Some of my Whinges

[Acorn]

Dear Xara...

... the following are not just whinges (mild complaining), they are impediments to the quality of your rendered output and for the ease of designer workflows.

There are many more but these have been around for a long time or forced on us without full and due consideration:

Modular Websites

• Layout group - if an end-user cannot create or modify one, it defeats the ability to edit Web Blocks that have them.
• Embedded assets - prevent WBs being edited. This needs proper documentation to describe how to dis/re-assemble these.
• Matching to multiple variants - people still design for more than a single variants(!)
• Page size changes - totally scuppers the versatility of WBs.

Text Areas
Ensure punctuation or the space after a word is included - CJ & FJ have no word gaps - a space is a character.

SmartFields
Sort out the muck-up around linked text entries - a link per character is unworkable.

Scrolling Websites
Deliver the means to have different Pasteboard Backgrounds showing across pages.

Variants

• Sometimes designers need the Variants to be generated as standalone sites.
• A case-in-point is third-party form widgets - toggling between Main & Variant either is not possible (duplicated ID) or you think your data entry has been lost.

UI Controls
You cannot Smart Duplicate upwards.

Proper Xara HTML Filter Table Handling

• Tables ought to be rendered into HTML - it mucks up Accessibility.
• HTML Tables allows for data manipulation, sorting & filtering...

Edit Widget
Dialog window needs better workflow integration - too much dancing around with the Placeholder Tab.

Sub-menu NavBars
A replacement is long overdue.

Page Numbering

• Long overdue for the means to control Part / Section / Chapter / Page numbering and their page counts.
• Positioning of the above for proper offsets for L/R page handling.

Page Printing
WYSIWYP needs to handle CSS and code renderings.

Smart Transform

1. Get rid of it.
2. Or, make it a top bar visible toggle.

Acorn

[gwpriester]

If I might enter one of my long time requests. Independent left and right pages. This is so important when laying out a book where the left hand pages and right hand pages have different gutter and outside margin spacing.

Right now if I make any modification to a text column let's say on a right hand page — move the text area to the right a bit, Xara wants to apply the change to both pages. If left and right pages were independent then the change could be made to only right or left hand pages.

[Acorn]

If I might enter one of my long time requests. Independent left and right pages. This is so important when laying out a book where the left hand pages and right hand pages have different gutter and outside margin spacing.
Right now if I make any modification to a text column let's say on a right hand page — move the text area to the right a bit, Xara wants to apply the change to both pages. If left and right pages were independent then the change could be made to only right or left hand pages.

Gary, I agreed. I made passing lip-service to this in mentioning the page numbering position.

My solution has been a repeating central gutter that repels text under on both left and right pages.
This can be split in two and outer gutters can also be used. Overall, you have total control of the layout.

Acorn

[handrawn]

whinges? well...

if xara were to fix the wobble that the freehand tool has when using a ]wacom] pen I would be forever grateful

no other vector program I have / know of does this; it is as if xara is trying to guess in advance where you want to go, like a puppy round your ankles it just gets in the way when you re trying to draw

[gwpriester]

My solution has been a repeating central gutter that repels text under on both left and right pages.
This can be split in two and outer gutters can also be used. Overall, you have total control of the layout.

Brilliant. But there should not have to be a work-around. But that is definitely a good solution.