Re: Xara Xtreme Pro - other improvements
After reading through the postings, of the Xtreme Pro announcements, I'm surprised there hasn't been more praise for the Photoshop PSD import / export that keeps the layers in tact. I can see some big advantages with that. Being able to share with other collaborators for me is one of the most important thing about software. Design, share, submit. I could be wrong, but seems like the AI / EPS import has been improved a bit.
For those who are kind of put off by the price, it can be a bummer when the actual price and your expected price are so different. That actually might be a testament to people's appreciation of Xara Xtreme and how full featured that program is. They see it as such a good value, it's hard to top.
I think Pro has some excellent additions for the DTP users. The new text boxes were coded wonderfully. Smooth, original use of the text box linking. I've used PageMaker, Quark, Indesign, Scribus, and several other non popular products such as the serif stuff. Xara's linking text boxes are smooth and good.
I do wish the flash features had a timeline, something like a livemotion, aftereffects or other, but at the same time, it's kind of good that the flash animation is kind of like a traditional flipbook animation.
One bug I found on my demo was, when I had an animation open and another normal document open, switching between the two, the animation controls stayed when they shoudl have gone away and the canvas of the animations are locked where the document canvases are sort of free floating. I saw a little bug where my normal document got locked to the corner like an animation.
I'd love to see the addition of instantly importable lorem ipsum text like indesign has to make designing faster. If plugins could be made, creating a table plugin and a text-wrap plugin or capability is going to be really useful too.
nice job to the X team. I appreciate your work and I'm glad that this release seems to be on the mark for a lot of xara fans.
Re: Xara Xtreme Pro - other improvements
michaelbuddy PSD import is a superb new feature to me as well :-D
Not having to open PS just to export .psds to some compatible format, and in worst case separating layers to different files is a real time saver.
I don't know, the timing is just so fine to me personally. My skills, job tasks and wishes were just starting to "grow out" of Xara, and I've been looking at the available options... then this update comes and my favourite program grows with me. How cool is that?
Re: Xara Xtreme Pro - other improvements
Quote:
Originally Posted by
joroho
Have you looked into a third-party utility that can run macros within any program? I've used MacroExpress for those times in Xara when I've wanted to automatically execute a series of operations.
.joroho.
Thanks for your suggestion joroho, I'll download and try that one, but my past experience with non-dedicated (not specific to the program) macro/actions software is not great.
Mouse recorders are particularly fraught with danger, the slightest difference in your display, after recording, can cause all kinds of problems.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Doug
Have you seen the Xortcuts Pro feature? Or were you looking for soemthing more?
Having more hot-key commands does help a lot, but not all functions have hot-keys available.
Re: Xara Xtreme Pro - other improvements
Of cpurse Raymond, you are right. But my work with Xara is not so important at the moment ;-) It will become more and more in some months when I will be ready to layout my texts and 3D illustrations and add some fancy Xara graphics and effects. And of course that was an incredible surprise for me yesterday to discover that I will be able to do the whole work with Xara !!! thanks to the Xara staff !!!
kindly,
ivan
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Re: Xara Xtreme Pro - other improvements
Here's something that really surprised me: A max of 9 files for recent files. OK, it's not the end of the world, but why build such measly uneccessary limits into the software?
Re: Xara Xtreme Pro - other improvements
Charles, Thanks again for the many improvements. One thing many of us have been hoping for is multi-sided moulds. Can you comment whether that feature is even on the radar screen for Xara?
.joroho.
Re: Xara Xtreme Pro - other improvements
Quote:
Originally Posted by
pauland
Here's something that really surprised me: A max of 9 files for recent files. OK, it's not the end of the world, but why build such measly uneccessary limits into the software?
I've seen this all over, so I don't think it's a Xara specific thing. I think it has something to do with using MFC or some other GUI framework library. The list is always stored in the registry, so that might factor into it somehow as well.
Of course, the code to write a list of files to disk and read them back is about as trivial as things get (speaking as a developer), but there's probably a cognitive limit to how big a menu can get before it becomes hard to use (though I wouldn't put that number in the vicinity of 9, personally).
Like most people, I tend to store most of my files together with a single directory per project. I've worked with some software in the past that, besides providing you with a list of recently accessed files, also provides you with a list of paths that you've recently used as well, and picking them would open up a file dialog directly into that path, and set it as the current directory so that saves go there as well.
Something like that in Xara would be fairly handy.
Re: Xara Xtreme Pro - other improvements
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Odat
I've seen this all over, so I don't think it's a Xara specific thing.
I think you're right - fireworks and PSP8 have a limit of ten. I'm always flitting about and it would be nice to have a longer list. I just assumed it was some arbitrary limit.
Never mind, no worries, Xara Ltd.
Paul