Which would be most valuable to you?

**Soquili** · 30 May 2007, 09:09 PM

Ken you may find some useful information as to alternatives to SVG in the thread http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthread.php?t=27158

Adobe is dropping support for their SVG plugin in less than a year; January 1, 2008. Adobe has an XML based vector format that should be available later this year.

Microsoft already has XAML vector support with the beta plugin that supports cross platform browsers.

Post #9 in the thread above is by Charles Moir of Xara Ltd (MAGIX).

As a historical note, Xara provided a browser plugin for their .web vector format. If you have IE 5 or maybe IE 4, you may find the plugin does a great job of displaying and zooming in and out when displaying .web files.

**kismert** · 30 May 2007, 09:22 PM

Soquili, thanks for the tip. I saw that thread just after I posted to this one, and realized my response is a better fit for that thread.

-Ken

Hans · 31 May 2007, 07:59 AM

Originally Posted by kismert

I voted for better Adobe Illustrator import, but I have comments on SVG and HTML export.

If SVG is not that standard, then what is the logical, standards-based, open alternative?

As a web designer, I don't see how Xtreme could export a graphic to HTML in any meaningful, satisfactory way. Tables are on their way out as a layout tool, and it is hard to imagine how to translate a free-form, object-based, layered drawing into a CSS/HTML layout that makes semantic sense and validates.

-Ken

Exporting XAR to HTML probably demands at some moment to embed an SVG. I don't see how you can create an XAR and convert to plain HTML and still have it workable unless Xara would add a number of functions for web design (typically in the table area).

**dflock** · 31 May 2007, 01:18 PM

I hesitated before voting for SVG - if it had said 'SVG Import & Export', then that would have been an easy choice. If you're going to have meaningful xar to web conversion, then SVG seems the logical choice. SVG is an open standard the enables extremely high quality scalable vector graphics on the web (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Vector_Graphics).

As SVG's now natively supported by Firefox, Opera and (nearly) Safari, that means that it's natively supported by ~20-30% of poeple's browsers (http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php).

Considering that Opera is pretty dominant in the mobile phone/device browser market (50 million+ handsets - http://www.opera.com/products/mobile/) and their mobile browsers also support SVG (including the ones that run on the Nintendo Wii and DS) - makes it all the more compelling.

Thinking more strategically, it's also the case that having Xara be fluent in SVG (which is just XML - i.e. structured text) would get you half way toward XAML (which is also XML) and WPF/E - or Silverlight - Microsoft's new 'flash killer' - http://silverlight.net/

Once Xara can speak XML, it ought to be fairly simple to support both SVG and XAML, as they're both just XML/Text. This would allow Xara to create not only SVG but Silverlight graphics/application layouts (and possibly animation) and UI/graphics for Vista and .Net too - these are all done with XAML (i.e. XML), underneath.

What do people think about this?

Dunc

**Soquili** · 31 May 2007, 01:40 PM

Hi Dunc,

As Charles mentioned in the thread I referenced in a previous post, SVG support will be part of the 3.2 version to be released in about a week or so.

In a post several months back Charles also said that Xara would be looking into supporting XAML.

I think it is all a matter of allowing the developers time to work and integrate new features in the most effective way possible.

I voted for better Illustrator support as the SVG support had already been mentioned in older posts.

As for HTML, I use notepad or notepad2 for syntax highlighting. I can't seem to get my head around using Xara Xtreme or Xtreme Pro to export HTML

**dflock** · 31 May 2007, 02:56 PM

Yes, I've just seen that thread and replied there, thanks!

JMark · 31 May 2007, 02:57 PM

Hey All!

I rarely see .svg files too. But I do have a cd with 7000 .svg clip arts that I would love to use...

JMark

**The Alien** · 31 May 2007, 08:03 PM

I'd vote anything except HTML export.
Webdesigners know of the WYSIWYG HTML editors where you can make beautiful pages which are - unfortunately - cluttered with junk code once you'd visit the source

As a true webdesigner, you'll want to be in control of every line of code on your page and not leave it to a program to decide on that. That's why you'd find it easier to export your drawings to .png/.jpg/.gif and write the code for the webpage yourself.

I'm afraid that HTML export in Xara would be good for simple pages and not for serious html coding :\

Options 1 and 2 are both irrelevant to me as they only speak of "import" and not export, like Dunc has said.
I don't care a lot about svg anyway these days, so I vote "blank"...

**alexbozhenov** · 01 June 2007, 01:38 AM

As we can see for now, demands are very different...

Xara become a really universal application. So, I'm afraid, it might turn into the Corel etc. monster application when you use for about 10% of its capabilities.

If somebody really claims to be a PRO designer, learn HTML, it's not hard at all. There are a lot webeditors if you can't learn HTML... Also, I'm afraid, even with better HTML exporting Xara wouldn't be a HTML-leader apps...

IMHO, Xara should stay as design tool... And there are a lot of thing which should be improved first to be a really standalone design apps and pretend to significant part of design-tools market...

**pauland** · 01 June 2007, 09:48 AM

I'm not even sure what's meant by 'html export' in this poll. I've no doubt that Xara could produce a very basic html export with little time and effort (after all the preview page is probably more complicated than outputing a picture on a web page).

I don't want html export, but just what do people expect from such a facility(that makes them vote for it)?

Paul