New Xara Home page - proper RD

[Gare]

The new look seems like a branding effort. Whenever your design a new website, you take into consideration both the chrome and the topography. I can't argue that if Magix wants to be profitable, it stands to reason that you put your products up front, but it's still not as good organization, as it is "slick".

I can't get over two things, for all the bright and shiny look:

• Because Gotham Black is used for all the headline of the products, the only realy way at a glance is to look at the pictures on the "boxes". Wouldn't it have made more sense to brand MAGIX at top and then used fonts more specific to the thing a software product does?

• I count the brand "Xara" listed exactly once on the top page, of...um xara.com.

Isn't that a lot like showing all the products Bershire Hathaway or Heinz Kraft offers while putting the company name once in the upper left corner?

Technically, it's a dandy piece of work. I think the priorities and organization need help from a developer, not a designer.

-g

[pauland]

I don't think I'm with you on this one Gary. :-(

[Gare]

Sorry, Paul—

My remarks, strictly speaking, are off-topic, given this is about Responsive Design and Xara.com. So what is to follow really isn't a defense or an argument, but merely an observation from a promotional point of view.

"Clutter awareness" is what the net thrives upon: there's nothing "break away", nothing that separates this site from the herd. You could put a different company's name at upper left and it would be the same site. Advertising isn't marketing, never has been.

Small example: if you know you have four products to sell on the top page, I'm sure responsive design can neatly lay them out vertically, but on a Desktop, I've got three large product images, and then a single one flush left below the fold. Surely there's a design solution that can accommodate both layouts equally well? Does one begin with the Desktop layout and then scale down, or vice versa, remembering that this website wasn't designed with a Xara product?

[steve.ledger]

There are some excellent Wordpress themes which are fully Responsive. Maybe we'll see the XaraXone updated for mobile devices soon?

[mwenz]

Xara's website does work nicely on my phone. Better than XU

XU on my phone has so little info displayed that I have to visit a forum to determine if there are new posts. I know I could log in and click to see new posts, but I would rather just glance at the sections from the main page. If there were more new posts, I would do the log in thing.

[pauland]

Small example: if you know you have four products to sell on the top page, I'm sure responsive design can neatly lay them out vertically, but on a Desktop, I've got three large product images, and then a single one flush left below the fold. Surely there's a design solution that can accommodate both layouts equally well?

On my screen, I can see four large product images, so I don't see the three then another below.

This is the problem - all our screen widths are different, so "fixing" this problem isn't so easy. They could do it by dynamically changing the images sizes, but that cause the images to blur, or you could dynamically substitute the images used. Similarly, where the fold is also varies between our machines.

Does one begin with the Desktop layout and then scale down, or vice verse

There's an argument for both methods. I don't think it matters.

[mwenz]

They could use the max-width property. That's what I did/do, pre-responsive and post-responsive that is.

[steve.ledger]

Xara's website does work nicely on my phone. Better than XU

Should be fine Mike, XU is fully responsive. Works fine on my Samsung phone and mate's iPad.


(It also passes the Google Mobile friendly test, for those who care about that ► https://www.google.com/webmasters/to...ara-users.info)

I know I could log in and click to see new posts, but I would rather just glance at the sections from the main page. If there were more new posts, I would do the log in thing.

What you're talking about are personal preferences rather than RD.
New posts are indicated via a red marker. But they won't be new if you aren't logged in.
Why don't you just check the 'Remember me' box and save the New Posts URL as default?
Also, it's a phpBB system, we're limited by it's limitations

[jaydear]

I'm disappointed with Pinegrow's support. I had a look at v2.0 and upon opening a copy of our home page as they suggest, I see that characters such as a copyright symbol, registered symbol or an apostrophe are all shown as <�> in the main screen and the tree, or as <a black diamond with a white ?> in the code editor. My site is made and maintained in Xara WD10 premium and displays fine on all browsers. Anyway I signed up for support and sent them a detailed query but after 11 days it remains unanswered. Just saying...

[pauland]

That's disappointing, but there have been a few Xara users who have said exactly the same thing (not that that's an excuse for pinegrow). I'd give some pinegrow forums a whirl.