What do you like best about Xara Designer Pro X?

[chris-dickman]

Gary, thanks, actually comments about favorite features in the new version, or specific features in all versions, or simply overall statements about why Xara is the tool of choice, would be fine. The idea is to provide a broad portrait, from a user perspective. And this can be in contrast with competing products or not. As long as comments are grounded in personal usage and so transcend a marketing perspective. We know why we think Xara is great -- but not enough other members of the graphic and design community do. I'd like to encourage them to give the trial version a spin, and user comments are very powerful in this regard. So, thanks to all for your commments.

Chris

Thanks, Gary.

I think Chris Dickman would be most appreciative if you pointed out how useful you find a new feature specific to this version, to help him differentiate in his review between the latest rev and previous versions.

For example:

Xara has always been terrific for graphics-rich short desktop publishing documents, but now with Paragraph Styles, XDP X is a hands-down winner at my shop for easily and quickly providing text consistency between pages. Styles are as easy to define as they are to use.

..or something like this. Probably less "sell-y".

My Best,

Gary

[Karateed]

I'm a hobbyist with Xara but my use of it came early on with Webstyle....I tinkered with that and found it easy at first to create webdesigns. I've been purchasing Xara since Xtreme because of ease of use. My graphic side got 'bugged' when tutorials offered on this site and others which proved I could use Xara easily to do different kinds of drawings.....ease of use of it's functions is what attracted me....I've built a few web pages, mostly for my wife, again ease of use and quick creation of said websites.

[KultiVator]

I love the speed of use and the fact that you can wade into Xara at your own pace... e.g. use just the toolbars initially, until you feel confident enough to start using the many UI tricks and keyboard shortcuts to achieve more drawing in less time.

It's not just that Xara is fast - it also gives more and better feedback as you manipulate your images and objects - all in real-time (other than some of the more demanding Photoshop plug-ins - which are not really the core of what Xara is about, so this does not detract in any way from the speed and convenience of the overall design workflow).

The text handling tools have matured well over the past couple of years - now supporting some really useful capabilities, including advanced layouts, multi-tiered bullets / lists / numbering, automatic flow between 'linked' text panels, embeddable graphics that remain anchored at a specific position in a paragraph even as your text continues to evolve.

Xara really is a one-stop shop for almost every graphical need, from fine art, to vector illustration, to data visualisation, to photo manipulation, newsletter construction, application UI wire-framing and web design.

Topping it all off, Xara is great fun to use and any time I fire it up it becomes the highlight of my working day!

[Gare]

What attracts me the most to Xara Designer Pro X isn’t a feature or a new tool, but instead the way everything works together in this latest iteration. I feel as though a level of maturity has arrived with this version. Previous versions introduced some bitmap editing features here, and a desktop publishing feature there—the Xara Group can make the claim that you don’t need a suite of applications for intermediate to advanced tasks anymore—the goods are right here in one single integrated interface.

It’s not “a little of this and a little of that”; the tools are there for doing what many graphics professionals need, and they’re simple and straightforward enough for a novice to get down to productivity almost immediately.

It’s a tidy little Triple Threat. You have features for basic image retouching, a desktop publishing environment that’s the friendliest I’ve ever experienced, and a complement of drawing tools that almost explain themselves. If you want to get into visual communications today, you might run out of ideas before you run out of features in Xara Designer Pro X.



-g

[masque]

I earn my living using Xara for 95% of all I do. I spend all day producing work for product labelling, signage, web sites and web graphics. I use it for vector illustration as well as photo manipulation and if I can't produce something with Xara Designer I usually use Xara Designer to find a way around and do it anyway.
It's my living as well as my interest that I turn to Xara to help me with. If they had computers on desert islands this is the software I'd take along with my 8 mp3s.
Derek

[MarcT]

Hi,

It shows in Xara that a lot of attention was focused on core interaction first instead of adding endless gadgets on loose ground.
I find it easier to do more with less complicated tools.

Some features and innovations that set apart Xara from other vector programs and make my life easier:

• General responsiveness and speed.
• Consistency across tools and command behavior.
• Most tools have on-screen live controls in the graphic window.

• SpaceBar toggle of last tool used <-> selection tool.
• Right click on swatches to set line color.
• Right-click + Drag to copy objects

• Large flexibility of keyboard assignments

• Select objects inside fence.
• Force fence selection without selecting what's directly under the cursor (shift+drag).
• Select inside groups, cycle between sub-groups.

• Name Gallery is definitely one of the most powerful selection method I've seen

• Selecting based on visibility instead of bounding box or stacking order.

• Stacking order changes based on whats "touching" the objects instead of considering every single object in the drawing.

• Amazing transparency tool.
• Transparency that can be assigned to a group, sub-group, sub-sub-group, etc..

• Direct bitmap linking to bitmap editor.
• Contone bitmap combined with the profile editor is incredibly flexible.

These are the major reasons I prefer Xara, I surely missed a couple and there is a lot of other small details that would make this list very long.

The latest additions adds very much in functionality, especially the eraser and live copies.

Marc

[MarcT]

I almost forgot another quite important:

• It's not possible to select point of unselected objects.

This seems trivial but it's a major irritation in other software.