Why did you buy Xara the first time?

[d-sine]

I like a few others have migrated to xara after using artworks on the acorn platform. I got into artworks (pre-xara) after doing some freelance design work in my early teens with a dtp package called "impression" (also by computer concepts, aka xara).

Artworks was like someone turning the light on for me, I loved doodling with computers and I used to be fascinated watching people like Gordon Taylor (I think that's correct!) demo artworks at exhibitions in the early days. I then got my clammy mitts on a copy and sat for hours doodling my mini drawings and that was around 10 years ago.

A few years later I worked for a local computer firm who had a few retail units. I was regarded as a bit of a "wierdo" (I still am *grin*) because I could mix design and IT in the same body (!!). I heard about the artworks port to the pc (xara studio) and pestered my boss to get a copy for the store and took the full responsibilty to demo it. Over a period of about 4-6 months we sold many copies of studio due to my product knowledge and buckets of enthusiasm, I even demonstrated it to a fairly important lady from Corel who came to visit my boss not realising who she was! She seemed rather impressed though I must admit [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

Ah well, thats enough of my ranting, this is a great place to chatter to fellow xara-maniacs!

regards,

d-sine

[Turan]

If I'm right, Corel bought Xara and incorporated a lot of features into Draw7. Hence the big leap form Draw6 to 7 in speed and performance (not that I had 6 to notice).

After that I'm not sure. Corel seemed to continue to market Xara as Corel Xara.

But then seemed to drop it. why? Given as you say Gary much of Xara is from Draw users, it has been a bad business call!

Am I right? what is the history?

Turan

[d-sine]

hmm.. well afaik xara was born xara studio which itself was a port (albeit an enhanced one) of artworks from the acorn risc-os platform.

xara studio 1.0 was around for a short while (12 months or so?) and corel agreed to market it under their own label. studio then have a "feature facelift" and corel xara v1.1 was born.

i think thats about it, but i've prolly missed loads of detail!! [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

(i still have a xara studio leaflet in immaculate condition, must be a collectors item by now!)

[Ross Macintosh]

D-sine - You write: "I even demonstrated it to a fairly important lady from Corel who came to visit my boss not realising who she was! She seemed rather impressed..." I think you could well be responsible for the intro of xara to corel. Maybe given the dismal history of how Corel failed to market Xara you might not be welcome at the Xara mansion. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img] Don't worry we won't hold it against you - we still want to be your friend. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

Regards, Ross

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

[Truroneil]

I started graphics with Corel Draw 3 and eventually 5. My daughter-in-law, a colleague of Ross MacIntosh, kept saying how good Xara was and what Ross could do with it. Had to check it out.
Wasn't truly impressed until I got Xara X with the cds! The forums have helped a lot. Neil

[gwpriester]

Turan

There are many versions of this story floating around and this is my impression of what happened between Corel and Xara.

Xara was generating a tremendous amount of word of mouth excitement. I first heard Xara mentioned in the CorelDRAW 6 Beta Testers Conference on CompuServe. People who had seen Xara were blown away and strongly suggested others try it. THIS WAS BEING SUGGESTED IN THE COREL SPONSORED FORUM.

Obviously, Corel looked at Xara to see what all the fuss was about and decided (my opinion) that Xara represented a potential threat to DRAW in terms of price, speed, interface, and features.

Xara, being a small company, in comparison to Corel Corp., lacked the funds (my opinion) to market Xara the way it needed be marketed to compete with the major players, Illustrator, DRAW, and FreeHand.

Corel (my opinion) reasoned, they could market and distribute Xara as CorelXara, and at the same time, position it in the market place as a Web graphics and design application, thereby defusing some of the potential to cannibalize sales of DRAW. This sounded good to Xara (my opinion) because with Corel's "channel" connections" Corel could get Xara into the major retail outlets and put the dollars needed to market Xara aggressively.

Unbeknownst to Xara (definitely my opinion), the DRAW product team looked at Xara and said, hmmm, we can do that, and set about reverse engineering Xara's best features into DRAW 7. Xara owned all the code and only granted Corel marketing and distribution rights so Corel could not use the code. Plus the code with which Xara was written was more labor intensive to write and was not compatible with the code with which DRAW was written. But because of Xara's code, it could do the same things, faster, and more efficiently than DRAW.

When DRAW 7 was released, their implementation of Xara's anti-aliased screen display was so slow, it was not even the default setting. On the other hand, using existing code, DRAW was able to one up Xara with multi-colored fills and multi-value transparency.

Anyway, once DRAW 7 was released, putting a bright face on it (my opinion) Corel lost interest in Xara and it began disappearing from the retail channels. Corel was only mildly interested in upgrading Xara beyond version 1.5 but released version 2.0 for Internet sales and distribution only.

Arlen Bartch and Chris Dickman, the co-owners of i/us.com (may it rest in peace) negotiated with Corel to be one of the on-line sites where Xara could be purchased.

I was already creating monthly tutorials for DRAW and then later for Xara and Arlen and Chris asked me to develop an area on the i/us site called the XaraXone. The idea was to create a value added site that would draw in Xara users and encourage them to purchase products from the site. It was a fun challenge and I think it worked pretty well.

Chris added conferences and Xara users now had a place to meet and share ideas.

Then i/us was purchased by Getty Inc.'s EyeWire.com which in its infinite wisdom, decided to shut i/us down the first of this year.

Around the same time, Xara was developing Xara 3 (Xara X) and Corel planned to market it against Macromedia Fireworks. Good plan, because Xara is so much better than Fireworks.

About this time, Xara decided (my opinion) that the deal with Corel was not all it was cracked up to be and negotiated with Corel to get out of the contract. Corel agreed, and Xara is back in control of Xara Ltd.

After i/us closed its portals, Xara Ltd. agreed to sponsor the XaraXone, my monthly Xara tutorials (in their sixth year) and the WebXealot, my monthly tips, tricks, and on-line manual. I have tired to add content to the XaraXone including the Shareware Page, the Featured Artist Page, The Guest Tutorial, Xara Links, and more, to provide an additional resource for Xara users.

Xara took the conferences off EyeWire's hands and turned them into TalkGraphics. And while the Xara conferences are by far the most active (and productive IMHO) the other conferences are slowly building in size and activity.

And that pretty much brings us up to date.

Did I leave anything out?

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

<a href="http://home.earthlink.net/~garypriester">
Be it ever so humble...</a>

[Turan]

Gary,

Many thanks for that interesting (in my opinion) read. Like the wy there was no 'in my opinion' next to the Xara being better than fireworks [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] .

IMHO: Think Corel was right to be thretened by Xara, but drop the ball (or should I say golden egg) in not doing a better job with it.

Turan

[rheaton]

Anybody know what total number of registered members is now?

[roman]

Now Xara shouldn't asleep at the wheel.

[philhendry]

I've always been wary of spending money, and am very slow about buying new software. Anyway, I was still using version 3 of the C****D*** drawing package when I saw a review (it might have ben in PCW, I forget), of Xara Studio. This looked good, but being mean I didn't immediately order it. Then, when I finally got round to wanting it, C**** had bought the rights to it, and, to all intents and purposes, had sunk it.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, eventually our 'local' PC World had a single, slightly tatty, boxed copy of C****Xara on sale for fifty quid, so I snapped it up. It took about half a minute, after installing it, to uninstall C****D*** 3. I stuck with Xara 1.5 for ages and ages, missing 2 completey, but have come up to date with Xara X.

I love it- it does an excellent job of showing up my total, complete and utter lack of artistic talent. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

Cheers,
Phil

Trust the computer industry to shorten 'Year 2000' to 'Y2K'. It was this sort of thinking that caused the problem in the first place.