Staff acapstick Posted March 3, 2015 Staff Share Posted March 3, 2015 Hi everyone, Now we're a couple of weeks into the beta, I thought i'd try to gauge some opinion on how you're all enjoying the help. I'm very confident that the help will serve you well, but it's really beneficial to me at this stage to find out where improvements could be made from a user's perspective. So far, this is what we've achieved... - Topics created for all functionality. - Text content in topics is mostly complete (but tracking UI changes daily). - Cross-referencing complete (i.e., See also..). and what we're planning... - Adjustment layer topics, filters topics, and other topics that need to be visually led (crop, retouch, etc.) will have before/after image examples. - Optimization of search results. For release, we're planning a strong set of video tutorials that will complement the Help. If you've 5 mins to tour the Affinity Photo Help (Help menu), i would be very interested to know your views. Thanks Andy Capstick Affinity Photo Documentation MichaelZoone 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeFromMesa Posted March 3, 2015 Share Posted March 3, 2015 My personal opinion is that the organization of the Help information is very well done and very well organized. Finding things is relatively simple and the information provided seems clear enough. My main complaints center around missing information. That is, not all of the topics cover all of the controls within those topics and I have filed at least one bug report listing functionality that exists but is not contained in the Help file. Keep up the good work! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A_B_C Posted March 3, 2015 Share Posted March 3, 2015 Hi acapstick, I have missed the entry about Color Balance Adjustments in the latest Beta ... I have tried to point a friend to that specific topic, but I was looking in vain ... What you are planning sounds wonderful indeed. I believe these things are very helpful for beginners ... what turned out to be confusing for some users seems to be the difference between layer masking and layer clipping, as far as I can see from the forum posts in the last months ... perhaps you might consider to clarify this difference a bit ... And please (please, please, …) would you be so nice to correct the page layout in the help viewer? The main text frame on the right does not fit the help viewer window regardless of window size (see my screen shot from OS X Lion) ... :o I had to create a PDF from your AD help files just to allow continuous reading when I started to use the application ... and I would term this "the ugly" part ... ;) Other that that: keep up the good work, thanks, Alex dieter.weinelt 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A_B_C Posted March 3, 2015 Share Posted March 3, 2015 A searchable PDF file with internal links would be great too ... this was requested several times on the forum, as far as I can remember ... :) LilleG, manu schwendener and Paekke 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff acapstick Posted March 3, 2015 Author Staff Share Posted March 3, 2015 Thanks Mike, Your comment relates to Develop Persona which is still being developed. Andy Capstick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff acapstick Posted March 3, 2015 Author Staff Share Posted March 3, 2015 Hi ABC, Color Balance should be in the Help for this week's beta as it went in last week. I don't get to write it up until it's in the software :P . Noted about clipping/masking. I'll investigate the text being clipped by the Window. Can any other OSX Lion users verify this? Oh.. we also hope to create a Handbook (ibook format) at some point. cheers Andy Paekke and A_B_C 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A_B_C Posted March 3, 2015 Share Posted March 3, 2015 Thanks, Andy, sounds great ... :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted March 3, 2015 Staff Share Posted March 3, 2015 A_B_C, Do you also have the Help text clipping problem in Affinity Designer on OSX Lion? or it's just on Photo? A Guide to Learning Affinity Software Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrianJonesDesign Posted March 3, 2015 Share Posted March 3, 2015 I'm running OS X 10.7.5, and also experience the Help text clipping problem in AD, AD beta, and AP beta. When in Help, If I navigate via the scroll bar at the bottom of the page to the right so the whole body of text is now visible, the text wraps as I expect it to when I resize the window. But the index column to the left is now out of frame. When I navigate to the left to bring the index column back into view, the right edge of the text is now out of frame. Keep up the good work, Affinity, well done! A_B_C 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CarlB Posted March 3, 2015 Share Posted March 3, 2015 The only thing I found so far is that while using help to look at the overlays in the develop persona this is what I see. Not sure if its just me or not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A_B_C Posted March 3, 2015 Share Posted March 3, 2015 @ MEB: Unfortunately it is just as BrianJonesDesign says ... :( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted March 3, 2015 Staff Share Posted March 3, 2015 This problem was fixed for Mavericks and Yosemite some betas ago. Seems it's now restricted to Lion. A Guide to Learning Affinity Software Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LilleG Posted March 4, 2015 Share Posted March 4, 2015 On a 20" display, running Mountain Lion, it is a PITA to use. Text should automatically wrap to the size of the window. Instead you have to scroll to the right to read all of the text. When you scroll to the bottom, if you even touch the mouse while reading, it takes you back to the opening page. The Overlay segment shows the same "no image" icon as Lion. Please fix this for Lion and Mountain Lion. Some of us don't want to go to Yosemite and can't go to Mavericks since it is no longer available. That's as far as I've gotten in the Help for now. Update: Okay, worked my way through down to the Tools section. In the previous sections the Overlay dealie is the only one with a missing image. Gave up on looking at the Tools section. Click on a couple of sections then boom, you're flipped back to the opening screen and have to scroll down through all the now open sub-sections to find where you were. The help itself seems comprehensive and well-written. It's just the current "layout" and operation that is a pain to use. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paekke Posted March 5, 2015 Share Posted March 5, 2015 The layout could be more easy on the eye, eg. icons always placed the same spot. But what is written is clear and short, and the linking to relevant stuff works great. Nothing so terrible that I can't live with it :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ronnyb Posted March 6, 2015 Share Posted March 6, 2015 Bug: I notice that if I switch apps while the Help window is open, the window remains on screen (albeit not active), but it overlaps the active app's window... 2021 16” Macbook Pro w/ M1 Max 10c cpu /24c gpu, 32 GB RAM, 1TB SSD, Sonoma 14.4.1 2018 11" iPad Pro w/ A12X cpu/gpu, 256 GB, iPadOS 17 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A_B_C Posted March 6, 2015 Share Posted March 6, 2015 Yes, Ronny, but I think this is not a bug ... the help window is a "floating" one by default, always on top ... But you can change this using OnyX > Parameters > Misc > Help Viewer ... http://www.titanium.free.fr/onyx.html But this does not cure the cropping of the text ... :( Cheers, Alex :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ronnyb Posted March 6, 2015 Share Posted March 6, 2015 It makes sense to have the Help windows above all other windows while in the app; but I'm not sure if I like it floating above ALL apps. However, as you correctly pointed out, it's a default OS X behavior. In my case, I was searching for something in the Help viewer first, and when I didn't find it, I switched to Safari to do a DuckDuckGo search (I'm trying to avoid Google as much as possible). Then I noticed couldn't see Safari's window because the Help viewer was above. I've only ever used the Help window for targeted queries, I suppose it's beneficial for some to leave it floating above all else while working in a new app. Thanks for the heads-up, Alex! I will download Onyx again, I used to use it many OS versions back... Cheers, brotha, have a great weekend! A_B_C 1 2021 16” Macbook Pro w/ M1 Max 10c cpu /24c gpu, 32 GB RAM, 1TB SSD, Sonoma 14.4.1 2018 11" iPad Pro w/ A12X cpu/gpu, 256 GB, iPadOS 17 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A_B_C Posted March 6, 2015 Share Posted March 6, 2015 Have a nice weekend too! :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobbd2000 Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 I had to create a PDF from your AD help files just to allow continuous reading when I started to use the application ... and I would term this "the ugly" part ... ;) Any chance of sharing that PDF or describing how you created it. I have the other help bug that has been reported. No Table of Contents. Thanks Bob LilleG 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobbd2000 Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 Just a followup to my previous post. This may be well known to some, but not to me. I was able to locate the help index HTML file and I can now use the help from within Firefox. If anyone else needs this workaround, show the package contents for the Affinity Photo app and look for the file Contents/Resources/AffinityPhoto.help/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/index.html. Bob Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LilleG Posted March 9, 2015 Share Posted March 9, 2015 Thank you, Bob! That works great. And the text wraps now, which makes it a lot easier to use. MichaelZoone 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A_B_C Posted March 11, 2015 Share Posted March 11, 2015 Sorry Bob, I had just missed your post #19 ... but what you wrote in #20 was just the way I did it myself ... sorry again ... :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobbd2000 Posted March 11, 2015 Share Posted March 11, 2015 Sorry Bob, I had just missed your post #19 ... but what you wrote in #20 was just the way I did it myself ... sorry again ... :) No problem. Do you have something that will create PDFs from a Web page/site or did you put it together by brute force? I'm reading in a browser but it would be nice to have a PDF for annotation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A_B_C Posted March 14, 2015 Share Posted March 14, 2015 Brute force ... :( In the meantime I discovered that there might be smarter solutions, for example: https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/print-pages-to-pdf/ http://tv.adobe.com/watch/acrobat-x-tips-tricks/quick-tip-how-to-turn-a-website-into-a-pdf-file/ But I haven’t tried any one of them ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobbd2000 Posted March 14, 2015 Share Posted March 14, 2015 Brute force ... :( Been there myself. Hoped you had some magic :-) I had tried Scrapbook but it didn't give me anything more than I had. I have not tried Print Pages to PDF as an add on to scrapbook. As for the second, unfortunately it requires Adobe Acrobat which I cannot afford. And I think I've used up my trials. Thanks Bob Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts