So at first I thought, 'what a meaningless upgrade'. And 'No sound in the Flash animations.' But then I started messing with the Mask. Yes! WAY easier than Photoshop. Instant copy-paste. And I found that I could make layers, which lets me work somewhat the same as Photoshop, but here with both bitmaps and vector art without any problems.

Which got me into the Photo Editor tool: 'Why would I need this... since I already use Photoshop?' And it took less than 5 minutes to figure out how to copy a bitmap onto a new layer, then desaturate it (all gray), then use the transparency tool to reveal part of the colored bitmap layer beneath. Zing! And I can connect to my Photoshop filters.

Next came the bitmap tracer -- which I can unreservedly state is far better than the Adobe tracer in Illustrator, and the Corel Draw tracer. Yes -- you CAN actually make a vector out of a photographic bitmap. At a very high level of accuracy.

Today, I started learning the Web Designer section. And you have to understand that for years, as a multimedia designer for a large corporation in San Diego, I kept using Front Page because it was so much faster than Dreamweaver, and hoping someone would take WYSIWYG to the next level. Xara has really, really done that. We all have our own design sensibilities and tastes, but, on the job, what's really important is how fast you can create web content that works properly... and how fast you can make edits to it when needed later... and how easily you can teach others how to edit your work (if you want to get promoted).

Most amazing of all is that I'm happily testing Xara 6 on a little Acer Aspire netbook. And it runs very well, with the only limitation being the small screen. The program does NOT run slowly, which surprised me... and it is letting me make graphics easily anywhere... which will include Starbucks soon with their free wi-fi.

Anyway, that's it for now... more later after I've bought the program and used it for awhile at work.