lvl99 Posted February 28, 2015 Share Posted February 28, 2015 Hi guys, cheers for the cool software. I've been having a play so far and are offering my thoughts on some issues and feature requests. As an aside, I used Sketch for about 30 days and felt that while it has nice features for more technically-minded programmer-type folk, it's not a great tool for visual designers (in fact, I absolutely HATE it). I still have a fondness for Freehand and a chip on my shoulder at Adobe for discontinuing it and making me use Illustrator. Here are my thoughts for Affinity Designer so far: 10 days isn't long enough for a trial period I want to be able to see all the things outside of the artboard. Sketch was so annoying with this particular issue regarding artboards and grouped objects, it made me want to throw it into a fire straight away. Thankfully Designer doesn't do this, but it also doesn't show me the objects which are outside of the artboard. I set the unit measurements of my document to be in pixels, however text units are in points. How do I ensure that the document's primary unit will be consistent with all my sizing settings? Is a point a pixel anyway? (sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't) Setting line height on text seems unnecessarily buried, should be as top-level as setting text size. Have to open Paragraph window then look for line height setting amidst other options and juggle overlaid window with subject in viewport in order to see changes (I'm on a 15" MacBook Pro laptop so not much screen space). Shift+Enter does not insert a "soft" line-break (e.g. not a new paragraph) in any text input, but I notice Ctrl+Enter does. I feel the Shift+Enter is a standard feature across many different programs (not just Adobe ones) so I'd recommend that convention over Ctrl+Enter. It's kind of nice that you display overset text in Text Frames, but I'd prefer default behaviour is to crop. Is there ability to set crop visual behaviour (visible, hidden, ellipsis) ? It might be outside of the scope of Designer (seems it may be more an illustration tool than DTP), but I'd like to set objects to wrap around text within text frames a la InDesign. Could this be a potential feature? I was annoyed at first with proportional resizing via handles being default (my old habit was to hold shift so got irritated that holding shift didn't size proportionally) but after I thought about it, I size proportionately almost exclusively. There is a caveat though, I thought: when creating any shape with click and drag, it's never proportionate until you hold down shift, so I think you should probably choose one convention and stick with it, rather than incorporating two. I'd prefer the convention of holding down shift to size proportionately, personally. Hex code form input on colour panel is very very recommended On colour panel there's no shortcut button to add colour to swatches, have to go to context menu on top-right. Swatches panel has shortcut button to add colour to swatches, but no option within context menu on top-right to add colour to swatches. I feel like these could be swapped around, i.e. put shortcut button on colour panel Cmd+Y as a shortcut to viewing in Outlines would be real nice... Object selection is annoying me, much to the degree Sketch did too. Would prefer general black and white cursor behaviour like in Illustrator/Freehand (object and direct object selection — I don't want to have to select a specific layer first, nor do I want to continually have the Cmd key held down like with Sketch). In fact, the more you can make this program like Freehand, the better in my opinion it will be against Illustrator :) Deleting point in curve doesn't remove it, program removes it then adds a new one in its wake, unless I set the surrounding points to not be curved (ah, I get it now: clicking curve adds a point. Anyway to make that more explicit? Maybe use a + instead of a wavy curve?) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Harris Posted February 28, 2015 Share Posted February 28, 2015 Thanks for taking the time to look at our product and tell us your thoughts. We have a public beta of Affinity Designer, which you can try for free while the trial lasts. It addresses many of your concerns, and most of the others are on our roadmap to do later this year. Specifically: Artboard - on roadmap. Text in pixels - Preferences option in current beta. Leading on toolbar - in next week's beta. Shift-Enter for line break - in current beta. Cropping overflow text - not currently planned. Text avoidance areas - will be a feature of our forthcoming product, Affinity Publisher. Proportional resizing - Preferences option in current beta. Selecting objects in other layers - check "Edit all layers" (and this is the default in the current beta). Selection behaviour - I'm not sure exactly what you are asking, but the current beta has a Preferences option that may help. I'm not sure about the other points so I'll leave those to someone else. I also don't know why our beta is 10 days rather than 30. You aren't the first person to mention it. I'll raise this in the office and see if it can be changed. I should also say that we'll update App Store version from the beta in a few weeks, so all those changes will become part of the standard package then. We'll update the free trial at the same time, and that would be a logical point to increase its duration. We tend to release a new customer beta every week or so, when we have something new to show that we want feedback on, and this is free to those who have bought the App Store version. It's available from lower down in this forum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seneca Posted February 28, 2015 Share Posted February 28, 2015 Please keep releasing betas every week (Mondays). Don't change that. 2017 27” iMac 4.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 • Radeon Pr 580 8GB • 64GB • Ventura 13.6.4. iPad Pro (10.5-inch) • 256GB • Version 16.4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lvl99 Posted February 28, 2015 Author Share Posted February 28, 2015 Thanks Dave, much appreciated to hear from the people involved that stuff is happening and being addressed. I have been really enjoying some of the new tools, especially the paint in pixels stuff and the additional details with vector line/brush widths. Makes illustrations look more illustrated! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Harris Posted March 1, 2015 Share Posted March 1, 2015 Please keep releasing betas every week (Mondays). Don't change that. We don't really have a set rule for this. Obviously when we've finished something, we want to get it out to you ASAP, so we can get feedback and refine it by seeing how it gets used by real users. However, sometimes there's nothing complete enough to show. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matthias Posted March 1, 2015 Share Posted March 1, 2015 (edited) On selection: Maybe one thing IvI99 is referring to when mentioning FreeHand is that you do not have to switch over to another tool in order to edit nodes when using the move tool. Click on a path and – bingo! – you see the nodes (except when the path is grouped, then it would be alt-click). Click on a node an – bingo! – manipulate it to your liking. Nothing is buried behind tool modes, everything is instantly accessible and miraculously it still doesn’t add up to screen clutter. As much as I love AD, to me one of the biggest drawbacks is the paradigm of separating the functionality of the move/selection tool and the node tool. You may select a path with the move tool but you may not select the stuff that the path is made of. If you want to cross this border you must pay a toll: switching tools. Edit: Well, it is Sunday morning, it is raining, I am still sleepy and just realize I’m being obnoxious: Now that tool switching between both tools is just a double-click away, there’s no more reason to complain about „tolls“ to pay. Sorry, guys. Have a nice sunday. Matthias Edited March 1, 2015 by Matthias Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Markus Dierolf Posted March 1, 2015 Share Posted March 1, 2015 I think at this point of developing AD Betas are quite important cause they add new features and correct come glitches. But if a certain level will be reached that works for most of the people, most of us will use the stable version for production :) iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2017), i7 4.2, Radeon 580 Pro 8 GB, 40 GB DDR4-RAM, 1 TB Flash, macOS 10.14.6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liz Posted April 5, 2015 Share Posted April 5, 2015 My first day using Affinity Designer, first impression feedback: Powerful, fast software, very nice! I am excited for the future! We need a replacement for Adobe and their subscription based service. Sadly I cannot make the switch from Adobe to Affinity - yet. Most of my work goes to a Printer, I need artboards and guides and bleeds and adjustable rulers and the ability to save these files for the Printer...I will keep playing with the software (at least during the trial period) and I hope someday (soon) to make the switch from Adobe to Affinity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted April 5, 2015 Staff Share Posted April 5, 2015 Hi liz, Welcome to Affinity Forums :) I'm glad to know you're enjoying Affinity. All those things are already on our roadmap and will be implemented as we move forward. Just bear with us while we get there ;) liz 1 A Guide to Learning Affinity Software Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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