Xara Xtreme verison 4

**pauland** · 29 March 2008, 03:58 PM

Eye candy sells. I really don't care much about themes, but it would be nice to have an application that wouldn't look at home on Windows 3.0.. ;-)

Paul

(OK handrawn, we can have a 'luddite' option on the file menu if you wish! ;-) )

**handrawn** · 29 March 2008, 04:05 PM

I'm not arguing with you Paul

- it will sell to new people that judge by appearances, of which there are a lot

there is nothing luddite about not wanting to change the appearance for the sake of it - that is quite different to not wanting to use new methods of work

**BobInce** · 29 March 2008, 04:18 PM

Please no special themes/skins! Do it right, let Windows theme applications; programs that look and behave gratuitously differently to the rest of the desktop are not a win. The last thing I want to see is Xtreme done in mxgui, looking like the Photo Editor, yuck.

(There's also something to be said for simple, neutral icons that don't interfere or distract attention from the artwork you're working on, specifically in the case of graphics applications.)

It would be nice to have the UI widgets pick up the standard Windows UI fonts settings, though... at the moment you always get non-anti-aliased Tahoma, which is a bit ugly if you've changed the desktop to use something nicer.

BQ · 29 March 2008, 04:43 PM

Originally Posted by Charles Moir

Sorry I accidentally lapsed into Adobe's mad techno-gibberish speak there. By path clipping I mean shape intersection. i.e. the Combine Shapes set of operations is now more accurate. You no longer have the very small straight line piece at each intersection, which has annoyed some users.

(For some unfathomable reason Adobe don't call them simple plain English things like 'lines' and 'shapes', but paths, strokes and other silly stuff. Once you've gone through the Adobe product indoctrination you too can sound clever by using such terms. I should not have done, and apologize. Plain English descriptions are always better.)

Charles,
Ah, now it makes sense. Thank you for the explanation and thank you for all the new features in the new release.

**BobInce** · 29 March 2008, 04:51 PM

Originally Posted by eobet

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** · 29 March 2008, 05:38 PM

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.

**Hwy101** · 29 March 2008, 06:22 PM

Originally Posted by RedWombat

Anyone else getting this message? ...

Yup

*Say, is there What's New List around? I tried a couple search; but didn't hit any. Thanks

**jclements** · 29 March 2008, 08:15 PM

First of all, I trust the Xara programers so much I bought the upgrade BEFORE downloading it! That should be an indication of the reputation Xara has extablished for itself (at least for me) throughout the years of its development.

The 3D Tool seems work very smoothly and I used it pretty easily without looking at the help file. Also seems like the 3D attributes can be copied and pasted to other, existing 3D objects. Enough said for "Ease of Use".

Constructive Criticism/Suggestions:
1- An XML index to store User defined Bevel Attributes ("Bevel Stlyes") for resuse and the ability so save these with a template and to send the Bevel Styles to others.

2- When you click on a light, have its identity (#) displayed in the Taskbar. Currently the light# only displays in the color editor or when you drag a color onto a light.

3- Ability to LOCK THE LIGHTS to an object so, as the object is rotated, the set of 3 lights are rotated with (relative to) the object. Perhaps implement this with an icon in the info bar (icon would be a lightbulb with a lock) AND/OR interactively by holding the Alt keys when rotating the object with the 3D Tool.

4- Ability to reset a light's position to 0,0 by triple-clicking on a light.

5- An option to toggle the lights to a "Contrast/Brightess Mode" to the change only the brightness of the object's native color. [I think the only way you can can to this now is to manually assign black to each light, then adjust their greysscale value]