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ipad description of all tools


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hi there,

i know there are lots of tutorials explaining AD for the ipad but there are still functions that i can not figure out because i have not found any detailed info about them, for instance the contextual options when an object is selected and you tick the move tool: About Centre? also: icons with a lock inside, or an eye, you can toggle these on and off but what is their goal?

a detailed manual with all the AD functions would help but i have not found it yet, anybode else?

imac 27", macOS high sierra, ipad pro, affinity designer and photo on both desktop and ipad, lots of adobe stuff, not used since the arrival of affinity B|

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‘About Centre’ is a resizing option, so you won’t see any effect if you’re moving the object. The other icons (‘Lock Children’ and ‘Hide Selection’) are explained in the Help within the app.

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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thank you, i figured out About Centre,

no clue what the two other options do, you say it is explained in Help, you probably refer to another source because if i select the question mark righ bottom corner i don’t see an explanation of these options, am i missing a Help section?

imac 27", macOS high sierra, ipad pro, affinity designer and photo on both desktop and ipad, lots of adobe stuff, not used since the arrival of affinity B|

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The question mark icon in the bottom right-hand corner of the workspace only reveals the tooltips. To access the Help, you need to tap on the arrow in the top left-hand corner to go to the Home screen, and then tap on the question mark between the ‘plus’ and gearwheel icons.

53C96CBE-70A9-4E33-85C0-67E5BB33CB23.png

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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  • 1 year later...

Hi fellas,

Does Serif read the questions in this forum?

Two years on and nobody realised that placing the same icon for help ("?") for two completely different types of information is misleading? The help one finds in the work area (where images are created and edited) is barely a help at all, it just shows the tooltips for the main buttons but not for the ancillary buttons (the unlabeled smaller buttons) at the contextual menu that appears at the bottom. 

The iPad app is very inconsistent with regards to displaying tooltips, it will show the tooltip with the name of the button on tap just on the tools buttons but not on any others. The problem you create for iPad-only users is that we never know what the ancillary buttons are called to even make a Google search for them. Just try: "what does the button with two arrows pointing to each other under the Move Tool does in Affinity Designer?"

After I used the "?" in the work area and just got a listing of tooltips, I ignored the "?" in the file listing area as I expected it to do just the same too. These two guys above, two years ago, had the same experience. 

Ok, here are the issues Serif needs to be aware please:

1. The help in the file listing screen and the tooltip switcher in the work area screen which are both labelled as "?" need to be differentiated and re-labelled: 

  • Please rename the real help link in the file listing area to "Get started" or "Help", spelled out. Ideally, you should also have a "Learn" link or a "Learn" area in the app too, listing the few videos you already recorded. Just check how welcoming and beginner-friendly Adobe Illustrator is in comparison (ok, tried to upload two screenshots and it failed, see the link at https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/tutorials.html?mv=product&mv2=ai).
  • As to the tooltip switcher, anything but a "?".

2. When the tooltip switcher is activated it should show ALL the button labels including the small ancillary buttons, otherwise there is no way for us to learn the names of the buttons we need help with. For sure, you would have the challenge of making the switcher contextual as I can see the reason you haven't done that already is because the tooltips are just being served as a static overlay.

3. As both a UX professional and a Educational professional, I can confidently say that the content you have for help needs professional attention with regards to organisation, labelling, instructional design, content design, information architecture and visual design. This is the help content for one of the best creative tools out there at the moment but it is served as a really messy technical documentation. For example, just in the Introduction section:

  • You start with an introduction explaining what AD is and then next follows "About Personas" but then you break the sequence with two sub-sections (Key Features and New Features) just to talk about Personas again at "Switching Personas". Down in the Tools section you talk about "Vector Design Tools" and "Raster Design Tools" but make no mention of Personas any more. Then several sections below, in Workspace, you finally show what the Personas toolbar looks like. It is really difficult for beginners to make sense of that.
  • "Key Features" and "New Features" link to the same content but there is no explanation, initially I thought the page was broken.
  • "Workspace" which should definitely be part of the introduction is one of the last sections. It doesn't make sense to show screenshots of the interface last.

4. All of that content, with barely any screenshots of the UI to serve as a memory aid or reference.

5. Lastly but not finally, if you have an index with links to content, a basic UX practice is to show whereabouts in the index the content one is seeing is. If someone reaches your help via Google, one never knows which section they are because you provide no clue, no visible selection or a "you are here". The fact that you several times label the links in the index slightly differently from the titles in the content just makes it more difficult to try to find which section the content is in order to follow a sequence of instruction. 

Hey, I can help you with that, I would love to, that is what I have been doing since the 90's and still do today. Just give me a nod.

Regards,

Louie Morais

Screenshot_2020-03-29_03_38_15.png

Edited by Louie Morais
Forgot a link to show Illustrator example
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  • Staff

Hi Louie,

Thanks for taking the time to give some comprehensive feedback.

I'm going to take your comments on board and certainly will look at improvements to the structure of the help system for the next main release. 

Regards
Andy Capstick

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On 3/28/2020 at 10:37 PM, Louie Morais said:

When the tooltip switcher is activated it should show ALL the button labels including the small ancillary buttons...

I think that might not be practical because of the limited screen space available to show everything, at least on smaller iPads like mine.

So what I would like to see instead is an additional tooltip feature that works more like in the desktop apps, so that pressing & holding on one of those tiny ancillary buttons would pop up a tooltip name for it after a delay, ideally a delay time that can be set as a system preference.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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  • 11 months later...

Hi

I am also getting frustrated at not knowing the functions of the small contextual menu icons at bottom of the screen in the iOS version. It really needs tool tips to appear for them. There is no online help for this as far as I can see. This is becoming a dealbreaker for me, so kindly let me know how I can solve this.

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19 minutes ago, Nadz said:

There is no online help for this as far as I can see.

Please refer to my earlier post. There are similar explanations in the Help topics for other tools.

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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I did this for myself, quickly, as a memory aid after looking them all up.

*** It's not a complete list*** only the one's I struggled to remember.

As the ever helpful @Alfred has said, they're explained fully in the app, Help accessible via the "?" on the Home screen. Then under each tool.

> > > The first 5 roundals (left) are all concerned with snapping (The grey label above them doesn't show up very well on some screens)

(The image size is because I added it to my profile header in this forum - as good a place to store it as any.)

Suggestion to Serif - include a "Context menu icons" page in the app Help devoted to these. Collecting them together into one easy reference.

Untitled_Artwork.jpg.d17c14882cc443660be

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Words are crude implements, difficult to get perfect, easy to get tied in knots with, and often - usually - misunderstood, which is why 'tolarence' is the best word of all.

The word "professional" fits us all - amateur, semi-pro, beginner, advanced, middle, beyond it all, and on....., because professionals are tolerant.

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