Broaden Xara X's appeal

[xarb]

Not wanting to turn XaraX into bloat-ware, here are my two suggestions for simple enhancements that would allow me to use it more often:

1) Text handling - if you added Tab Stops, for example, I could throw away Corel Draw

2) Connectors - if you added connectors, especially smart ones which re-route when an object is moved, I could throw away Visio

(And I agree with the previous poster, !Impression was fantastic)

[LogoVend]

EASY ACCESSIBLE LIVE-VECTOR-BRUSHES
& STEAL A LEAD ON EXPRESSION

At the moment I play with ProCreate Painter and it's natural media brushes - it's great fun but becaues it's not vector based there's little chance of editting after. And Expression is bag of crap. There is no tool out there yet which I can Vector Paint with!

Personally I think putting greater emphasis on brushes would definitely broaden Xara's appeal. Even create a brand new tool or gallery. I mean brushes as more obvious thing on the surface - yes I know you can create Brushes but the way that this works at the moment is very fiddly and obscure and more users never delve into using brushes and the ones supplied are pittiful - maybe have brushes that can have multiple layers so that you can get closer to natural media. Get artist on these forums to create them when it's in beta form so there's a massive gallery of quality one's included. Also please let users define there own Stroke Shapes Pressure Profiles!!! In that way you'll end up with Vector Paint as part of the feature set rather than an after thought.

If X2 delivered this I think it would be a great marketing tool. Not all graphic projects are made of boxes and text. X2 - Vector-DESIGN - Vector-PAINT - GOD DAMN Vector-CREATE!


IMPROVED 3D
Common Integrate Xara 3D

Some times I just want to draw something that's 3D to add to my piece of work and I end up having to use Corel Draw and then import it into Xara X.

I know that it's an extra revenue stream for Xara Ltd but you have all the code there - why not bite the bullet and integrate the two apps. When something like Corel Draw has had Extrude features for over 10 years - since version 3 - why doesn't X - especially when you've done the work with Xara3D.

FINALLY
MARKETING

I've been doing a lot of work recently (on Xara X Onbiouvly) for a company called GreasyPalm - they're a referal cash back site and get about 1 million unique visitors a week. Maybe it's an idea to advertise Xara X on here - you already offer a referal payment - why not get them to do this for you and I think there's one in the US as well called Ebates - if it costs noting to set up at your end and you're giving away referal money any way - you should be getting your marketing people on this. A few hours work might get a hell of a lot more people using Xara X.

[Availor]

I'm sorry ahead if it was already posted.

The reason (in here anyway) Freehand is so popular is because it is a stand alone vector program as well as a desktop publishing app. I deal mostly with desktop publishes (catalogs, books, magazines, brochures etc...).
For this reason Indesign is too heavy and lacks many features which are included in Illustrator, but it's too heavy to run them both together with a large file.

Personaly, it will just make my life easier if Xara would have better text handling capabilities - if it was a desktop publishing software being able to support Middle-Eastern text.

[min]

I agree with James about vector brushes (altho' I do use Expression and I don't have a problem with it) and marketing

Much better compatibility with other vector programs (export/import) and PDF support.

I can understand the desire to increase Xara X's appeal but please don't "dumb it down" http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

Amanda

[Sheff]

I use Xara for almost everything except bitmap editing. Again, I would much rather have a smoother interface with Photoshop or whatever bitmap program I want than deal with the limitations of XPE. I would like to go into the bitmap gallery and hit 'EDIT' and have Photoshop open with that file as a temp file. When it closes, I would like to see the bitmap in the gallery update. I have seen this before with other apps, and I know it's doable. Editing bitmaps with XPE is like eating soup with a fork.

If Xara had a way to make selections within a bitmap and turn them into shapes, then that would help with using a bitmap program less. A magic wand tool or a color select tool would be handy.

In Photoshop, I often paint shapes that I turn into selections. If Xara had a way of painting with vector brushes that turn into shapes with a toggle, then that would speed up selection accuracy as well as give us a new avenue for painting. If there was a way of actually painting in Xara where unseen objects beneath other painted objects on the same layer would disappear or be added to the current shape. Or if there was a toggle between painting mode and standard Xara mode.

I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to paint with Xara, but the brush system is awkward. It is not designed for a painter. If this feature was added and added in a functionally practical way, you would see a major increase in my personal vector output. It would also need a hot key for color selection that is outside of the color editor.

I still use Xara for printing quite a bit even though, I end up creating multiple single page files. If the PDF solution enables me to export multi page documents, that would be helpful.

Still having true multiple pages within Xara would be much better than faking it in layers as we currently do now.

In terms of web design, I build my navigation graphics in Xara, but I use Dreamweaver to create the actual code. I don't use the navbar function.

What would be nice would be if we could have a toggle to show us what weblinks are within objects when building an image map. That would be handy.

I don't use Xara for figuring things out like perimeter or area. This would be helpful. Import and export of CAD formats would also be a godsend. Also in the infobar at the top, it would be nice to see a readout of RGB/CMYK values.

The option to link to external files would also be a useful addition. This would minimize bloat of Xara file sizes. Also the user could update the external files without having to reimport it back into Xara. After numerous client permutations, there is a tendency to lose track of versions when you reimport similar files again and again. It would be much easier to link to a single outside file which can be updated by an outside program. Please add this feature. Don't leave it out because some people don't know where to find things on their computers.

I would like an update to the existing filters. The one that is most important to me is the AI filter. I would also like an increase in speed regarding PNG files. I would like Xara not to convert my 32 bit files with alpha into 24 bit because it cannot handle that. This is another reason I would much prefer to deal with bitmaps in Photoshop.

This month I will be building a new machine for myself which will be a dual boot 32/64 machine with dual processors and 8 Gigs of memory. I would like to be able to take advantage of all of that using Xara. I realize that Xara is built to work well for lesser machines, but for those of us who have that much memory and such, give us a method for taking advantage of that. Give us a way of specifying where to put Xara temp files, or how much memory cna be dedicated to Xara, etc.

But from a marketing perspective, give X2 a name that makes sense with what it does. X2 can refer to a movie about mutants or new processors from AMD just to name 2 things. If X2 had a name that said what it does, then you wouldn't have to rely on users so much to explain to people what it does.

Regarding bloat, you might give users an option to turn on/off the individual features they do/don't want to use. This might help development in that as you add new features, they can be added as a patch or a plug-in without having to update the whole program.

Give us a method of having more than 9 default templates. Let us make our own templates that can be used with other Xara apps.

[AntonM]

I feel like a kid in sweetshop who's been asked what he'd like to see on the shelves for his next visit! So this may also be over the top...

I'd LOVE to be able to do 3D CAD work with the kind of intuitive ease that Xara has been spoiling us with. At least some of the programming is there already, in XX1 and X3D.

[Lurach]

I would love to see Xara moving closer to the "Impression Publisher of the old BBC/Archimedes days. I am not an artist, and I know that most will consider Xara as an "artistic" program but I would be delighted to see some more input into the idea of frame based text. In my opinion Impression Publisher was away ahead of its' time, and easily beat anything available on the PC at that period and would just love to see it being "revived" through Xara. With linked frames it would be the perfect production tool for jobs ranging from single sheet flyers to more complex Brochures, booklets and maybe even more.

I would also like to see tighter integretation with Xara 3D.

By the way I still have Impression Publisher on my beloved Archimedes A5000

[bcire68]

I have to agree with some of the other posts here. If what you are after is making XX a more appealing product to the average user on the street, then the 2 main things they would probably use it for are Desktop and Web publishing. This is aside from photo touch up which is in the domain of XPE (which will need allot of work to challenge photo shop)
If you can provide users an easy (read templates) interface for producing fliers, banners, business cards, etc. I think that the users will learn the other functionality in the tool, like how to create shapes and drawings.
Also, if you were to provide better integration to Webstyle (where you already have the templates) and allow the users to create new designs for it. I think that more people would be enticed to use Xara for a one stop shop for their graphics needs (except where noted above).

That's my 2 cents...

Eric

[stlewis]

I think Photoshop Elements should serve as a warning for us; I trialled v3 but it loaded and ran like a dog. Yes, it has got a lot of appealling gizmos which, to an occasional user are clever, but it should run quickly on a 2004 PC with average memory. And PE3 didn't.

I wonder if, for the bitmap side, XPE was shipped with a good set of (paid for) plugins, that would give X2 extra home user appeal.

Plus, as I suggested earlier, a Wizard product which will poke its nose into X2. If this was script driven, then the serious user could also write scripts for these repeated actions that various people need. If the hooks are there in X2, then it would not bloat the basic X2 product.

[w00dy]

Xara X is a fine product with its speed, transparency handling and price being its biggest advantages for me. To think that it will one day rule the graphics world is perhaps a pipedream (what a great little programme that was!) so where does it find its niche in the market?

The ability to talk more effectively to its "industry standard" peers in in the graphics world in terms of import/export has to be a priority. Perhaps most annoying is the fact that it doesn't talk to Webstyle, which is a Xara product. A lot of folks out there would like to see these two combine to enable web templates to be easily produced. However Xara's Webstyle templates provide a constant revenue stream and providing this facility could effectively kill off that income.

Xara Picture Editor is fine for a quick fix, Photoshop its never going to be but used in conjunction with Xeus-like enhancement, it would go a long way towards meeting my needs. Basically I use it to produce website graphics, I'm not a rocket scientist.

An improved tracing capability would be really good.

Multi-page documents. My printers use Corel Draw full stop. They marvel at how quick I can produce some effects in Xara but the printshop doesn't do native xara files and it's too much clatting about to get a .xar file into something they can use. Add to that Xara doesn't do multiple page documents, so they'll never entertain it

I've used to use Impression/Artworks years ago and that was the reason why I bought Xara last year... I'd heard of it. The overwhelming majority of fellow IT teachers look at me gone out when I mention Xara, they've never heard of it. A foothold in education is worth a lot and companies like Serif are constantly offering "free trials" of their products to teachers. I don't recall ever having received any promo material from Xara. Does Xara see the education market as a priority but in the long term to be successful, surely the company must address that area.

Charles is a cool cookie, most of the comments that have been posted on this thread, he will have already has thought about long ago, so the question begs, "When will X2 arrive?". If some of the suggestions put forward are to be implemented, then I'd say not for a while yet which is a pity. Then again, it could be just around the corner and Xara will spring it on us out of the blue, saying there you go... we knew what you wanted!