"interested skeptic" needs some feedback on Xara pros/cons

[Mark Goodall]

Xara has had a topsy turvy time with branding and market placement, this has hampered our success, and the marketing support in the past left a lot to be desired.
Pointers to the merits of Xara can be taken from Corel, if mimicry is the sincerest from of flattery then CD7 (or8) was the biggest compliment to Xara that can be given, Draw copied the whole concept of info bars, transparency tools, anti-aliasing, on-document UI e.g. linear fills, threw away their rollups and even the icons appeared to be very similar to ours.

In terms of desirable features I would say
-Performance, we have probably the fastest software anti-aliasing 2D rendering engine in the world, our redraw is many times faster than CorelDraw for instance
-All of the features are interactive and intuitive, try feathering, colour editing, bevelling, shadowing etc and compare with Illustrator, Fireworks, CorelDraw, and I believe there to be no comparison for usablility and productivity and performance
-Almost all of our stuff has on-document UI, compare with Illustrator, Fireworks, no horrible floating palettes everywhere taking up screen space and obscuring the document, our context sensitive info bar is a big help here
-We are very general in what can be applied to what, try a blend of a bevelled, transparent, shadowed object, CorelDraw won't even consider letting you blend a transparent object!! This is very basic
-We have a number of novel features such as our stretching buttons which is an enormous time saver for graphics designers
-The bevel tool provides very powerful and flexible lighting effects
-Lots of other things of course such as comprehensive and flexible brush stroking system, dynamic smoothing of scaled bitmaps etc etc

Then main aim was to provide a productive, intuitive, and flexible UI, along with a very fast and flexible rendering technology, and I think this has been achieved.

Mark Goodall (biased.... me?)
Xara Ltd

[ED]

Good points Mark but don't forget the context sensitive on-line multimedia help system. This is one of the most impressive features of Xara. Becoming productive with XaraX will be almost instant and getting answers to "how to's" will be just as fast if not faster.

No one else has a Multimedia Help system that can compare to XaraX. Just wait and see. Does any competing products even have a Multimedia help system? I have already experienced what this can do for newbies (and me too [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]) This is an awsome feature often overlooked. You gatta see it in action to believe it.

... Now where is my CD? (looking up, down, left and right) [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

The BEST is good enough!

[xrenex]

Mark,

To mimicry your House of Commons: hear! hear! [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_cool.gif[/img]

And don't let Ed hurry you up. Quaility before a fast delivery [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

[This message was edited by René van der Houwen on November 28, 2000 at 10:39 AM.]

[standay]

Here's my 2 cents worth...

Pros: very fast program (loads fast, opens files fast, closes fast, renders fast), and the best anti-aliasing and transparency around. Much easier interface than Illustrator. I use Xara for all my graphics illustration work almost exclusively. We do have Illustrator here too, but the thing is so cumbersome, so slow and so hard to use I only go to it when I absolutely have to (e.g., creating an AI9 file from a Xara original).

Paul's cons:

1) Xara (still) doesn't support multiple pages

2) You (still) can't export bitmaps in CMYK format (and the Tif LZW compression sucks)

3) Xara is quite poor when coming to text related things.

1 and 2 I agree with (although I don't have any opinion on the TIF compression, I rarely export TIF files), but you can work around 1 and 2 fairly easily (I'd LOVE multiple pages though!).

For the way I use Xara however, number 3 is not a problem for me. It excels at the work I need to do using text (mostly logos, and mostly running text around a circle).

The main trouble I've had in the past is waiting for program patches and updates (especially as they apply to file import/export, i.e., EPS and AI filters). Hopefully now that Xara has full control back, they will post these kinds of things on a regular basis between program updates.

Stan

[gary]

Wow! I never expected to receive so much great feedback in such a short time - great discussion group!

Since the majority of comments are positive, i guess the only thing left for me to do is download the trial version and see for myself, and then grab a crack from astalavista - JUST KIDDING ! :-) (My tax man likes me a lot more when i actually buy stuff!) ...

But seriously, your comments have helped a lot - it's always good to hear the experiences from other users.

the "Pros" sound really good (although speed has not been to much of an issue for me in the past).

As far as the "cons" go, (CMYK export, Text, etc) the only on which concerns me is "bad text formating" - i'll have to check it out myself, though.

(concerning "weight loss": i keep my german beer belly in check every time i work with a macromedia product :-) ..... click, dock, close ... 2 kilos gone! )

once again, thanks ... now it's off to the download section - probably i'll be back in 16 days with a load of "nervy new user Questions" ...

gruss,
Gary

p.s. moin, znd ! alles klar?

[imagination is more important than knowledge - a.einstein]

[vravi]

Gary,
you will become an instant fan once you use Xara.

Try downloading a tutorial movie first. It's the
best way to fall in love with xara in 3 minutes
flat [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

- Venu

[lucx]

With regards to:
Xara (still) doesn't support multiple pages.

Illustrator (still) doesn't support multiple pages, either, and they're in version 9.

As Mark mentioned above, Xara innovated many of the features that are only now starting to appear in other programs. Without Xara, the world may have never heard of vector transparency.

[gnurf]

And I (still) don't use Illustrator [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

And one more comment about exporting tifs:
If Xara would support CMYK export I would probably export a lot of my work directly to CMYK jpeg, but now I have to go via Photoshop to do the coverting (and while I am in PS I usually apply an unsharp mask as well, and if you don't - try it). And therefor I chose to export as tif so I don't mess up work, and LZW to save disk space (because I usually use a Zip-drive).

-Paul

[FLySOLO]

znd, your´re right with your above statement.

pros: lightning fast
very good onscreen appearance of your artwork
reliable output (what you see is what you really get)
easy to use
cool bitmap handling and incredible transparency fx

cons: no cmyk output
text handling (kerning is fixed now [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img])
font problems (type 1)
lack of product updates
xara x final 1.0 still buggy

anyways,
xara rules

Bye

FLySOLO
ps: to all german visitors:
holödrio aus wiesbaden [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

[mike engles]

Hello

Standay said

"You (still) can't export bitmaps in CMYK format (and the Tif LZW compression sucks)"

What is wrong with the Tif LZW compression?
You could say that the TIF export 'sucks', but not LZW compression. It is just a code replacing, strings of the same digits for a code that denotes the digits.

I compared a normal tif export with a LZW in Photoshop. There was no difference.

What are you comparing the exports with?

I have just made a 5cm square image in Photoshop 6 at 300 dpi. This was 591 by 591 pixels,filled red and saved as LZW tif.

I made 5 cm square in XaraX filled red and exported as LZW tif. The Xara was 25 kb and Photoshop 24 kb.

They both open in Photoshop as 591 pixels and 1mb

Dragged both in to a document in Photoshop, differenced them, merged and equalised the result.

There is no difference, except that Xarax has a 1 pixel anti-alias that shows up as a 1 pixelCyan stroke all round.

Solution turn off antialiasing.

So I did that. The export was now 22kb.
Did the same in Photoshop. Photoshop said that it could not equalise, because the merged image had only one brightness value 0,0,0.

I had better find a new interest as I think that I have too much time on my hands!!

I think I will revive my darkroom.


Mike Engles