Designer Pro + / UI colour scheme and shortcut key reference

[Boy]

standardisation is useful, but functionality beats it every time for me

what I would not like is all apps to be exactly the same in all respects, because then choice goes out the window...

I agree. In addition, some variation among the apps' UIs helps in remembering where the different tools, panels etc. are located and how each app actually works.

If I compare the UIs of XDP 19 with the Affinity apps, the different layouts and looks visualize in one fell swoop their unique workflow. However, it requires fairly frequent use of each of the apps or else I have to reacquaint myself with their underlying logic again.

[handrawn]

take the function PAN

I can think of at least three ways to do this:

hold down spacebar and move mouse
hold down middle mouse button and move mouse
hold down right mouse button and move mouse

they all have their pros and cons depending what you are doing and what the program might do instead, eg context menu in xara for the third example which you may prefer; software companies look at their packages holistically in terms of functioality [well the good ones do anyway]

and that is the crux - some of the time it's best one way and some of the time another way; it's not practical to have it all ways...

there are aspects of xara's UI that 'get in my way' frequently, but I understand why they are there - double click to switch tool, and the ability to add an object to a layer that is locked [!] to name but two