CONGRATS for Affinity Publisher!

[mac_heibu]

I have to say: I never expected, that Affinity Publisher is such a complete and „round“ product from version one!

Of course there are limitations, short runnings and other hiccups, but this app is really, really great (although I am an every day user of InDesign CC)!

[ZombieRofl]

Same experience so far!

[Pšenda]

59 minutes ago, mac_heibu said:

Affinity Designer

??? :-)

[mac_heibu]

Uuups! Affinity Publisher of course! I edited my post.

[InfoCentral]

So I have Affinity Publisher 1.7 but Designer and Photo 1.6.5...interesting.

[mfarooqi]

Finally we got it what we've been waiting for.. Thank you Affinity. 

On the first start I found some visually issues. Like the UI font's are too pixelated in windows 10. I've used both AP and AD on mac, but downloaded this Publisher on Windows as trial. 

please check the screenshot I attached, the left is Photoshop and on the right Publisher.

I didn't check any performance or functional thing. this was the first thing I found apparently. 

[Medical Officer Bones]

I agree with you, @mac_heibu !

For a first version it seems remarkably feature-complete. Although I've only played with it for a couple of minutes, things that stand out in comparison to InDesign:

• Optical Alignment is not only included, but is also a text style property! Hurrah! And way better control options.
• The text ruler sticks with its text box! I hate the InDesign (tabs) text ruler with a vengeance.
• Seemingly feature-complete typography and text flow options
• Fast. Navigating pages in Publisher feels faster compared to InDesign on my machine.
• The GUI reacts in a smooth way in Publisher, while InDesign is quite laggy. For example, dragging the pages panel to increase the width updates the entire screen smoothly and instantaneously. In InDesign it's a lag-fest.
• Very smooth viewport dragging with hand tool compared to InDesign
• way more parametric shapes to play with!
• instant feedback when browsing drop-down lists. Overall, Publisher feels less clicky in most regards.
• the translucent rulers are actually a really good idea
• grid options are light-years ahead of InDesign. Isometric grids in a DTP layout app? Gold! And the grid window is non-modal!
• nice snapping options

All in all, pretty usable so far.

Things that are missing for me or in need of drastic improvement compared to InDesign:

• master pages cannot be based on other master pages, it seems.
• the pages and master pages functionality is extremely basic compared to InDesign.
• no option to set up alternative layouts.
• section manager is awkward, awkward, awkward.
• multi-page spreads and fold-outs seem impossible? That would be VERY problematic.
• Spread Setup dialog is terrible in Publisher. This really needs to be integrated in the page panel more. And the dialog is modal?
• no cross-referencing, running headers/footers, etc.
• not possible to paste graphic/image/object in a text so that it flows with the text.
• having various page-sizes and spreads in the same document seems either very difficult or very awkward.
• place tools not very refined
• no spine awareness for various features
• no epub export: fixed or flowing. No animation or interactive epub layout options.
• no html export or online publishing
• no flight checking tools.
• no links panel to check a place image's properties and effective and true ppi. The resource manager is too awkward in use. Can't even use the scroll wheel to navigate the list.
• no built-in article editor. InDesign's article editor is sort-of essential to deal with large copy.
• guides won't work in layers, so it is impossible to create multiple guide systems.
• no change tracking
• no footnotes
• no visual measurement feedback when dragging stuff.
• no scripting, no plugin architecture.
• InDesign's Gap tool is very nice. Publisher needs something similar.
• no way to zoom into the pages thumbnails. Same with the layers.
• many panels very messy looking (the paragraph panel, for example). Looks thrown together, rather than well thought-out. Lack of breathing space.

So, still a lot of scope for improvements. I don't care too much about epub and html export, but the pages panel and how pages are handled need a lot of love before I decide to commit to Publisher. Features related to automation within a document (running headers, cross-referencing, links, footnotes, automatic table of figures, figure numbering, text variables, and so on, and so forth) are almost completely missing for now, and I use these quite a bit too. I wouldn't want to layout a technical manual in Publisher as it stands now.

A good start. Hopefully the pages panel, master pages and page management in general will see drastic improvements before the end of the beta phase.

[kimtorch]

I'd like to congratulate the developers for what they've done.

I'm sure they've spent many a long night trying to mould AP into a product suitable for public testing. You've done a great job getting to where it is now and I hope the sudden rush of bugs and features requests are seen as users desperately trying to help rather than an unscalable mountain of work.

Enjoy what you've been able to achieve - it's probably better than I was expecting for a first release - well done.

[InfoCentral]

I see the current version 1.6.5 Designer/Photo aren't compatible with Publisher 1.7

[digger1914]

If you have been clicking on the persona icons, they are not activated yet.  Hence the message.  Check out the UI video.