Xara Xtreme verison 4

[Odat]

Looking good! I'm using the power of remote desktop to download it and play around a bit right now (don't tell my boss . Looks like there are some interesting new things going on here. Interestingly just recently the ability to flow text around an object has become important in a way it wasn't before, so talk about a timely upgrade.

How long are these "introductory" upgrade prices going to remain in effect, just out of curiosity?

[gottwavo]

Just unbelievable good ...

[James Loudon]

I upgraded as soon as I saw the announcement. I didnt even try it before - just splurged out. My reasons were:
better support for multi CPU rigs ( I have been running dual Xeon for years and waiting for software to catch up) and the new text tools. Finally, font preview! And the interactive font size adjustment - there are so many times I could have used that in the past. Just excellent!
New colour picker too - great.
The integrated photo properties panel is good and fast and welcome.
I'll never use the HTML features, and probably not the 3D but hey, they seem to take up no overhead so I have no problem with bloat.
Overall the app seems more responsive, and it certainly loads faster.
Money well spent - thanks Charles and co.

[behzad]

Just wondering if it will be backward compatible with previous version?

[RTK]

Xara is now multi-threaded! 2 or 4 cores? Have fun...

Risto

[eobet]

So that's that, then.

Xara, as a vector editing application is dead.

What exists now is a messy bloatware of photo and DTP mish-mash.

Good thing InkScape is on the move and there's a few new object based editors on OS X I haven't tried out yet...

[BobInce]

Xara, as a vector editing application is dead.

Hyperbole much?

What exists now is a messy bloatware of photo and DTP mish-mash.

I don't agree.

The inline photo tools are much quicker and neater than the external XPE solution. For web graphics I need to deal with bitmaps a lot and I'm glad the tools are there to do it. Keeping my whole workflow within a single non-destructive editor instead of having to import/export/keep-separate-copies for even the simplest editing operations is a win. (I do kind of think it's a little odd how so much of the photo tool and the live effects tool are kind of the same; there must be a way to integrate them.)

The text area stuff I was initially sceptical about, but I've come to use it a fair bit and it fits well with Xtreme's other tools. I couldn't complain after seeing the live-dragging on the repel-text feature; this is a classic Xara fast'n'smooth feature.

I do agree with you that incorporating the Panorama and Xara 3D tools doesn't really fit well with Xtreme's core feature set. (There might be more of a case for X3D if you could convert it to editable shapes, or if a simple 2D extrude were also available.)

But OTOH it doesn't cost us anything (Xara4 is not noticeably slower than before; you can always drag the 3D tool off the toolbar), and presumably didn't take much time to copy in from existing code.

Good thing InkScape is on the move

cough. I'd love an open source vector package but, you know, let me know if that ever gets at all usable...

[Xhris]

I don't see any evidence of bloatware. In fact, I see clear and obvious evidence of the exact opposite; the integration of XPE directly into Xara provides speed and design advantages, and removes bloat. I'm guessing XPE will likely be dropped in the future now that most of it's features are directly integrated into Xara, and maybe the same could happen for the Magix pixel editing application. Xara is a graphics application, not solely a vector drawing program; it's vector approach is the main part of it, simply because vector and object orientation is the superset of bitmap handling. Admittedly, Xara currently lacks direct pixel editing functionality, but that is still available through the Magix pixel editing application. Xara has always been capable of handling bitmaps and vectors right from the start, and this version provides additional, slick support for both image types.

Xara has also always had an orientation toward screen graphics for the web; the new website design feature is further support for that area. Adding an html export option in the dropdown list hardly qualifies as bloatware either. Perhaps people have only subconsciously noticed: Xara's interface has hardly changed at all--even after all these additions. This is an example of good design; users aren't thrown by a completely and unnecessarily revamped interface that's already perfectly good, which would generate discomfort in having to re-orientate to use it. There is also no speed reduction at all in the new version, further evidence of attention to design, and avoidance of bloat-effects (in fact it's considerably faster with multi-core support--feathering for example is clearly faster (which makes me wonder why the 50 pix limit is still in there)).

3D extrusion is a basic vector graphics offering (which AI and CD also offers, albeit inferiorly). Similarly with text wrapping; Xara's approach is considerably slicker and more efficient (although repelling isn't a complete substitute for shaped text containers, but for most cases it is).

In summary, quite a few of the new additions by Xara are either a) available in other competing software but done much better in Xara, or b) replacing old functionality to reduce bloat and directly integrate functionality into Xtreme, giving obvious speed and design advantages. Xara shows good evidence of clear thinking and progression to an established and blatantly apparent goal--the creation of slick, intuitive, very fast and feature rich graphics software.

While it's unfair to compare Inkscape with Xara due to the fact that one is proprietary and one is open source, I hardly think Inkscape's development or new feature set is anything near as good and intelligently thought out as Xara's. Inkscape's updates are less significant, and the tools are somewhat half-assed (e.g. 3D box tool...?), buggy, smack of bloat, and pretty badly implemented (relatively) in terms of usability and slickness (but justification of that is another thread entirely). Inkscape, while good, appears to me to be what Xara would become like if taken out of the hands of Xara--a relatively poorly designed mess.

[eobet]

[*]Improved, more accurate path clipping

Crap, I missed that one!

Is it possible to get this feature without the bloat?

Will there be a Xara 4 Pro LITE or something?

Again, Xara may be able to take on Illustrator, but trying to go after InDesign and Photoshop (and, what? SketchUp and Maya now with the 3D too?) as the same time is simply stupid! "You can't satisfy everybody" goes the saying, but isn't that exactly what they're trying to do?

[pauland]

Crap, I missed that one!

Is it possible to get this feature without the bloat?

Will there be a Xara 4 Pro LITE or something?

Again, Xara may be able to take on Illustrator, but trying to go after InDesign and Photoshop (and, what? SketchUp and Maya now with the 3D too?) as the same time is simply stupid! "You can't satisfy everybody" goes the saying, but isn't that exactly what they're trying to do?

Xara sits in a difficult place. It's ease of use is favoured by professionals and hobbyists alike. It's missing some features that professionals want and it's had a patchy ride in terms of interoperability with it's established professional rivals (mainly due to import export issues). The non-professionals are particularly price sensitive and happy to have as much 'bang for the buck' as possible via the 'one stop shop'. Now being owned by Magix, the product seems to be embracing the middle ground and still pushing forward features for professional users.

I think the product still has the great features we all love - speed and ease of use in an uncluttered interface. The bloat (as you call it) can easily be ignored.

I suspect (though I don't know) that the enhancements in the middle ground have been as important to Xtreme sales as the more professional features, so in that sense the 'bloat' is helping to finance development of more professional features too.

The DTP, photo editing and web page features that have been incorporated into Xtreme are not a sign that Xara is attempting to make inroads on the inDesign/Photoshop/Dreamweaver markets - it's simply a recognition that the middle ground of Xtreme users has a need for such features at a fairly basic level. The 3D features come from Xara 3D and while I may never use them, plenty do. The 3D is hardly attempting to be in competition to full-blown 3D software.

None of us are imagining that Xtreme is really competing directly with Adobe (except as a vector package), but even those (professionals especially) with access to lots of Adobe software will still use Xtreme as a quick filler for jobs that might otherwise have been done with Adobes larger offerings, but which are now easily within Xtremes grasp.

Xtreme is now fitting into a working pipeline better than ever.

Comparing the development effort we have seen in very recent times compared to what we saw previously, I can only say that the strategy must be paying off. While none of us are going to use every feature of Xtreme, just looking at the forums on talkgraphics we can see that the new features and bug fixes are getting a very welcome reception. Development is getting better and faster.

Good job Charles & Co (but where are those nested layers?).

Paul