Xara Designer Pro X10 Released

[jon404]

Mike W -- surprised by your note about the crop marks, I looked in the Help file and found, under Exporting PDF files > Commercial printing (PDF/X, 300 DPI images)... "Crop and printer's marks are included if these are switched on in the Print Options dialog in Xara Designer Pro X10." Any help? Not sure what I'm talking about here, since I haven't done any spot color work for years now. Am just assuming that DPX would burp out a set of PDFs, one for each color, all with your reg marks, if they were on the artboard?

[KultiVator]

Yes - I too am having to ponder this now. Interactive SVG-based content is where I need to be heading - really hoped Xara were on the same wavelength, as it would seem to be a natural fit with the (seemingly forgotten) vector drawing foundations that so many of us rely upon.

As an HTML5 web developer, what I'm missing is good SVG support. I don't really want to, but - for today's use cases - I may have to: switch to Illustrator

[gwpriester]

Mike - Per Jon's comment, see attached.

Kate - Thanks for your response. The one really positive thing that almost all of these posts express is how much we all love the product. The message, if I might be so bold as to speak for the members who have posted here is get back to the basics. Especially in the case of Designer Pro. Give us professional features to augment the fine tools and features that are already there.

[KultiVator]

But there's a growing need for a Xara-like tool that can output interactive SVG-based web content - with proper vector-shaped (e.g. not just rectangular) hotspot zones that trigger actions/popup layers/sounds/etc - using the increased functionality present in HTML5.

Seems bizarre that Xara is at it's core a vector-based package, yet cannot adequately support SVG output within HTML5 when all of the popular modern web browsers can render this quite comfortably. This seems like a major disconnect between Xara's own capabilities and emerging opportunities to carve out a valuable and unique solution that would instantly appeal to a wide section of Xara's customer-base.

As a designer, I don't want to have to draw in one package, then write code (e.g. using something like Adobe 'SNAP') to make it interactive, then possibly another package to produce the finished web page. Instead, I continue to hope that Xara will seize the opportunities that are out there today - to excel again and not become a dumbed-down competitor for the 'Serif WebPlus' type of user (Serif products have their place - and it shouldn't be Xara's aspiration to emulate Serif's approach).

I will download the trial, if only to see if the pop-up layers issues (e.g. locking layers) have been progressed as hinted at by Rob in Xara support.

Come on folks there is no need to feel hurt. Just look at the threads here when you hit What's New most days, 2/3 are web questions. Now if you were a small software company what would you do, pander to a small but loyal group of sketchers or keep the people who are buying your software?

[jon404]

KultiVator-- DPX 10 will certainly let you make irregularly shaped hotspots, that you can set to go to ther locations, or to show popup layers, all that. Very easy and fast to do, without writing one bit of code. Just one thing -- when you start, make sure you make a new web page, instead of a new regular drawing. Then, when you right- click on that hotspot you drew (and made transparent), you can go to Web Properties and it lets you choose a from a bunch of different actions. Easy. As for HTML 5, I'm sure the code DPX 10 produces is HTML 5 compatible -- or, maybe putting it another way, anything you cook up will display properly in all the browsers.

On the other hand, if you are thinking of using HTML 5 for animation, good luck. Not ready for prime time. But check out Videoscribe... it might get you by if you can't use Flash...
l

[mwenz]

Mike W -- surprised by your note about the crop marks...Am just assuming that DPX would burp out a set of PDFs, one for each color, all with your reg marks, if they were on the artboard?

Mike - Per Jon's comment, see attached.

Thank you both for your responses. It isn't actually about what I wrote, though Jon came closest with the bolded/italicized part of his quote above.



Is what I am talking about. In Illustrator, InDesign, QuarkXpress, PagePlus, DrawPlus, CorelDraw, etc., etc., those reg targets will be on all plates. This is because of using a color named Registration. Though one can also set an object(s) to also print on all plates. And I mean all plates, like Pantone plates.

So how does XDP do? It doesn't put those reg targets on Spot plates. To be fair, the issue is "Print" on all plates. And it does put those reg targets on all plates when printing separations to PDF, but only when the print to PDF is set to separations and not a composite print that does keep the spots separate.

There is no facility to have those reg targets hit the PDF on ALL plates when using the Export to PDF function, which every other application I mention does. See below...no reg targets on the spot plates. XDP needs to do this for both screen printing and packaging design. And while those are two industries I am involved with (more screen printing than packaging design) I suspect there are other industries this applies to. Heck, even having N-up business cards on a single sheet using Pantone colors needs this.




Mike

[csehz]

into the Photo looks plug in and it actually is a useful addition to the program.

Yesterday I also saw like that but the general experience since then is that this plug in makes the XDPX10 slow and sometimes even bringing such message



Generally who accustomed to the speed of Xara it is rather painful to wait for its start. Hard to say anything without emotions, what can imagine there was some business decision to put this to the program but technically became a huge challenge for the programmers to balance it into relatively stable state. Because currently not reproducably stable that is sure

[feklee]

Just noticed that there is a new "feature" in the installer:

Not amused…

[masque]

Kate
Thanks for the clarification and reassurance that XDpro will not be left to waste away.
I look forward with a little more hope and expectation to future releases.
Derek

[feklee]

But there's a growing need for a Xara-like tool that can output interactive SVG-based web content

Spot on! With good SVG support, Xara could be a useful tool for creating banner ads - just one example.

The main problem, however, is not lack of features. It's bad quality of Xara generated SVG. Years ago I reported a critical SVG export bug with Xara Designer Pro 7. It still has not been fixed! This means that I cannot use Xara to create content for my own Prezi like presentation tool: pres/v/g (source)

As I said before, Xara seems stuck in the 90s. Others are ahead, actually providing useful features for today's web designer. Illustrator offers great SVG support, dating back to the days that Adobe was competing with Macromedia's Flash. Inkscape is built all around SVG. Also, there is Google's Web Designer which I still have to try. It's all a pity because for vector drawing I feel most comfortable with Xara. Over the past weeks I was checking xara.com almost daily, eagerly looking forward to version X10, just to be disappointed in the end.