Quote Originally Posted by katemoir View Post
If you bought 12.5.0 PGD today, for example, then that is the version you have a perpetual license to. If after 1 year your Update Service expires and then you have to reinstall on a new computer, the version you will be able to install is 12.5.0. What you won't have access to on that new install is any updates that you have downloaded during that year (12.6, 12.7 etc). So my point was that if you buy today, reject the updates and upgrade again in a year's time, you are pretty much in the same position you always were. The main difference being the loss of the Online Content Catalog after expiry.
Quote Originally Posted by katemoir View Post
I'm only aware of one serious problem with connectivity with the Online Content Catalog, which we posted about here on TG. ... But I agree it's slower than it should be. You know, the Find function in the Designs Gallery hadn't worked properly for quite some time. We couldn't easily fix that but kept it there as better than nothing. Now we have a proper search function in the Online Content Catalog so we've removed the Find function from the DG.
Kate, I have been on about the loss of the native Find for some time. If you expire your update service then no OCC and therefore no Find. Reverting to the version you bought does not allow you to maintain the websites built with the version you bought as the poorly documented upgrades that might have been your lynchpin part of your design are not flagged as such. Gone, without a trace. The Update Service is a pernicious form of crippleware: Wikipedia - "The term "crippleware" is sometimes used to describe software products whose functions have been limited (or "crippled") with the sole purpose of encouraging or requiring the user to pay for those functions (either by paying a one-time fee or an ongoing subscription fee)." After the one year's subscription, i would expect not to revert to 12.5.0 but 12.5.n where n is the summation of all bug fixes. Bug fixes, gone, without a trace. Your mantra of being able to continue using the upgrades (and bug fixes) until you re-install is hollow.

Specifically on the slow access to the OCC:

  1. My initial access time: 4 seconds
  2. Search All on %: 3 seconds for each of 93 pages of content.
  3. Search Tree section with %: 3 seconds for any of the tree nodes.


I am sure the handshake with another external website, Pixabay, doesn't help. Both Stock Photograph and stock Illustrations should have a toggle.
Forcing the OCC to be driven by Internet Explorer is not great either.

You cannot even collapse a node up to its parent without scrolling to the parent down arrow.
Selecting an open parent closes it so you have to click it again to recover the tree you actually want.
Native Xara Find provided a Description to search on, the OCC doesn't.
To provide an OCC that, on hover, just allows a click button to (Open, Import, Buy) is nugatory and different to the friendlier Symbol method.
The OCC thumbs, which are already present in the Local Design gallery, offers me the opportunity to re-download them all over again (and again? No caching?).

Flip the Update Sevice to we can keep all updates in the year, forever.
Give us a native Local designs gallery Search.
Provide four clear updates in the year: typographic, vector, images, web.

Clean, understandable, a winner.

Acorn