New Versions of Xara Designer Pro X(15)

[handrawn]

it'll possibly raise the temp of your cpu unecessarily

[Egg Bramhill]

It's been a long standing problem I and others but not all have had with Xara software. I'll try & find an earlier thread where I did a video highlighting the very high cpu usage even though the program was not being worked on and just in an idle state. It may take a while fot me to find it.

As for fonts, I don't have a excessive amounts of these installed, far from it.

Here's a screengrab of my Task Manager / Processes as I type the reply to this thread. The CPU usage is at 19.4% even though Xara is idle and not being used.

[Ron Duke]

Got it Eric.

I had the same problem, but with this update and downloading the content installer and Panarama, it is now running at 8%.

I don't understand that, but I'm glad it has dropped.

[Aciden]

The new version of Xara is another disappointment for the graphic designer and illustrator. It is unfortunate that the developers do not hear their users.

[RKissane]

As Designer Pro X is the "flagship" product I was hoping for a few more unique features, updates, etc. instead of the same additions made to Web Designer.

The newest feature, Auto Fit to Page is the most unique feature with the addition of new page sizes for various social media (see my screen shot).

While this is kind of cool, I wonder how many people will actually use this feature? I spend way too much time on Facebook and Twitter, and I have a folder full of memes I have created to respond to posts and comments, but the size has never been an issue.

I have read blogs by graphic designers that make up graphics for other bloggers. They talked about having to layout graphics for post for the different size requirements of the various social media platforms and how they have to work the design for between the platforms. I could see this as a big advantage for these type designers. Most of these people are probably not using Xara but I do think it is a neat idea, whether I would ever use it is a different question.

Ray

[Ron Duke]

Well,
I appreciate that the update has lessened my cpu usage, but I really can't see what in this update really is "new" for me as an "artist" ( I use artist liberally here).

I was hoping for some real additions and improvements to this update.

[RKissane]

I was looking in the content catalog at the print/calendars and was surprised that there was no 2018 versions. Still using this years and labeling them as new. Almost the end of year and this was not updated. Please some manager at Xara needs to start setting up their schedule on what needs to be updated.

I must note that I do not use these calendars as I have a special calendar made for our company where I just supply the graphics and the print firm does the date portion.

Ray

[Guest]

But Magix has seen I'm in Germany and installed the German version. Since all the years I work only with the English version of Xara products and now I must complete reorganize my tools to find them. Is there a way to switch to a English version? I dont find a way.

I'm in the same boat - super annoying. There is a switch in the menu bar ("Hilfe > Sprache der Benutzeroberfläche" or something...), but the only language you can select there is indeed German.

Is there something wrong with the MAGIX servers? The download of V.15 and the content pack was abysmally slow and any attempt to update the local design galleries results in a multitude of error messages concerning files that could not be found on the server, followed by a request to check my internet connection (which is fine, thank you...). Not even the online content catalogue works:



Considering that MAGIX is supposed to be the distribution workhorse I can't say that I'm much impressed by their handling of this release.

This whole V.15 update got me into a bit of a catch-22 situation... V.15 finally solved the nasty PDF export bug I encountered, but leaves me with an outlandish user interface: The UI now may be in my German mother's tongue, but I'm using the English interface since Xara Extreme 4 and I'm so very used to it. And I don't like having those decisions forced upon me.

[Acorn]

Are you being blocked from downloading the English version at http://www.magix.com/gb/xara-designer-pro/? ?

Acorn

[Guest]

That's where I got the file from... I even used a proxy in the US to make sure.
But the downloader in that .exe seems to analyse the language your Windows installation is set to and automatically downloads the corresponding language version of the software. So, do I feel like fiddling with the system language to (hopefully) fool this MAGIX nonsense? Don't think so.

Why not ask the customer which language pack he/she wants to install? That's what most other software out there does. And I'm still puzzled by that language switch in the UI: What good is a switch that doesn't switch anything? Or is this supposed to be programmers' humor?

BTW, this happens when I click on Help > Check for Updates... (in English: "Could not reach update server or could not read update information."). This is not exactly inspiring confidence in MAGIX's way of handling this piece of software.