First take rave

So at first I thought, 'what a meaningless upgrade'. And 'No sound in the Flash animations.' But then I started messing with the Mask. Yes! WAY easier than Photoshop. Instant copy-paste. And I found that I could make layers, which lets me work somewhat the same as Photoshop, but here with both bitmaps and vector art without any problems.

Which got me into the Photo Editor tool: 'Why would I need this... since I already use Photoshop?' And it took less than 5 minutes to figure out how to copy a bitmap onto a new layer, then desaturate it (all gray), then use the transparency tool to reveal part of the colored bitmap layer beneath. Zing! And I can connect to my Photoshop filters.

Next came the bitmap tracer -- which I can unreservedly state is far better than the Adobe tracer in Illustrator, and the Corel Draw tracer. Yes -- you CAN actually make a vector out of a photographic bitmap. At a very high level of accuracy.

Today, I started learning the Web Designer section. And you have to understand that for years, as a multimedia designer for a large corporation in San Diego, I kept using Front Page because it was so much faster than Dreamweaver, and hoping someone would take WYSIWYG to the next level. Xara has really, really done that. We all have our own design sensibilities and tastes, but, on the job, what's really important is how fast you can create web content that works properly... and how fast you can make edits to it when needed later... and how easily you can teach others how to edit your work (if you want to get promoted).

Most amazing of all is that I'm happily testing Xara 6 on a little Acer Aspire netbook. And it runs very well, with the only limitation being the small screen. The program does NOT run slowly, which surprised me... and it is letting me make graphics easily anywhere... which will include Starbucks soon with their free wi-fi.

Anyway, that's it for now... more later after I've bought the program and used it for awhile at work.

Speaking as someone who has little interest in most of the features you mentioned, I have to say that I too am impressed.

Purely from a selfish point of view, as an illustrator, the new transparency types and the new layers features look like they might well improve productivity significantly.

It's early days yet, but I'm loving the "Solo" feature. One aspect in particular; being able to drag down and view the contents of each layer individually saves masses of time finding small elements in large and complex illustrations, similarly, but in another way, with the layers "find" button.

I'm still playing with the new transparency types, but I think they could be very useful.

As for the U.I.; to be honest, I tend to use a minimal interface, so the new colour scheme really does not bother me one way or another. Lots of smaller changes, some of which seem to be pretty good.

My initial reaction is that this is a big and positive step forward, nice job Xara.

I have used NetObjects Fusion since version 3 (now up to version 11) and it is excellent for large websites. Mostly because everything is tied into an internal database and so global changes update instantly. I use it primarily for very large websites such as the XaraXone which is about 80 pages now.

But even though it was designed as a WYSIWYG application (it was developed with the help of the well known and respected San Francisco designer Clement Mok), I much prefer Designer and Web Designer.

It is so much more convenient and time-saving to be able to design and edit the graphics in the same page as the web site. And a lot of the things you can do in Designer 6 and WD 6 you could not do in any other application without a lot of extra effort.

I personally didn't have a look at the web features and probably wont try them out ever, but:

1. I like the new UI a lot and ...
2. OMG, pressure sensitivity, even visible while you draw.

These 2 alone make me happy already and everything else just comes on top.

Juergen