Not happy ....

[Dijenga]

So, finishing up my first Xara site, customer calls with a couple minor changes and I start to work ...

C R A S H ! ! !

No problem, I saved the site before the last operation so we'll just restart the program and get back to editing.

Not really. When the program crashed, it saved the file .... and apparently in an older format because when I restart, I get a warning that I probably should update the format of my site. Hmmm...

So, I save the project again with a different name after I apply the updated format.

Now I look and the window where my pages are displayed no longer has scroll bars. The menu bar across the top of the UI is now "hidden" until I mouse to the extreme top of the page AND click.

All my customizations are gone ... as is part of my last week of work.

1. With multiple saves, the lost work can mostly be fixed with out too much trouble ... even though it "puts me hot" as we cajuns say it.

2. The UI, however, is now nearly possible to get along with because I have to use the mouse's scrolling wheel to move up, down, and hold the shift to move left or right. PAIN IN THE *******!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, I'm up against a deadline ... Monday AM. Not next Monday, tomorrow!

I can put up with a lot of weirdness in UI, and some quirkiness, but

I * W I L L * N O T * T O L L E R A T E * L O S T * W O R K * B E C A U S E * O F * S H O D D Y * S O F T W A R E !!!

If you don't believe me, ask the folks over at Serif when I got screwed after purchasing WPX6 ... which still tried to access a folder on their server after installed along with all of its other bugs.

Customization? No, my UI was back to out of the box dark UI except that I had the file and the align toolbars at the top of the page when this happened. That would be easy to change.

I gotta try to hobble to get this finished, but I'll be back if I figure it out.

[pauland]

All my customizations are gone ... as is part of my last week of work.

That's not good, but it's as much your fault as anyone else's.

Anyone doing work for a client (or themselves) needs to take backups regularly of their files, no matter what software that they use.

Losing work with Xara software is not reported here very often and usually can be retrieved from backups that the software makes.

Good luck.

[Boy]

Hi Dijenga, sorry to hear you have such problems.

Have you tried to do a System Restore so that at least you have your Xara software working again as you set it up and hopefully without the wrong error message?

[Boy]

.... but it's as much your fault as anyone else's.

Anyone doing work for a client (or themselves) needs to take backups regularly of their files, no matter what software that they use.

Pauland, I don't think not saving a work file is really the problem here.

[pauland]

Pauland, I don't think not saving a work file is really the problem here.

Really? I understand Dijenga's upset, but it's totally avoidable.

Even if there's a software fault, having a backup of your files can put you back to a position where you lose a minimal amount of work.

This comes up every now and again on TG and when it happens people never seem to have any backup strategy at all.

I'm not perfect by all means. I still get caught out occasionally. I never blame the software. If I lose something it's because I was stupid enough to trust that the software wouldn't screw up my files at some stage or that I'd do something dumb.

My Xara software is pretty ancient. I thought it always kept multiple separate backups these days?

[Boy]

Well, perhaps it was too early in the day but I read his post differently.

[pauland]

Maybe I've misunderstood.

As I understand it Dijenga was using the software, things went a bit odd, so Dijenga closed the file and re-opened it again and it was messed up.

I'm assuming it was messed up because (I think) Xara will do periodic saves.

So Dijenga has a messed-up file.

Hopefully there are separate Xara backups made by the software, but Dijenga doesn't mention if that's the case.

My point is that if you just copy your working files to a separate hard drive (ideally), there would be a fallback position, whatever the cause of the calamity.

[handrawn]

I think that automatic backups are a mixed blessing - fine when they work, but as Dijenga has found out, they are part of the program and therefore can 'go wrong' just like any other part of it

So, I save the project again with a different name

I would do this at least at the end of every work-session and probably several times during, for mission critical work; call me paranoid but I am old enough to remember when things were 'always crashing'

I sympathise, it is a very frustrating and awkward position to be in, but no software on earth is perfect, and when you are new to it you need to learn what is the right and wrong way of doing things in order to avoid issues; there are always issues, often they crop up because the software is not being used the way it was designed to be...

I hope you get it sorted out ...

[pauland]

A really simple scheme is to save to files with the date in, in YYMMDD format. mywebsite_160620 for example. Then you shouldn't lose more than a days work. You can even do mywebsite_160620a, mywebsite_160620b etc.

Just remember if you don't copy to another physical drive you can still lose everything if the drive crashes and if you don't keep an offline archive, a virus could wipe everything.

[handrawn]

agreed - incremental saving, date tagged or numeric - I prefer numeric, but date is good - I have an external USB drive permanently plugged for this

edit - did someone say cloud? - really.. but what if your connection goes down.... or they have 'issues'?...

edit 2 - good point about the virus - I guess to be sure you would need to remove the USB whilst you were not actually saving to backup.... nothing is perfect... not even that would be foolproof