New feature in CS5 could have been in Xara 5

Yes well I suppose I could have been a little less dismissive of Angel Eyes however I did state in my initial "post" that "sure you can go through the painstaking process of a work-a-round" which clearly means I am not looking for a "work-a-round" yet he/she quickly posted a work-a-round which is their right I suppose.

Anyway, I apologize if I offended. I suppose I'm more upset about the direction of Xara and it's becoming bloatware and ignoring the vector tools for so long that I come off as someone with a chip on my shoulder but I have been a customer for longer then most of the people on this forum, so I guess I feel that I have a right to bitch now and then but others may disagree. Next time I'll move it to off topic as suggested and people can flame me from there.

s.g.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sgiff

I suppose I'm more upset about the direction of Xara and it's becoming bloatware

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Unlike some other software which is truly bloatware (Software that is overpacked with features a result of feature creep and therefore slow or unwieldy), Xara doesn't load everything into memory or become slower to use.
For example, if you don't ever choose the HTML or Bitmap tools, then you don't ever load any into memory.
You can even remove all the HTML or bitmap related toolbar buttons if you wish.

True dat, but we'll see when 6 comes out. My guess is that they are just going to take all of the features from Web Design 6 that just came out and put them into XX6Pro. But I wouldn't say it's not bloatware now necessarily, it does take a good bit more time to load then it did 5 years ago.

sgiff:

sorry if you took it as flaming - not meant that way... when I said 'bitching' it was me I was refering to, and me alone.... ;)

we are free to do what we want [subject to the usual] - if you want to bitch go ahead I say, for what that's worth :D

it just seemed a strange way to approach things thats all.....

PS: see steve has just come in on the subject of bloatware.. never had a problem with CS4 in this repect on my current machine..... tortoise and hare.....

Honest, sgiff, my XXP5 takes 7 seconds - just timed it :D I agree with waiting to see what XXP6 has in store ... you never know! :-bd

Perhaps I misunderstood the opening post, but it seemed to me that the question was about clipping a brush stroke to a shape. That is what Xtreme's clip view does. I whole heartedly agree that Xtreme's brushes need some major TLC. But until Xara gives us better brushes this is not a bad method. most of the steps I outlined are to make a custom brush, which only takes a min or 2 actually clipping the brush to the shape takes 1 keystroke.

I too am hoping that Xara has something more for us in the next upgrade than just Web Designers new features.

While I do agree that Xtreme needs a little overhaul of the vector tools, seems it may have had the jump on the 3D extrude tools. Adobe has just included the Easy 3D extrusions which Xtreme already has.

Not really something I need but it is there all the same.

Fluid Vector painting does look sweet, may just be worth my hard earned cash this time around. I'm skipping the next round of Xtreme as it's bound to be just another web upgrade with a fancy new GUI with pull out menus. YAWN CS5 has my main web tools there in already Dreamweaver.

I was never a great lover of AI 3D tool bar the excellent way you wrap a bitmap or vector around your revolved shape, as in a label. The new tools have a fancy interface with great preview but when would and illustrator use that maybe in a Flash illustration, I don't know!

I had an uncharacteristic rant in a similar thread as this mainly about brushes with a little dig about CMYK but you have got to remember the size difference in both companies. It will cost me nearly £250 to upgrade just Illustrator from the CS3 version I now own and also I don't think the NHS department that I now work for will upgrade from CS and even the printer that I use they only use version 9. Companies will have to think more on how many bits of work that I would have to do just to spread the cost of an upgrade, so is Xara that bad? Will still need to tidy up the brushes to give illustrations a more hand drawn look.