Xara Xtreme 6

[amoore]

Yup

[zumwalt]

I checked back on my invoices and Pro v.5 was released about 3 months after web designer.

[Albacore]

Xara has to concentrate on vectors if it wants to be used by professionals, take the example of Illy and that is where the money and the numbers for sales are.
Why is it used by so many print based companies:-
Because it produces a quality PDF,
Consistent colour in both RGB and CMYK.
It has got a good Text engine
Can it be used to produce small brochures - Yes
Has it got enough vector tools - probably too many
Can it integrate with other applications easily - Yes all that you have to do is look at its export list.
Can it be used by many different types of designers easily - yes for web to high end mags including cartoonists.

Where does Xara stand in the market place at the moment? Well it has a niche market for home user that want to use their own printer or even do the occasional bigger jobs. Some might say it is easy to make simple websites with the tools available. Here I would agree at the moment but wait a couple of years and I think that the way CMS is developing then even this will be over taken as it is nearly drag and drop now.

Now you are going to say why is a moderator saying all of these things against Xara and why do you still use Xara. Well I am comfortable with it firstly and it is so easy for people to pick up. Having said all that and after now working with Illy over the last really 8 years I am now just as comfortable with that. I used to use Xara in my day job for laying everything out as I was much quicker than my collogues in my vector work and then bringing it across into Illy for the final part like adjusting the colour and other small jobs. In my current work I produces literature for the NHS from local newsletter to national handouts and info sheets and I find now I am doing more and more with Illy. I am not saying that I still don't use Xara for still some of my work but is is less now than it was.

Now that was a rant and I apologise as this is a request topic for the next version of XPro. What that I want to see is certainly the brushes sorted and a few more usable vector tools so that I will use Xara as my first tool.

[covoxer]

I thought it's obvious but I see it's not...

We are not going to directly compete with Adobe in any foreseeable future. This is impossible. Simple like that. So there is no point to seriously compare Illustrator to Xtreme.

Yes we have a niche. And it's good because that gives us sales. Developing Illustrator's direct competitor we would lose this niche and would have to compete for sales with Adobe and Corel. I don't believe anyone of you would really like this blaze of glory unavoidably followed by the quick and disgraceful demise.

Please be a little bit more serious.

Thank you for understanding.

[dv986]

I personally don't mind if Xara has less features than Illustrator - it does practically everything I need it to.

However, there are certain details that I believe should be looked into.

I'm hoping for a change mostly in things considering precision, like

- being able to choose the position of the vector outline (inside, outside, or split half-half as it is right now). Split version is making a big mess for me, mostly when I need to position things precisely and have the exact dimensions to a pixel

- an option to disable subpixel values

- initial start of shape creation from an exact pixel (non-subpixel) position

- roundness of corners definable in pixels by radius or diameter

Also, it would be nice if feathering could be applied in larger values.

[masque]

Xtreme is a niche product and will certainly never compete with Illustrator/Photoshop as they have a pretty big niche, which consists of the vast majority of the professional market for themselves already.
If Xara’s niche coincides with your own niche then great. With me it does. I suppose to some extent I’ve carved my particular niche to fit what I can do in Xtreme.
Having said that I would obviously like to see Xtreme develop with new and improved vector tools, yes those brushes need work if they are ever going to be useful to brush users.
But also, and heres the bit where some will slap their forehead and throw themselves back in their chair (note: make sure you’re not on a stool), it would be great if the bitmap tools were enlarged upon. I’d love a dodge and burn tool to selectively work on areas of an image and a clone tool for those times when it’s hard to cut out areas and replace them.
The Web tools are already progressing better than I thought they would and I hope the DTP side of things will also grow in strength, which if WD6 is anything to go by it looks as though they will.
I know the argument is that there are already applications that can be used for all these things, but it would be so much better if they were all in one place and so to hand instantly rather than mucking about exporting this and importing that. Just do what you need to, shut it off and go and read a book in the time you’ve saved.
That’s what I think my niche product would be anyway.
Derek

[MarkMyWords]

Of course Xtreme should not try to compete directly with Illy, for all the reasons given and also that if we wanted illustrator we would use that. I'm sure many use both.

On the same basis Xtreme should be wary of extending bitmap tools too much. Direct competition with Photoshop would be just as suicidal. Besides, Xtreme can emulate airbrushes, with various modes, similar to multiply, screen, desaturate/saturate, etc. Actual bitmap brushes would be a retrograde step.

The problem, for me, is that Xtreme is marketed as vector illustration software, look at the galleries and the movies. The web/design stuff is tacked on in the promotional material, not sold as the core purpose of the program.

This keeps my hopes alive, seemingly false hopes, that the focus will return to vector tools. Xtreme seems to be focusing more and more on design, especially web design. Which would be fine, if that was what it was marketed as.

From my point of view, I am not interested in "design" tools per se, I rarely, if ever use shadow, bevel, contour, extrude(3D), live effects, animation, web or bitmap tools. It doesn't bother me that they are there, I can easily ignore them, but, as an illustrator, my heart falls each time there is an upgrade and it avoids any new thinking on the vector functions. Sure, I appreciate workflow improvements like the object gallery (or a macro function) but, from my point of view, as an illustrator, Xtreme has barely changed for many years.

That is not to say this is a terrible thing, just that I, personally, see little point in upgrading when I get little or no benefit. I run a business, I try to only buy what I need, and I don't need any of the new "features" Xtreme has offered for some time.

Then again, I may be part of a very small and shrinking niche market.

[Luciano]

Albacore,
I agree 100% with you. At present I cannot export correctly a pdf with a duotone picture with spot colours, or if a shadow is cast over CMYK filled shape I get a rectangle with RGB colours.
I developed workarounds to solve this problems, but if they worked correctly I am sure they would attract more professionals.

[jwhitham]

I for one am very happy with the direction Xara is taking, but maybe I'm atypical.

When I started using Xara I was around 75% designer/illustrator and 25% developer. By five years ago those proportions had reversed and Xara had been been reduced to a tool I used to sketch out UI's, or make fancy buttons.

As speed increases over LAN and WAN, plus the advent of CSS2 and AJAX, have eroded the advantages of developing a native desktop application over a web application, I've found myself using Xtreme almost as a RAD for web applications.

Looking at the improvements added to WD6 I can imagine Xtreme, by the next version, becoming something like Delphi4PHP should have been, but wasn't.

[Odat]

I'm pretty happy with XPro 5 currently, feature and speed wise. For all of my vector art/photo manipulation/GUI mock-up type needs, it's pretty much all I need or use. Occasionally I slip into an older version of PSP for some photo work or scanning, but that's about it and even that is pretty rare.

That being said, I'm personally not interested at all in WYSIWYG web design stuff, not now and not in the past. Doubly so for something that generates HTML that doesn't flow properly. And before anyone jumps down my throat, I have no problem with it working that way in Xara, it's a great way to design something and literally see exactly what you designed, it's just not something I want or need.

So while I'm waiting with quite some anticipation for a new version to be released, if it's just more of "here's that stuff we put into the latest version of Web Designer" without any significant gains in other areas I think it will be the first time since the 2.0 days that it's not just an automatic upgrade for me.