What's New?

**StevenWWinters** · 28 February 2008, 07:15 PM

Let the speculation begin...

http://www.xara.com/news/february08/

"In this month's edition of the Outsider:
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Look out next month for some Xtremely interesting news about new versions.... "

**gwpriester** · 28 February 2008, 11:18 PM

Sounds pretty exciting.

**pauland** · 28 February 2008, 11:57 PM

Err.. one thing I can anticipate - a load of complaints about paying up for another upgrade..

..maybe I'm just a cynic.

**DanDaBear** · 29 February 2008, 02:39 AM

Never mind paying for another upgrade!

I just got Xara3D 6 and now they're practically giving away X3D 5!

**pauland** · 29 February 2008, 02:55 AM

They really want the upgrade money from X3D 5 to the next version..

**ss-kalm** · 29 February 2008, 03:17 AM

Originally Posted by pauland

Err.. one thing I can anticipate - a load of complaints about paying up for another upgrade....maybe I'm just a cynic.

That depends on what's in the upgrade, and how much they want for it! I do however believe that an upgrade from 3.2.4 to whatever it is should only be a nominal cost! The users have already spent money on the programme. It would be a prudent move on Xara's behalf to ensure that it's not too expensive to keep using the latest version. There are already a lot of people who didn't upgrade to 3.2. Personally I believe that if the pricing is right for upgrades from 3.2, and maybe a little more for upgrades from 3.0 etc. it would benefit Xara if it was cost effective for all users to be using the latest version. If they only got $20 from every current user, they would still be making more money than if only 1 in 5 of the current users decided to upgrade.

**raynerj1** · 29 February 2008, 04:02 AM

when Charles announced 3.2 he said it was only a minor upgrade. The next release should be a major release... Although the best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry.

I have supported xara and continue to support xara to the best of my abilites... it is fine software and it is 1000 times better than the alternative. Adobe or Microsux to be specific.

**Odat** · 29 February 2008, 05:51 PM

For me personally I think that I won't be upgrading unless there are some seriously cool new features that will enhance my workflow in some way. Not to say anything bad about that last (minor) release, but I've been picking up new software (and yesterday a new computer) a lot lately, so I need to reign in on my toys a bit here.

As to what could be new? There are so many suggestions that people have made that would make great new tools that the mind really boggle and reels at all of the possibilities. After some careful thought (ok, maybe semi-careful), I would place the following features as what I'd really love to see in a new version:

The ability to "lock" a shape/group so that it cannot be moved. I do a lot of mock-ups of GUI's and whatnot and this would be invaluable.
In place of #1, which is possible by putting the objects you want to lock on a layer and then locking the layer, better layer support (e.g. hierarchical, click-to-rename).
New alignment options for selecting two or more shapes and getting them to arrange theselves so that they're touching each other on the sides. Again, when doing mock-ups this comes in very handy to quickly get things lined up the way you want.
An extrude tool like Corel-Draw would be nice, but my needs for that sort of thing are few and far between.

That's really about it. #1 and #3 are lifted directly from Microsoft Image Composer, which I found exceedingly useful for layout purposes. Unfortunately it severely lacked in the area of actually building the components that you're laying out and in importing them in from other applications, making things a bit more of a chore than they would otherwise need to be.

**ss-kalm** · 29 February 2008, 06:12 PM

Originally Posted by Odat

In place of #1, which is possible by putting the objects you want to lock on a layer and then locking the layer, better layer support (e.g. hierarchical, click-to-rename

Not sure what is too much different than we already have here - The layers have a hierarchy and you can rearrange them by clicking and dragging to new places - and you can double click to rename. What's so different? I'm not being facetious, I may be missing something.

**Odat** · 29 February 2008, 06:33 PM

I was a bit unclear with that one, actually. No worries!

Currently to rename you double click and then a dialog appears. It would be handy if double clicking changed the layer name into an edit box so you could rename in place. It's not that big of a deal but if you work with a lot of layers, the time saved can add up. I don't think this is that big of a deal to most people, however.

What I meant by hierarchical layers is being able to have layers be children of other layers. It's like looking at a folder list in a file manager. If you use a lot of layers you can group associated layers together to make them easier to work with in the layer list, which makes it easier to navigate your drawing. You could also perform operations on the parent that also applies to all of it's children, like say "Hide" or "Lock".