Xara Designer Pro X9 Released

[gwpriester]

Welcome to TalkGraphics D.A.S. Good points. Support for larger sizes would be great.

[angelize]

After working with DP9 a bit I have to say I'm pleased about some things and disappointed about others.

For me the new columns feature will save some time but I think it would be better if we could set the column width instead of the gap width
Like others have said the new healing tool is great it combines the magic erase with the shape builder and saves a lot of time.
The new background eraser is awesome, there will always be some photos that I'll probably use the shape tool intersect method for but there will be a lot that the background eraser will take care of faster and easier.

As others have said I am disappointed that there are no new vector tools. And yet again the brushes are ignored! The lack of proper brushes that stretch along a path has been a long standing complaint on these forums!

All in all a worthwhile upgrade though.

[Nostaw]

My 2 major highlights of v9 are:

64bit - THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!!!
Font Families - finally! We're only 6 years too late but hey, thank you.

Again, I would have liked new vector drawing tools like non destructive interactive Arc and Spiral drawing tools.

I'm surprised to see the columns are destructive (instead of being non-destructive). Instead of converting, it would have been nice to keep the settings interactive at all times. Usually, this kind of stuff is non destructive in Xara, e.g. the curvature of a rectangle can be changed at any time = non destructive.

[WilliamHere]

As others have said I am disappointed that there are no new vector tools. And yet again the brushes are ignored! The lack of proper brushes that stretch along a path has been a long standing complaint on these forums!

I think better communication with the XDP users and involving more people in beta testing could have made a big difference.

I don't want to sound negative, but as a new user of XDP I was looking forward to these additions and improvements. This is why I just recently invested in this software. I am an illustrator and cartoonist.
I wonder why these drawing improvements were ignored? Isn't XDP, for the most part, a vector drawing tool? Shouldn't these drawing tool improvements be a priority?
I would love to see someone from the Xara company address this here so that we can understand their vision for XDP?
Would they get on this forum and talk about this?

[slavelle]

To add something to the Free Adobe CS2 thing...

You CAN get this directly from Adobe (not just some snapfish-y download), including the software and the keys, but the Adobe verbiage basically says that it is for legit customers with real purchase history of the product - still not supported anymore but not just for "free download for all". You also need an Adobe ID to login to download these and "accept" the verbiage (though the account is easy to sign up for):

Adobe has disabled the activation server for CS2 products, including Acrobat 7, because of a technical issue. These products were released more than seven years ago, do not run on many modern operating systems, and are no longer supported.

Adobe strongly advises against running unsupported and outdated software. The serial numbers provided as a part of the download may only be used by customers who legitimately purchased CS2 or Acrobat 7 and need to maintain their current use of these products.

Hope this helps to clarify without inflaming.

[David Strover]

Just to stick my tuppence worth in I would have to say that Xara have 'dropped one' a bit here. Just by the few reactions on here, and I appreciate that they are only a small snapshot, there does seem to be more of a feeling of discontent with this update.

Certainly I cannot remember such a big and negative reaction to an update/new release since I have been using Xara.

For the record I have downloaded the trial and having used it for my work in the last couple of days I cannot really see any reason for me to upgrade. Primarily I always thought this particular product was a more affordable version of Adobe Illustrator (certainly the reason I originally bought it) so, for me, the upgrade operates in the same style as the last version.

I don't really want to manipulate too many photos and what I do can be done in the 'old' version so the £79.99 stays in my bank account.

I am not angry or upset or any of these extreme reactions, I'm just underwhelmed and will carry on as normal.

It will be interesting to see what happens next summer - if the next version goes toward the more Adobe Photoshop direction we know where Magix is taking the product.

All is my opinion of course - other opinions are available!

[tovokas]

To be perfectly honest, as a long-time customer, I was going to upgrade regardless unless the new version introduced a host of show-stopping bugs. No issues there!

The 64 bit version is awesome. I've already noticed lots less strangeness with my extremely large documents. The plug-in issue is problematic. I understand not supporting 32-bit plugins, but not supporting 3rd party 64 bit plugs (if that's actually the case) is not a good thing.

Like others, I agree that there doesn't seem be be much attention being paid to what long-time users are asking for. The new features are fun in a 'that's cool' sort of way, but obviously the focus seems to be on wow-factor 'bullet point' additions for casual users as opposed to what those of us in the trenches who use the program for hours every day are looking for. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure many of the updates will prove useful, they're just not what we asked for. Many of the 'quiet' behind-the-scene things like smarter dialog boxes, better ftp support, robust drawing tools, etc. seem to be overlooked upgrade after upgrade. And at some point, the 'we're a small company' line wears a bit thing when new features are piled on while important core functionality is overlooked.

I believe this growing sense of a lack of connection between the Xara developers and their core users is troubling. We obviously love Xara, but at some point you look at the overall direction and are forced to do some pondering. It won't take much to convince me that Xara is still committed to it's vector-slinging core, but I need to see something. Please don't make me spend more time in Illustrator.

[qmr]

Downloaded the designer pro v9 trial and discovered I can remove the right edge galleries, found I can also remove them from previous version so there you go. Never been much good at reading instructions.

Touch on my Surface Pro is good, at first glance much the same as the previous version which is already good. I only use Xara for drawing which means I use it a lot and the sketch button for shape builder and eraser in prev version seems to be missing on the v9 upgrade or am I missing something? Only see it there for pen tool. Hope it's not dropped as I use it a lot. Xara is already great on this tablet and I'll download the non-pro trial next to try as I don't use a lot of the features in the pro version. I was hoping to see the new illustrator vector export format as adobe seem to be moving away from ai but I transfer drawings to illustrator for some of my work

Q

[tonylondon]

For me the new columns feature will save some time but I think it would be better if we could set the column width instead of the gap width

To me, Xara's method for the columns seems intuitive. Wouldn't want to specify the column width but am concerned to get the gutters right. Guess you can't please everybody!

[Boy]

The splash screen topic of another thread made me compare the one for DPX with the one for DPX9. I noticed something that might be quite telling with regards to the subject of this thread, " X9 - no new drawing tools". Version 8 has five icons representing its main functions (although I am confused as to what the right and the third to the right ones are really representing) but version 9 only four. Guess which one is missing.

I hope that I am reading too much into it and hope that the drawing tools will get more attention in the next version.