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Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
Designer Pro X11 has arrived at last! You will already know about most of the new features from the Web Designer and Photo & Graphic Designer 11 announcements. But nevertheless I’ll repeat the highlights:
Web Features
• Stickies – objects that stick in place as the page scrolls
• Stretchy background images that fill the browser width
• New animation effects available on mouseover, on click or on reveal
• Still in beta but definitely worth a try: Xara Online Designer (formerly cloud.xara) introduces collaborative online editing of your sites from anywhere and on any device
We have a couple of demo sites @ http://www.xara.com/web-designer-examples/site1/ and http://www.xara.com/web-designer-examples/site2/ (both now included as templates in Designer Pro 11) and for that matter the Xara Online Designer release notes @ http://kovemi.xara.hosting/XOLDesigner-Intro/ are a good demo of Stickies.
Graphic Design, Illustration & Text
• A big step forwards for the Brush Tool, with new Art Brushes and enhanced Scatter Brushes
• New industry standard blend / transparency modes
• Lots of new & improved text features including abbreviation expansion and some you won’t have seen in Web Designer or Photo & Graphic Designer such as auto-hyphenation and greater flexibility with embedded graphics
• An extension of the Shape Editor Tool (Liquify Tools)
• Share & Sync your files via Dropbox or Google Drive
You can find more information on our website @ http://www.xara.com/designer-pro/whats-new/ and detailed info in the release notes @ http://xaragroup.magix.net/Pro11releasenotes/ plus don’t miss Gary Priester’s traditional First Look at http://xaragroup.magix.net/XDP11
Also I’d like to mention again that the Liquify Tools and latest SmartShapes (don’t miss the new spiral) are the first quite simple examples of what can be created with our new plugin technology, for which we intend to publish an API so that third parties can add features, tools and SmartShapes. The API isn’t ready to be released yet, but if you’re a JavaScript developer and this sounds interesting, send us a ticket via support.xara.com to register your interest and we’ll keep you posted.
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
Thanks Kate
the brush problem with pressure recording in win8.1 that I was getting with photo&graphic designer 11 appears fixed :)
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
I had a lot of fun creating the First Look review and hope everybody is as excited about this release as I am. Kudos to the entire Xara crew for getting so many cool new features in my favorite program.
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
off to look at it now Gary - thanks as always
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
My thanks to the Developers, Senior Staff and everyone at Xara for a truly spectacular update!
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
Gary, you should have gotten xara to make your review one of its Templates.
Acorn
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
Son of a gun! Gary's review is another Magix website I cant open. Anybody else stuck with AT&T as an ISP?
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
Not with AT&T of course Ron but what happens when you try to view it?
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
Time to switch from ATT. They have the reputation for being the worst. The review should be on the XaraXone soon. I was making 11th hour revisions and Barbara got the files late.
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Egg Bramhill
Not with AT&T of course Ron but what happens when you try to view it?
It buffers for about 10 minutes and says it cant access the website. Ive gone round and round with AT&T on this, theyve sent people out, replaced lines, talked twice with level 2 techs there and still no success. They claim the problems with the website and not their equipment. I told them, then why is it possible for everyone else to access it and why am I able to access it NOT using their service, i.e. Hot Spot with Verizon.
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
Quote:
Originally Posted by
gwpriester
Time to switch from ATT. They have the reputation for being the worst. The review should be on the XaraXone soon. I was making 11th hour revisions and Barbara got the files late.
I have one option and that is Direct TV and they use, guess who, AT&T.
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
Ron have you tried going through a proxy server?
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
I have not been able to access any of the xara/magix web sites either. I can get to Xara.com with no problems.
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
Just opened a file I created in the free trial version of Xara Web thingy and Mothers Union (Sorry can't keep up with all these variant names for Xara products) using the new art brushes and it worked fine in Xara Designer Pro X11. FUN!
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
Yesss!!
Thanks you for the awesome work, this is huge.
Cool first look Gary!
Marc
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Mike Bailey
I have not been able to access any of the xara/magix web sites either. I can get to Xara.com with no problems.
THANK GOODNESS! Someone who understands!
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
I'm not on AT&T, but just a thought: have you tried to change your DNS settings on your network card? If you are getting bad DNS because of lookups directly on AT&T servers, maybe overriding that at your network card will help? n This would make sure that all the addresses along the path would be correct, converting names to IP addresses.
You can get to this by right clicking your network connection down by the clock, clicking "open network and sharing center", then going to "change adapter settings" on the left sidebar of that window. Then select your network connection (wired or wireless according to what you are using), right click it, go to properties, select the Internet Protocol IPv4 and go to the properties for that. Then at the bottom of that screen, you can see the option to specify your DNS settings. For the primary, put in 8.8.8.8 (this is a public Google DNS server). You don't need a secondary, but if you just can't help yourself, put in 8.8.4.4 (another Google public server).
Does that help this issue? Don't forget to turn this back to "automatically obtain" DNS if it doesn't work. If it does work, then it likely won't hurt anything to leave it this way. Those servers have been in place for years and I don't anticipate them going anywhere any time soon.
* I'm not responsible for anything you break while following this advice :)
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
Ok - so I'll be the first to ask:
I didn't see anything new here that was exclusive to Designer Pro. We all know that we get all the features of the "lower" products in the line, but there's usually something in there for the Pro only users, right?
What is that thing? Is there one this time around? Am I just imaging this?
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
Auto hyphenation is a new pro only feature. At the end of the text info bar there is a syl- icon that toggles it on and off and in the spell check menu there is a link to a settings panel
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
Great to see the pro version being released. Congrats :-bd
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
Is it me, or does the new v.11 seem a bit like chicken feed? What I mean is, if you are a user of Photo & Graphic Designer, you get lots of nice shiny new features, and a few weeks later along comes the flagship program and, OK, it has all the new P&GD features, plus...auto hyphenation. Anyone else underwhelmed by this fact? :rolleyes:
Bob.
Edit: I don't want to sound churlish, but there seems to be no good reason (apart from auto hyphenation of course) to upgrade, if you already have v.10 you can buy the latest P&GD for far less and suffer the loss of the auto hyphenation feature.
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
it's a point bob...
but then you cannot set your own keystrokes, or use other pro specific features like 'alt-drag select' when using the new features in p&g11
ok if you are new and you just want the new drawing features, and you don't need the pro only features that already exist, or any of the web etc stuff.. then you buy p&g11
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
I agree, Steve, but nothing stops one running both the above-mentioned programs in conjunction with each other.
(see how I made my very own auto hyphenation just then?)
Bob.
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
yes of course if you are happy to switch between
but for me for example humble though it may seem, the alt-drag select is the selection method I use the most and I would find it really difficult to work well without it; ditto having my own defined keystrokes; so it's worth the £89 upgrade on that basis rather than the £45 for p&g11 [offer prices upgrading from ver 8]
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
Hi Gary, is it possible for you to upload your file or a simplified version which includes the two sticky objects on the top of the screen? The nav bar and the Xara DP11 Header please? It's viewing incorrectly for me in Internet Explorer and need to find out why :)
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
Quote:
Originally Posted by
iamtheblues
Is it me, or does the new v.11 seem a bit like chicken feed? What I mean is, if you are a user of Photo & Graphic Designer, you get lots of nice shiny new features, and a few weeks later along comes the flagship program and, OK, it has all the new P&GD features, plus...auto hyphenation. Anyone else underwhelmed by this fact? :rolleyes:
Bob.
Edit: I don't want to sound churlish, but there seems to be no good reason (apart from auto hyphenation of course) to upgrade, if you already have v.10 you can buy the latest P&GD for far less and suffer the loss of the auto hyphenation feature.
Bob, Designer Pro includes everything from all of our products and a couple of extra features on top, including (which has already been mentioned) hyphenation, TIFF CMYK 16bit support, more import / export filters, more customization options, the panorama studio and a hosting package to name a few. Here is a comparison if you haven't seen it:
http://www.xara.com/designer-pro/compare/
So no it's not just "PGD plus hyphenation".
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
Just to let you know guys, Xara Photo & Graphic Designer is the perfect software choice for all your photo and graphic design work, however won't include a lot of the features in the Web designer series especially the new features such as sticky/stretchy, brand new animation effects, and the access to Xara-online, or some of the Page and layout Features? There's actually a lot of features in Designer Pro 11 that aren't included in Photo and graphic designer?
For a proper in depth analysis of all the features for each product line, see our compare chart - http://www.xara.com/uk/designer-pro/compare/
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
I think Bob's point was that, yes there are a whole lot of features in pro version that are not in the others, but not many that are both new this time round and exclusive to pro
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
Congratulations to all Xara users with the long-awaited release.
Thanks to the Xara's development team for the good work.
I purchased the upgrade and within an hour, I explored new opportunities.
What I liked:
Improved AI, EPS import - very good.
New types of transparency - very useful.
Hyphenation - useful. Although the settings are not very usual. InDesign % settings are more flexible.
Spiral is good.
Liquify Shape may be useful.
Disappointment:
I was hoping that created from vector shapes art brush will vector. But. When line converted to shape I get a 192dpi bitmap. Why 192dpi? Why bitmap?
One can use bitmap traser. But it's not a clean work.
Attachment 109054
PSD with CMYK/16bit import does not function("Only uncompressed data or RLE compression is supported"). What is it?
CMYK/8bit is no problem. But what I need it, if I can not export CMYK PSD back?
Unfulfilled expectations:
Still no CMYK PSD export.
CMYK transparency is still not supported.
Mold tool is not suitable for bitmap manipulations.
No vector fills.
Repelling was still an amateur level (text must be above the images).
Typography support is still weak.
Lack of color management.
Weak support of standard file formats(AI,EPS,PSD).
And bit more...
My personal conclusion:
For $ 118 I got a couple of useful things and some nice updates.
And finely. Now I can make a web site with a bunch of spinning, jumping, running, inverting and flashing buttons. Cool! ;))
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
Hi Rob, I may have been unclear in my post which you quote, for which I apologise, but here's what I said "...it has all the new P&GD features, plus...auto hyphenation..."
So I was aware of all the great new features, but for those who already have the previous release, it's possible to get by without Designer Pro and go for the cheaper option of purchasing Photo & Graphic Designer and only forego the auto hyphenation feature, which I am happy to do. Of course, I appreciate that there are implications concerning future upgrades which may cost more as a result of skipping the latest Designer Pro.
For my own purposes, I am willing to pass on Designer Pro this time, as I don't use the Web features at all and using my current version of Designer Pro alongside Photo & Graphic Designer seems to be a good solution for me.
Bob.
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
I have a feeling TG will be dominated by spirals and fancy brushes, for some time to come!
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
Tested both DPX11 64 and 32 bit versions with Magix Video Pro X7 and DPX11 fails to open. P&GD11 worked ok when opened from VPX7 (except for advancing the video). With DPX11 installed, VPX7 tries to open it rather than P&GD11, so I am faced with not purchasing DPX11, which I would really like, and purchasing P&GD11 plus WD11 instead, unless Magix/Xara can get DPX11 to work nicely with the video editors. I cannot advance on my videos that use Xara overlays and masks so long as DPX11 is installed. I have raised a ticket with Magix about this, but not with Xara.
I am quite disappointed. At least DPX11 installs on my computer, whereas DPX10 refuses.
For iamtheblues, DPX11 comes in 32 and 64bit versions, whereas P&GD11 is only 32, as far as I know. I was able to get "out of memory" errors with P&GD11 fairly quickly. I have 16GB of RAM that cannot be accessed by the 32bit version.
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
Bought XDP11 yesterday, installed and activated it as soon as I got home from work. Started setting up my usual preferences, saved a new default template, quit out. Opened it back up, and... crash. Rebooted, opened it again, and the same thing. I was about to go through uninstalling and reinstalling, but I noticed that it seemed to crash while loading settings from default template, so I went in and renamed the file I'd just created. Opened the program again, got a message that there was no default template, but no crash. Excellent. Created a new document, saved it was default template. Everything works fine now. Looking forward to jumping in and playing around with the new brushes.
So there's something to be learned here. Sometimes a problem has a simple solution.
-- Ben
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
Quote:
Originally Posted by
browj2
Tested both DPX11 64 and 32 bit versions with Magix Video Pro X7 and DPX11 fails to open. P&GD11 worked ok when opened from VPX7 (except for advancing the video). With DPX11 installed, VPX7 tries to open it rather than P&GD11, so I am faced with not purchasing DPX11, which I would really like, and purchasing P&GD11 plus WD11 instead, unless Magix/Xara can get DPX11 to work nicely with the video editors. I cannot advance on my videos that use Xara overlays and masks so long as DPX11 is installed. I have raised a ticket with Magix about this, but not with Xara.
Stop the presses! I tried Magix Movie Edit Pro (MEP) 2014 and got as far as Xara opening, then closing instead of continuing. I hadn't tried MEP2015 Premium, so I just tried it, and lo and behold, Xara DPX11 opened with the video image. So I tried VPX7 again, and it worked as well. I am dumbfounded. Somehow the programs sorted themselves out. There are still some issues, it seems, but at least I get the two programs to work together and I can continue with my video. Now if they can just get the animation part sorted out.
On with the testing.
John
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
PanStudio2 came with DPX10. Does it also come with DPX11? On the Features Compare list, I see "Advanced Panorama Studio," which only comes with DPX11 (another addition not available in the individual programs). Can I presume that this is the same as PanStudio2?
Thanks,
John
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
I think I'm later than anyone else!
And I know that lots of you have already been playing with it.
Just had a look at the new Brush gallery.
What a great addition and choice to something that was really very lacking.
Thanks, Xara.
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
Quote:
Originally Posted by
iamtheblues
Is it me, or does the new v.11 seem a bit like chicken feed? What I mean is, if you are a user of Photo & Graphic Designer, you get lots of nice shiny new features, and a few weeks later along comes the flagship program and, OK, it has all the new P&GD features, plus...auto hyphenation. Anyone else underwhelmed by this fact? :rolleyes:
Bob.
If all 3 products had been released at the same time then there would be the wow factor which would give XDP users the immediate desire to upgrade. But because we already know what is coming when XDP is released we are left thinking "auto-hypenation? is that all I'm getting for my Pro purchase?"
I will be upgrading my XDP to version from X10 to X11 as I do every year, but the yearly releases just aren't as exciting as they used to be.
Rich
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
Quote:
Originally Posted by
digitalphaser
When line converted to shape I get a 192dpi bitmap. Why 192dpi?
probably because that is the retina display standard dpi [2x 96dpi]
can always try drawing big and reducing down after converting to increase the dpi - that was one of the first things I tried
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Re: Just Release: Xara Designer Pro X11
Quote:
Originally Posted by
handrawn
probably because that is the retina display standard dpi [2x 96dpi]
Yes, probably.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
handrawn
can always try drawing big and reducing down after converting to increase the dpi - that was one of the first things I tried
But it does not help me. I rarely work with mixed documents. Alternatively, the vector or bitmap.
For raster I have thousands of Photoshop brushes. In Xara, I would like to see the vector brushes.
A huge disappointment.