It keeps crashing...

[The World's Biggest Frog..]

Hi,

I downloaded and installed "Affinity Publisher" today. However, when I try using it at all, it keeps crashing. I tried building and starting 2 documents for books. But when I started researching my materials and photos that I wanted to  use, while I was doing my searches for them, Affinity Publisher crashed and burned. This happened 3 times, so I just quit and said to hell with it. And the worst part is, when the program crashed, everything was lost. That even though I already hit the save option, named, labeled and put it in a separate file. When I had to reopen Publisher, nothing was there and there was absolutely zero evidence that I had even created anything at all.

Now I realize and fully understand that this is "A Test Beta Version" of the new program, but it's buggy and twitchy as hell and so far, I have not been able to get it to do anything worthwhile at all, let alone create a book. If it was functioning even a little bit, I don't think I'd have a problem and might even enjoy it. I like the fact that it is very similar in layout to Affinity Photo and Affinity Design. That's very good. And what is even better, I can use it... in theory anyway, to add photos or images to the book. It can be translucent, transparent, or background images with text over the top, or can be heavily text wrapped items. That is the theory anyway. But I don't even know if it's possible because the program won't work for me at all.

Will there be an update for the beta test version to fix some of the major bugs? Or, am I just stuck with what there is? I don't know... hope you do.

I tried finding a help email to contact someone at the makers of these affinity products but can't find one. When I selected "Help" I was brought here. That's also not right. I should be able to contact someone directly, instead of having to wade through this quagmire of a useless F**king blog in the hope that someone might actually see it and offer help or guidance.

I am sorry, but I absolutely hate these places. Believe me folks, I am trying very hard to be nice and trying very hard to be civil and to use decent language... but it is NOT easy.  <pardon my choice of words here... > But I hate these F**king blogs that are called "Help or Customer Service!!!" It is nothing of the kind and does NOT even remotely resemble anything like what customer service is supposed to be about!!! I'm sorry but leaving people to their own devices to solve or resolve problems or issues does not even remotely qualify as help or customer service... not even a little!

Come-on Affinity People!!! I am buying and paying for your products! At least give me the courtesy of an email addy to contact someone directly about issues and problems. I should NOT have to wade through the quagmire of what you call customer help and customer service just to try and find a possible solution. We are "PAYING" you for your products, and are PAYING YOU for the use of your products. You are making money on us. The least you could do is provide some kind of real and live customer support and service, instead of these useless forum and blog pages... shit!

No offense intended towards anyone reading, I'm just angry and frustrated at the laziness and the lazy approach to customer service and customer satisfaction these days. Real and live, meaningful customer service just does not exist anymore as far as I can tell. Most companies have resorted to these  useless blog and forum sites and are pretty much telling their clients and customers who bought their products to pretty much "fix it yourself." That is what these forums and blog pages amounts to. It's NOT customer service... at all!!! not even a little bit!!!  I guess you'd rather just ignore us after getting paid... How sad... Do I sound angry? Well, I am... If the issue of Affinity Publisher crashing issue can't be solved or resolved, I won't only just "Not Use It," I will write a scathing complaint at how poor it is, and how much poorer Affinity Customer Support and Service is... 

I love Affinity Photo. I rarely use Affinity Designer and will probably uninstall and quit using it. But I am disappointed at how much of a challenge it is just to get a hold of anyone to try fixing and resolving issues or problems. So far, I've had to fix and resolve them all on my own, and without assistance. This does NOT bode well for you Affinity... not at all.

[midsummer]

Sounds like you don't really know what the beta means. When you downloaded the free beta version you read this:

Quote

• It’s a beta - there will be bugs and areas of the app which are not yet fully polished. We don’t recommend you use it for any important production work at this time.

Affinity Publisher is not ready. It was not meant to be ready at this stage. It only works well enough now that we can test it, see if we like the interface & the way it works, and tell the developers which features we'd like to see in the future. Crashes are only to be expected. I think it's very cool that the developers made this beta open and free for all – they didn't have to do that. So the least the relatively small group of developers deserve for their efforts is that we keep our feedback constructive, don't you think? Don't expect the level of support that you'd get for a finished product.

Software development is not easy. Developing a complex suite of design software is not easy – that's why there are so few practical alternatives for Adobe's applications for professionals. I think Publisher looks very promising right now, pretty much as I expected. At beta stage I didn't expect to be able to do any actual work with it. I won't take on any big, demanding design projects with Publisher before I know it's feature complete.

Remember how the first version of InDesign was still practically unusable? People waited for it for a long time, and when it arrived, it had loads of bugs and missing features. It also cost a lot of money, and it was supposed to be finished & ready for production work.

Now you should maybe take a little breather and read through your post again and see how it sounds.

[Chris B]

Hey The World's Biggest Frog..,

I'm sorry you're frustrated but as @midsummer has pointed out, there will be crashes and there will be bugs. This is an opportunity to see if you like the direction the app is going in and request features and functionality.

If you can tell us what you're doing when you get a crash, we can fix it. I would imagine there will be updates during the beta cycle but we need as much information regarding crashes as possible so they can be fixed and stability can be improved.

We decided to use a forum so that everyone can note their issues and other users can offer advice and support as well as the dedicated support teams. This allows the developers to keep their heads down and carry on developing/fixing the app without replying to emails all day. Occasionally the developers do directly reply but I hope you can appreciate they will be extremely busy at this time. I'm sorry if this doesn't work for you.

 

[Rainieria]

I've got the full version and today it started crashing

Not a good start to the year.

[The World's Biggest Frog..]

I was able to go online and download the latest update over a year ago since I first posted. Rainiera, I would suggest running the updater that is builtin to Affinity and see if your version needs updating. I've enjoyed using Affinity Photo ever since I updated it. However, I stopped using Affinity Publisher because the issue of crashing was never fully resolved. That, and I also find that I can do everything needed within Affinity Photo. I also stopped using Affinity Designer for the same reasons of stability issues, and, these programs are all essentially the same as affinity photo and they all do almost exactly the same thing. I saw no reason to use the other programs and have since removed them.

 

I was considering Affinity Publisher for my book. But after careful research and studying Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing and Affinity Publisher, KDP turns out to be my best, most affordable and easiest to use publishing program and publishing engine. It contains everything I need to upload, organize, correct and then publish my materials. To date I've only published one short story book. But after researching and experimenting I decided that Affinity Publisher is just repeating steps and also adding unneeded steps for publishing my materials. So I removed and uninstalled it. I have all that I need with Amazon's KDP publishing engine.