Just Released: A New Version of Web Designer

[mwenz]

Cloud, just a little correction re "the vast majority" upgrading to CC. They haven't. When Adobe switched to pure subscription (they offered both subscription and perpetual licences when CS6 and CC6 arrived), there were over 12 million perpetual licencees. CC has no where near that number these several years hence.

[Acorn]

My choice the bootstrap studio.
Drag'n'drop components. Full responsive sites with a clean and valid HTML/CSS code with HTML5 semantic.
I would have wished that Xara chose a similar strategy for development a new generation of software. I see here an inexhaustible potential.

Yes, Bootstrap Studio is one of a breed of website creation utilities but it is in a different market to Xara.

XWD is suitable for those who can not write HTML. The program is able to create quite good modern landing pages and small static sites. For professional use is unsuitable. At least I do not see how it can be used.

Well, I can hand-code HTML, CSS and JavaScript with nothing more that Notepad. For professional use, Notepad is unsuitable. At least I do not see how it can be used. A Xara application or Notepad are simply tools. Any tool requires properhandling to get the best from it.

Something for Xara to note:

Bootstrap Studio is a desktop application that runs on Windows (7+), Linux and OS X (10.8+). There are no monthly payments, usage limits or ongoing fees. You buy it once and own it forever.

Bootstrap Studio - Can be installed on up to 3 computers.
1 Year of Free Updates - You will receive new features and improvements.

Compare that to the 365 Day Update Guarantee.

... and all for $25.

Acorn

[Cloud]

I can only speak for myself and other designers and people in the print and marketing businesses I know and the majority of those have gone the subscription route, this is in the commercial print, graphic design and marketing industries, of course there will be an amount who do not use adobe products for professional purposes who have not got a subscription. Just go to any forum or marketplace and you'll see that from employees to freelancers to students who are signed up with creative cloud.

All professional businesses have gone the subscription route, because they have to, can you imagine being a commercial printer and not having the latest indesign or acrobat pro?

[mwenz]

My point, Cloud, is not all persons whom had perpetual licenses switched to CC. For instance, only a fwe of my peers whom I have dealings with have a subscription or only rent month to month as needed.

Since CC, I have only had a handful of files come my way that were CC ID, AI or PS files. For those I rented as needed. Well, I had CC free for a couple years as a recognized Adobe Professional and it was supplied by Adobe to me. In the couple years I had it for free, one file was handed off to me that I used it for. Since then, two others have come to me.

Am I a professional? Are those peers I mentioned professionals? Of course print establishments should be renting if needed, and many/most perhaps do. I know the few large (millions of impressions yearly) print establishments I generally deal with do. But a few I have worked with do not. Yet I still consider those establishments professional. When it comes right down to it, I have never supplied original files to any print service, here in the USA, in Europe, India or China. Never. I started in 1989.

Commercial printers make up a small portion of Adobe's business. The bulk of users are what I call creative professionals, be it layout, design, ad agencies, or what have you. Next are the governmental and institutional users. But print service providers are the minority due to shear numbers of the other categories.

The majority of the questions on Adobe's forums for the print/design oriented software are not CC-oriented. Why? It is purely a numbers game. There are over a hundred thousand questions asked on those forums every day. Of those, I would have to look at the current statistics that would be for the ID and perhaps AI forums (and I can if you would like), but there are quite a few. The majority are not CC users.

And really, there is no need. Print-centric features in ID, for instance, have not substantially changed since CS4 to CS5.5. In the very latest update to CC, they have thrown a few true bones at ID, but most of the stuff that has been added is fluff, stupid stuff. There has been no reall compelling reasons for the individual and small firm designers to go the subscription route.

My last (really) large ID job was from a major drug company in Europe. They have more profits than some country's GDP. They sent me ID CS5.5 files and requested I return them in that version. They have just short of a hundred seats. I still receive CS4 files. Since CC, the number of CS6 files increased, but I have also seen an exponential number of QuarkXpress (newer versions) some across my desk.

To categorize (by implication) business who have not jumped on the subscription bandwagon as non-professional is silly.

[digitalphaser]

Agree that bootstrap studio is a good tool, but it's a different tool. You will need to know coding to use bootstrap studio whereas (as basic as it is) webdesigner from xara is purely a wysiwyg tool. And I am not speaking from the point of someone using it daily. I was using it to create websites (quite a lot) for clients till a few years ago (still using it to update old sites now and then; until the client pays to update it to full responsive) and for what it was it was good; creating a simple static website in less than an hour is more than possible but unfortunately not only have new options come in (bootstrap studio and muse amongst others) which just work a lot better but the clients themselves have become more knowledgeable about web technologies and webdesigner simply cannot keep up with their demands other than for the most basic of websites.

Professionals do not mind paying extra for such tools but I can't see a hobbyist or part-time professional paying a monthly subscription. I know of many people who did not upgrade to adobe creative cloud but the vast majority have as many of the apps are industry standard and if you want a job at in print/design/web design/marketing then you have to be familiar with adobe products. The same cannot be said of xara products - unfortunately.

You're right. It's a little different tool. Although BS is partially wysiwyg editor too. But the concept of this software is much more promising. This concept is used in most online site builder too.
Xara's concept is ....?

I deliberately did not write about the monthly subscription. I do not know if it will work. Marketers must know better. But BS , for example, cost double cheaper than XWD. Some online builders even free. A huge number of WP(or Joomla_ Drupal etc...) themes can be purchased for $ 5-15. ???

[digitalphaser]

Well, I can hand-code HTML, CSS and JavaScript with nothing more that Notepad. [COLOR=#333333]For professional use, Notepad is unsuitable. At least I do not see how it can be used. A Xara application or Notepad are simply tools. Any tool requires properhandling to get the best from it.

Under professional using I do not mean the software. For me it is clean, easy to edit and valid HTML(CSS,JS)code. What software create this code is indifferent to me.
If Xara can do it in the future, I'll be first in line.

[mwenz]

Something for Xara to note:

Compare that to the 365 Day Update Guarantee.

... and all for $25.

For a bit more money depending on what license one purchases, I have used Pinegrow in conjunction with other designers working on the project. They have both perpetual licenses and subscription. It took a bit of getting use to, and we were using the WordPress aspect of it as well which made it the more complicated. But it became easy enough for this old dunce to use.

There are a myriad of such options out there and Serif obviously decided it was time to bail on fixed-position web editors. They began the positioning to do so 5 years ago in secret. Obviously at this point it is old news.

Only time will tell what Xara is doing to hedge this market bet, but it is a dead end.

Mike

[Cloud]

Mike my qualifier was

I can only speak for myself and other designers and people in the print and marketing businesses I know

Everyone faces different situations, hence why I said "I can only speak for myself"

[mwenz]

I know how you started out post #103, but reread your last paragraph of that post. That is what I was commenting upon.

[Acorn]

Just a reminder to those coming late to reading about the Xara Web Designer 365 (Premium) release.
A few have reservations about the 365 Day Update Guarantee and effectively a roll-back of capability to the version you purchased, how the loss of online content affects the purchased product and comment on the new capabilities on offer.

You should read the Release Notes for the new features: http://releasenotes.xara.hosting/wd365/.
For instance, there is a Text context menu Change case to, with options (lower case, UPPER CASE, Sentence case.).
There is still the Ctrl+W quick key, which does not cycle through the above options; it is a binary toggle.

Such UI quirks make or break an application.

What have you found, appreciate or even enjoy?

Acorn