Quote Originally Posted by Egg Bramhill View Post
I can't argue with most of that WFC, but what I find interesting is your experiment re:
Above all that I'd add, as a designer, what is the most effective, pleasing, simplest software to work within? ie can you work in a intuitive software that delivers the same requirement as your client requires? Boiling it all down to "time to" is short sited.
I guess the reason that I decided to use "time" as my measurement was this.

- if I was solely basing it on "creative expression" then Xara would win hands down
- what I'm basing it on is the ability to create "industry standard websites" with "features the client sees on other sites" in a timeframe where they don't spend a ton of money

So, for me I'm looking at it like this - (DISCLAIMER: all numbers and dollars below are fictional and not accurate)

If a client comes to me with $500 and wants a wiz-bang website and they have a list of features they want
- slider
- calendar
- photo gallery
- testimonials
- 5 pages of content

I could pull that off in Wordpress pretty easy and everyone would be happy.

If I try to do the same in Xara the workflow is different... sure, if they can pick from one of Xara's ready to go templates and I just drop in the content I can probably get where we need to be - but --- as soon as they say "can you make the menu buttons rounded instead of square" then I'm screwed... why?

Because in Xara that means one of two things...

a. I pull in a new menu that has the look they want and then manually re-enter all the text and links
b. I try to explode and edit the look of the existing menu and then re-group it all back together

That can really eat up some time. Compared to Wordpress where I go with a page builder theme and when they don't like a menu I can add the Micro-themer plug-in that I own, double-click on the menu and tweak the look dynamically right in front of their eyes without having to change any of the text/links/etc.

Again - I'm not trying to stick a fork in Xara and say "it's done" - I'm trying to find some insights that will cause me to keep Xara in my web design toolbox. As it sits right now I've only been using it to generate graphics (not websites).