I am certainly too late to request anything major for v11, but I've always used Xara and always hoped they would sort out their structure of features and products. Xara could quite easily have a product that is good enough to stand up to Adobe if they just updated their look and stripped the bloatware. I have a vision of what a good structure would be and looking at Gare's Wishlist for v11 near the end he actually mirrors quite closely to what I had in mind. This would be a rough wishlist for a future DP model.

Ditch the product line names and have the following:


***Xara PRINT*** - This would have the capabilities of Photo and Graphic / Layout Designer would have. Direct competition to InDesign and Illustrator and nothing else!

A top of the line Vector drawing and layout tool with photo editing. Basically Designer Pro without the web design features. A graphic designer doesn't need all the web bloatware. Saving graphics optimized for web is OK, but if I want to design a website, I'd use a suite that's designed for that purpose, I'd doubt there's many users of DP10 who bought it for web design. Besides DP10 doesn't even use framework structures like Bootstrap that can be edited outside of Xara, so no professional designer would take it seriously.

Ditch 3D tool - does anyone really use this? The results are dated looking and it serves very little purpose in modern design. It may have been popular back when 3D Wordart was popular in the 90's but its just tacky now. I'd sooner make something in Sketchup and import it over as a png.

Ditch the novelty brushes - Remake the brushes presets, they are old and tacky and doesn't say 2015, a refresh in brushes, custom brushes and pressure profiles is needed. I've been using Xara on a daily basis since Xara Xtreme, and I'm pretty sure the brush sets haven't changed since.

Refresh or ditch the bitmap tracer - there are many good free tracers out there, I've never once had a good result from Xara's, if your tracer isn't as good there's no point in bloating the software out.

Improve CMYK colour management - highly requested by the looks of it. If v11 doesn't improve on this then I may end up leaving Xara.



***Xara WEB*** - This is where the web design can come in. Coffeecup have made a huge leap in WYSIWYG responsive design. A refresh in this would be welcome, but this needs to be a separate program. web and print are 2 totally different disciplines.


Give it a fresh Windows 10 look. Mac users may have Affinity to be proud of, but there's no reason Windows 10 can't have Xara PRINT with a fresh new look.

Why have so many different packages, that confuse people when buying. Keep a basic and pro version of PRINT if needed, but having a max of 3 packages in total rather than having 5 or 6 which are effectively all DP10 just with different bits stripped out of it. Fewer packages would mean more focus on improving each one, and less money spent on marketing.

If anyone can explain to me why this format wouldn't work I'd love to chat about it. The current mix of software is just confusing and filled with silly titles and unused features. I am not writing this to have a go at the Xara team, but this would be my dream Xara that would give Adobe a few sleepless nights.