Usability, workflow and bug fixes

[Rob-Xar]

One of the first initiatives I want to kick off is a big update to push out lots of little fixes, usability tweaks, minor bugs that often fly under the radar. Whilst they might be small things, each little frustration all adds up to the overall experience of a program.

To give you some examples of what I mean:

Resizing images doesn't snap to other images and objects.
Corner resize handles are not shown unless the object rotation center option is selected.
Changing the colour space does not stick unless you change the colour's values.
Program will lock up when it is processing something, causing windows to say it's not responding (which technically is true but the program isn't dead) instead of simple letting the user know it's working. This has often been reported as a crash.

And so on. Some of them are new, some of them are old issues. I have a large list myself of these tweaks and fixes, and I know there is a large number of TG here in the Dear Xara thread. I'm doing my best to go through as much as I can but with 15k Posts there will no doubt be loads I will miss, so with that if you have any of these small tweaks or annoyances that you want us to look at, please let me know.

Emphasis on the minor. I'm not planning any feature release or major overhauls in this particular update, just usability tweaks and fixes.

[gwpriester]

Excellent.

I would love to see independent left and right pages for book publishing. So if you make a change to the location of a paragraphs on the left hand pages it does not affect all the right hand pages.

[Acorn]

Thanks for the opportunity Rob.

• Saving Templates - https://www.talkgraphics.com/showthr...WebP-Forced-On
• Using Top of Page Link - https://www.talkgraphics.com/showthr...cross-Variants
• Hijacking ID - https://www.talkgraphics.com/showthr...ina-hijacks-Id
• Duplicating Smartly (Bug#005A) - https://www.talkgraphics.com/showthr...ation-Handling
• Losing Control - https://www.talkgraphics.com/showthr...Pro-Mould-Tool
• Losing Help - https://www.talkgraphics.com/showthr...is-not-updated
• Misapplying Border Radius - https://www.talkgraphics.com/showthr...-Round-Objects
• Misbehaving Naughty Corners - https://www.talkgraphics.com/showthr...ture-Behaviour
• Making a Slant - https://www.talkgraphics.com/showthr...Circular-Fills
• Halting Production - https://www.talkgraphics.com/showthr...-Web-Animation
• Stretching the Point - https://www.talkgraphics.com/showthr...Image-Filename
• Boxing clever - https://www.talkgraphics.com/showthr...-your-own-Good

The Chorus from Koko’s “I’ve Got a Little List.” in the Mikado:

He’s got ’em on the list — he’s got ’em on the list;
And they’ll none of ’em be missed — they’ll none of ’em be missed.

Acorn

[handrawn]

My object all sublime
I shall achieve in time.....

yes thanks rob - you have already got mine in the other thread; in particular the beep
most other things I might want, such as a UI switch for the boundary handles registry toggle, are likely out of this remit...

[gwpriester]

The web animation menu needs a rethinking. It is not intuitive and there needs to be more user control. Plus out options for the various object transitions. e.g. Fade Out, so an object can roll in and fade out.

[Egg Bramhill]

Okay Rob, I'll keep it to a single issue that drives me crazy. I have a website template 960px NO PAGE SHADOW.

The second I change the page width, up it pops, that unwanted, hated page shadow. Forcing me to open the Utilities / Options / Page Size tab & uncheck the Show Page Shadow or select the page background in the P&L gallery and remove the page shadow. But dare I change the page background width or height by even a tiny-weeny single pixel and the damn shadow thing reappears.

[Chris M]

Err, Egg, are you talking about the attached pic? If so, then it may just be you. The shadow option is off by default and no amount of resizing makes it appear unless I tick the box. De-selecting makes it go away, and it stays off.

XWDP 17.1 and also tested on a friends XDP+ whatever number it's up to.

[rsrsrs]

>>>
Program will lock up when it is processing something, causing windows to say it's not responding (which technically is true but the program isn't dead) instead of simple letting the user know it's working. This has often been reported as a crash.<<<

how true.
Xara crashes only one or twice a year.
but i would like a t kill a process when it takes to long.

[Boy]

In the Selector Toolbar, add a button with which to toggle between the new (blue) selection handles and the old (simple, black) selection handles or integrate it into the 'Show object edit handles' button that, anyway, doesn't do what is says it does. So, latter needs to be fixed.

[Acorn]

Err, Egg, are you talking about the attached pic? If so, then it may just be you. The shadow option is off by default and no amount of resizing makes it appear unless I tick the box. De-selecting makes it go away, and it stays off.

XWDP 17.1 and also tested on a friends XDP+ whatever number it's up to.

Chris, this is a long-time issue. If you drop a colour onto the design page, it happens, repeatedly.

The shadow is off by default as the supplied templates do not have any colour for pasteboard or page backgrounds.

@Egg, never seen it for page size changes though.

Acorn