Xara Xtreme 4 promotional material is punishing us long-term users

[stewart33]

Hi

It seems to me that the Xara Xtreme (incl. Pro 4) movie material is punishing the one group of customers that Xara should value most highly - the long-term users.

i.e. You are forcing us to watch endless stuff that we already know about in order to see what is new.

Solution:
I suggest you make a MOVIE about all the new stuff.


Alec

P.S. And no, I am too dyslexic and too tired to *read* whatever it is you are claiming to be so great about Xara Xtreme Pro version 4 vs version 3.2, that makes it worth 49 bucks.

[steve.ledger]

To my mind, it's worth your $49 just for these 5 new features alone...

• Multi-Core CPU support
• HTML Export (WYSI exactly WYG)
• Text Repelling
• 3D Extrudes
• *NEW* Photo Tools including the best photo stitcher on the market**


**personal opinion

[handrawn]

plus:

very high quality view - my 300dpi print quality bitmaps now display clearly when reduced in size or zoom changed

freehand select - select tool + alt - simply 'draw' through the items you want to select

fix to the boolean [combine, intersect,subtract,slice] to remove inaccuracy bug

[gwpriester]

Workbook 68 - Preview Edition Xtreme 4.0

[handrawn]

recommend it - Gary's done a great job as usual

[jclements]

With regard's Stewart's initial posting.

I do wish the movie index items would be get tagged with a "I've been updated" or a "I am new" icon of some sort.

When I ran an update this weekend, some movies were downloaded (I am assuming they were updates not new). However, I had no idea what had changed.

[RedWombat]

This probably doesn't need a new thread, but how many Cores is Xtreme supporting? Multiple core support doesn't necessarily mean Quad Core.

[steve.ledger]

Xtreme supports dual and quad

From XaraXtremePro Features

Xara Xtreme has always had by far the highest performing graphics rendering engine, up to ten times faster than Adobe Illustrator. Now with new support for multi-core processors in Xara Xtreme Pro it's even faster! Tests show approximate speed gains of 40% for a dual core processor with large screen images, and greater gains with more cores.

Also in the Help file:

Support for multi-core processors for improved speed
Xara Xtreme Pro always had by far the highest performing graphics rendering engine, up to ten times faster than Adobe. Now with support for multi-core processors Xara Xtreme Pro is even faster. Tests show approximate speed gains of 40% for dual core processors with large screen images, and greater gains with more cores.

[stewart33]

Workbook 68 - Preview Edition Xtreme 4.0

Call me a lazy b*stard if you like, but I want to be *shown* all these wonderful things in a video !

(e.g. what the heck is "Text Repelling"? - no, dont answer - I'm just being lazy again - but you get my point. I dont really have the spare time and energy to find out. In truth, I am only writing this out of loyalty to Xara.)

As a web designer, IMHO, Xara does most things I need extremely well - so why would I want to read in depth about any more stuff about it?

I've skimmed the list of new stuff and it doesnt *sound* like most of it is particularly interesting... If you could SHOW me in a video (and Xara seem to be very adept at creating lots of juice videos) then you might lure me in !

Certain things irritate me but I gather that they are unlikely to be fixed.

OK for the record here are some things that have irritated me for many years. The problem is that if Xara fixed them, then previous versions of Xara would (presumably) become incompatible - hence this is probably unlikely to happen... [deep sigh]

Anyhow, here's the list.

1. Shapes changing size
It is irritating that if you increase the size of a shape's *border*, then the overall size of the shape (in pixels) changes. Increasing line thickness should take up space INSIDE the object.
(As a webmaster, in order to get best results, I need my buttons etc to be of precisely predictable pixel dimensions.)

2.
Arrow heads.
It has long irritated me that arrow heads are stuck onto the END of a line, rather than being part of it. This means that if you carefully draw a line from point A to point B, and then stick on an arrow head, the arrow head makes the line appear to end in a different place - i.e. at some point well BEYOND the end of the line!

So then you have to shrink the line so that the point of the arrow finishes at the correct place. Fine, until you subsequently decide the line thickness needs changing, because then the arrow head change size and their points move yet again.
(Also, btw, the choice of arrow head sizes is far too coarse - I end up only ever use the very smallest because then next size up is vastly larger).

But of course *if* Xara reinvented "the arrow", then we have to presume that all previous versions of Xara files would be incompatable.


3.
Flow diagrams
Xara is rubbish at them! The problem is that it doesnt have proper 'connectors' - i.e. points on shapes onto which you can attach your lines.

The point is that if you know EXACTLY what you want your flow
diagram to look like and go straight there, then yes, you can of course create some very pretty flow diagrams. But that isnt how real life works. The design PROCESS is all about trying out different flows of logic to see what works best. This involves moving shapes around all over the place, and it is totally frustrating to have to reconnect them each time.

Strictly speaking I should of course buy a flow diagram package... but I know Xara well (having used it non-stop since Xara Studio days) so why learn spend the time and money for something I only use about once a month?

Anyhow the point is that I feel that Xara are missing out on a huge market - and one that has no decent, reasonably priced competitors (as far as I can tell).

* * *

I suggest that version 5 of Xara Xtreme (Pro) needs to bite the bullet and fundamentally change the file formats to accommodate the above suggestions.

No doubt other users will have their own suggestions too. Nonetheless it is good to see Xara finally putting some energy into developing their product (that Corel very nearly killed stone dead), and maybe, just maybe they will take heed of me (/us).

Whoops better do some paid work, so that I can actually afford all these upgrades...


Ship

[ss-kalm]

Ship,

Check out the website - it has quite a good overview of some of the new features (including a few videos).

P.S. This dual login thing is confusing - Can't you decide who you are ..... ?