed Dial Select tool not defaulting correctly

• Fixed tool handle selection with touch input 

• Fixed SVG export to avoid exporting spurious groups

• Fixed pressing escape key on font size context toolbar editor not returning focus

• Added option to prefer metafile over raster with per-application default (default to on)

• Fixed main window closing on second monitor not appearing at next start

• Fixed Adjustments panel starting below the visible window 

• Fixed Print dialog not defaulting to current selected artboard

• Fixed Transform panel fields losing focus when using arrow and shift+arrow keys to increment/decrement values

• Fixed intermittent crash when using the Pen Tool 

• Fixed drag dropping a PNG file into the document locks the file

• Fixes included in the 1.6.5.109 AD customer beta

[Petar Petrenko]

Both instalations (Designer and Photo) weree extremlly slow. It took 10-15 min. each!!!

Where we can find Dial support for Highlights/Shadows and Shapes? I opened both dialogs and they looked the same as in previous version(s).

[walt.farrell]

7 minutes ago, Petar Petrenko said:

Both instalations (Designer and Photo) weree extremlly slow. It took 10-15 min. each!!!

I did not have that experience; they seemed adequately fast.

 

[Aammppaa]

Installed fine for me (a couple of minutes) - did notice that the version number (during install) was 1.6.5. <- missing final digits 112.

Thanks for fixing the artboard printing bug.

[Patrick Connor]

17 hours ago, Petar Petrenko said:

Where we can find Dial support for Highlights/Shadows and Shapes? I opened both dialogs and they looked the same as in previous version(s).

Do you have a Microsoft Surface Dial? I exect the options require the detection of the hardware

[Mark Ingram]

There are no options on the dialog, the settings just appear on the Dial overlay.

[Petar Petrenko]

5 hours ago, Mark Ingram said:

There are no options on the dialog, the settings just appear on the Dial overlay.

Sorry, I don't understand. Would you be so kind and explain it to me in more details, please?

[Petar Petrenko]

14 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

Do you have a Microsoft Surface Dial? I exect the options require the detection of the hardware

No, I don't have any external hardware connected.

[Patrick Connor]

51 minutes ago, Petar Petrenko said:

Sorry, I don't understand. Would you be so kind and explain it to me in more details, please?

Some software functionality is hidden except on a Microsoft Surface and appears on the screen when a Surface Dial is brought into contact with the screen. Normally the functionality is primarily available in panels, but a dial gives you another visual/tactile way to modify those values.

[Mithferion]

In my case, Installation time lasted as expected, just a couple ofminutes.

Best regards!

[Petar Petrenko]

19 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

Some software functionality is hidden except on a Microsoft Surface and appears on the screen when a Surface Dial is brought into contact with the screen. Normally the functionality is primarily available in panels, but a dial gives you another visual/tactile way to modify those values.

Ah, I understood. Thanks, Patrick.

[Uwe367]

Thanks for the new Beta.
The Installation was working well and at this time i have no problems detected

[Friksel]

On 6/18/2018 at 11:51 PM, Petar Petrenko said:

Both instalations (Designer and Photo) weree extremlly slow. It took 10-15 min. each!!!

No problems with installing speeds here either, so it seems to differ per machine/software

[Friksel]

Nice one @Mark Ingram, when changing the opacity of a group doesn't create an additional group in svg export anymore! ("Fixed SVG export to avoid exporting spurious groups")

Thanks a lot guys! 

 

[Friksel]

@Mark Ingram The extra group problem is solved for the opacity thing, so that's great, but there seem to be another situation where the svg-exporter generates additional (redundant) groups to the svg causing problems when using on the web with javascript. Just tested it with the latest beta, but unfortunately the beta got the same problem still. It would be very much appreciated if you guys could find some time to take a closer look at that problem too. In the interactivity/animation project I'm working on rightnow I have to edit the svg manually now because of this to change the svg output before we can animate it, and that's not a lot of fun  Thanks a lot guys!

 

[Jonopen]

A longer than usual time taken install here but completed successfully. 

[chris.bannu]

I don't think I will use the Beta versions ever when the next stable version is released. I used the Beta version simply because the previous stable version was way too slow, but I keep downloading the latest beta version, and I keep getting into things I really don't like, and I make a living out of design and by using Affinity, I simply can't waste time with bugs and crashes. I'd rather pay 20-30 bucks/month for Affinity and have it stable, it's my main tool, and the Beta version is not an improvement for me. And I would gladly pay 20-30 bucks/month, I can't understand why you're selling this so cheap, it's one of the best tools available, and with the extra money you could hire testers, and not rely on the actual users. I don't mean to sound like a nag, but it's very frustrating, and even though there's a warning that the beta version should not be used for producing, you know we all use it for producing.

1. It crashed out of nowhere when trying to open a file (I wrote a crash report). No problem there, might be the amazing windows 10's fault, it's the worst os I've ever used so far.

2. Huge annoying bug: I have a text field, and I wanna change the color of a single word our of that text (artistic text), by pasting the hex value of the color. It used to work before, now it doesn't quite as before. I got it to work, but with workarounds. Still not sure why using the color picker is not possible when trying to change the color of a single word in a text field.. Anyway, I select the word, paste the hex code, and nothing. I click on the move tool, nothing. I click in another input field of the color chooser, and some weird color appears. I do this for 2-3 times before being able to actually change the color, and finally I manage to do that.

 

What I'm trying to say is that if you want to change the color of a word by copy/pasting the hex value of a color, that should happen instantly after pasting the color, so you wouldn't have to click in another input box of the color chooser to make it happen. It used to work fine before  

[Mark Ingram]

On 7/2/2018 at 12:43 PM, chris.bannu said:

Beta version is not an improvement for me

The beta version isn't supposed to be the "latest" version, it's a version that is available to help test. Read the caveat at the top of my post - the beta is not intended for production use.

[arcador]

Yes, use the beta only for low-stakes work or hobbies, or experiments.

A long time ago when I started using various software to earn, I learned that the hard way. From LibreOffice (back then OpenOffice), through various other open source tools, and even now the Office 365 (which proudly invites you to opt for beta versions). Everything which is not stable is usually not stable. Maybe it will be stable for 99% of the time, but the one 1% it will not, will be the exact time you're racing for a deadline to make final final final changes.

Save your sanity - use the stable for work stuff.

[carl123]

2 minutes ago, arcador said:

Save your sanity - use the stable for work stuff.

So what do you do when the released version constantly crashes on your PC but the latest beta version contains the bug fixes that cures that?

Does one just stop doing any production work until the beta fixes make it into the next released version?

[rubs]

There are no real differences between the two versions. Technically, Affinity software is always beta because it has hundreds of known bugs. So I tend to use the latest version available, keeping an eye on new bugs.

[Mark Ingram]

1.6.5.119 is now available.