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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
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Originally Posted by
eobet
Crap, I missed that one!
Again, Xara may be able to take on Illustrator, but trying to go after InDesign and Photoshop (and, what? SketchUp and Maya now with the 3D too?) as the same time is simply stupid! "You can't satisfy everybody" goes the saying, but isn't that exactly what they're trying to do?
It is really diffcult to decide what new features to integrate or not. I think the Flash & now export to HTML integration is a nice approach, but not good enough to use seriously. The text 3D is nice, but for a quality 3D render I grab a 3d package like Cinema4D or something.
In my opinion they should focus on adding easy to integrate features. Like for now, the very high quality image scaling , text underline, more accurate path clipping, font browser, that are the most welcomed features as I read the replies on the new version.
As I said some time ago, XARA Xtreme needs a interface refresh, not the positions/menu structure but just modern icons or theme support.
Something Like:
http://www.istockphoto.com/file_clos...php?id=2635297
add a modern professional splash screen (current has a little bit consumer look), finish the apple mac version and your in the biz like never before!
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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
I reckon its a good job done too Xara Team :)
I am very reassured that the product is going in the right direction, commercially.
And it is a commercial product, it has to be seen in that light.
We all want our favourite stuff and for the program to go in the precise direction we think it should - but it has to survive.
I would say that for that very reason it is not at all trying to satisfy everyone, but pitching very specifically. ;)
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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
Thumbs up to the Xara team for a (potentially) great update to Xara. Typical of me I had not been around much for a few days due to working on some themes for the upcoming release of vBulletin 3.7 and missed the announcement by Charles about v4. Well to cut a long story short I downloaded the beta and within a couple of minutes decided this was a must have upgrade. My bank account says ouch but thanks Xara team.
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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
Thanks Xara team, good job! New features go in a direction I appreciate.
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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
What exactly is "path clipping"?
I checked in help but couldn't find any information.
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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
Sorry I accidentally lapsed into Adobe's mad techno-gibberish speak there. By path clipping I mean shape intersection. i.e. the Combine Shapes set of operations is now more accurate. You no longer have the very small straight line piece at each intersection, which has annoyed some users.
(For some unfathomable reason Adobe don't call them simple plain English things like 'lines' and 'shapes', but paths, strokes and other silly stuff. Once you've gone through the Adobe product indoctrination you too can sound clever by using such terms. I should not have done, and apologize. Plain English descriptions are always better.)
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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
that is very good news Charles
This terminology thing is why 'bitmaps' are now 'photos' even if they are hand drawn and no camera was implicated at any stage? :D
I will get used to it no doubt :)
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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
I can confirm this. The combine shapes procedures produces extremely clean results, minimum of nodes needed to retain the shape. Much better than v. 3.2.4 and a much welcomed improvement.
eobet at least you are consistent in your whining.......
dead as a vector application...... no I do not think so.
bloatware....... definitely not.
I believe this is a signature release. My tests reveal incredible responsiveness, fast on about every level, and I am running Xara in a WinXP virtual machine on a Mac Mini.
And as for interface I have always run in full screen mode with a stripped down set of menu bars.
Modern Icons and Themes ????????
Anyway, thanks Charles and Co. for a great release.
adios
sunland
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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
Quote:
Originally Posted by
sunland
Modern Icons and Themes ?
Yes, I think that's long overdue. Unfortunately I guess it involves more than a few button images - it would probably mean a complete revamp of marketing material and screenshots (maybe that's going to happen anyway).
Strikes me it could make a great competition for the user community - we have some really talented icon people here.
Paul
[Added: I actually think revamping the interface icons to a more modern look could probably pay for itself - nobody wants to buy software that looks old - we do because we already use it]
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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
Keeping the 'classic look' as an UI option I trust :)
Themes - aren't they something for people who don't have any work to play with to stop them getting bored :eek: Please don't all shout at me at once :rolleyes:
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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
Eye candy sells. I really don't care much about themes, but it would be nice to have an application that wouldn't look at home on Windows 3.0.. ;-)
Paul
(OK handrawn, we can have a 'luddite' option on the file menu if you wish! ;-) )
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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
I'm not arguing with you Paul :) - it will sell to new people that judge by appearances, of which there are a lot :rolleyes:
there is nothing luddite about not wanting to change the appearance for the sake of it - that is quite different to not wanting to use new methods of work ;)
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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
Please no special themes/skins! Do it right, let Windows theme applications; programs that look and behave gratuitously differently to the rest of the desktop are not a win. The last thing I want to see is Xtreme done in mxgui, looking like the Photo Editor, yuck.
(There's also something to be said for simple, neutral icons that don't interfere or distract attention from the artwork you're working on, specifically in the case of graphics applications.)
It would be nice to have the UI widgets pick up the standard Windows UI fonts settings, though... at the moment you always get non-anti-aliased Tahoma, which is a bit ugly if you've changed the desktop to use something nicer.
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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Charles Moir
Sorry I accidentally lapsed into Adobe's mad techno-gibberish speak there. By path clipping I mean shape intersection. i.e. the Combine Shapes set of operations is now more accurate. You no longer have the very small straight line piece at each intersection, which has annoyed some users.
(For some unfathomable reason Adobe don't call them simple plain English things like 'lines' and 'shapes', but paths, strokes and other silly stuff. Once you've gone through the Adobe product indoctrination you too can sound clever by using such terms. I should not have done, and apologize. Plain English descriptions are always better.)
Charles,
Ah, now it makes sense. Thank you for the explanation and thank you for all the new features in the new release.
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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
Quote:
Originally Posted by
eobet
Xara, as a vector editing application is dead.
Hyperbole much?
Quote:
What exists now is a messy bloatware of photo and DTP mish-mash.
I don't agree.
The inline photo tools are much quicker and neater than the external XPE solution. For web graphics I need to deal with bitmaps a lot and I'm glad the tools are there to do it. Keeping my whole workflow within a single non-destructive editor instead of having to import/export/keep-separate-copies for even the simplest editing operations is a win. (I do kind of think it's a little odd how so much of the photo tool and the live effects tool are kind of the same; there must be a way to integrate them.)
The text area stuff I was initially sceptical about, but I've come to use it a fair bit and it fits well with Xtreme's other tools. I couldn't complain after seeing the live-dragging on the repel-text feature; this is a classic Xara fast'n'smooth feature.
I do agree with you that incorporating the Panorama and Xara 3D tools doesn't really fit well with Xtreme's core feature set. (There might be more of a case for X3D if you could convert it to editable shapes, or if a simple 2D extrude were also available.)
But OTOH it doesn't cost us anything (Xara4 is not noticeably slower than before; you can always drag the 3D tool off the toolbar), and presumably didn't take much time to copy in from existing code.
Quote:
Good thing InkScape is on the move
cough. I'd love an open source vector package but, you know, let me know if that ever gets at all usable...
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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
I don't see any evidence of bloatware. In fact, I see clear and obvious evidence of the exact opposite; the integration of XPE directly into Xara provides speed and design advantages, and removes bloat. I'm guessing XPE will likely be dropped in the future now that most of it's features are directly integrated into Xara, and maybe the same could happen for the Magix pixel editing application. Xara is a graphics application, not solely a vector drawing program; it's vector approach is the main part of it, simply because vector and object orientation is the superset of bitmap handling. Admittedly, Xara currently lacks direct pixel editing functionality, but that is still available through the Magix pixel editing application. Xara has always been capable of handling bitmaps and vectors right from the start, and this version provides additional, slick support for both image types.
Xara has also always had an orientation toward screen graphics for the web; the new website design feature is further support for that area. Adding an html export option in the dropdown list hardly qualifies as bloatware either. Perhaps people have only subconsciously noticed: Xara's interface has hardly changed at all--even after all these additions. This is an example of good design; users aren't thrown by a completely and unnecessarily revamped interface that's already perfectly good, which would generate discomfort in having to re-orientate to use it. There is also no speed reduction at all in the new version, further evidence of attention to design, and avoidance of bloat-effects (in fact it's considerably faster with multi-core support--feathering for example is clearly faster (which makes me wonder why the 50 pix limit is still in there)).
3D extrusion is a basic vector graphics offering (which AI and CD also offers, albeit inferiorly). Similarly with text wrapping; Xara's approach is considerably slicker and more efficient (although repelling isn't a complete substitute for shaped text containers, but for most cases it is).
In summary, quite a few of the new additions by Xara are either a) available in other competing software but done much better in Xara, or b) replacing old functionality to reduce bloat and directly integrate functionality into Xtreme, giving obvious speed and design advantages. Xara shows good evidence of clear thinking and progression to an established and blatantly apparent goal--the creation of slick, intuitive, very fast and feature rich graphics software.
While it's unfair to compare Inkscape with Xara due to the fact that one is proprietary and one is open source, I hardly think Inkscape's development or new feature set is anything near as good and intelligently thought out as Xara's. Inkscape's updates are less significant, and the tools are somewhat half-assed (e.g. 3D box tool...?), buggy, smack of bloat, and pretty badly implemented (relatively) in terms of usability and slickness (but justification of that is another thread entirely). Inkscape, while good, appears to me to be what Xara would become like if taken out of the hands of Xara--a relatively poorly designed mess.
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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
Quote:
Originally Posted by
RedWombat
Anyone else getting this message? ...
Yup ;)
*Say, is there What's New List around? I tried a couple search; but didn't hit any. Thanks
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3D Lights > Initial Response and Suggestion
First of all, I trust the Xara programers so much I bought the upgrade BEFORE downloading it! That should be an indication of the reputation Xara has extablished for itself (at least for me) throughout the years of its development.
The 3D Tool seems work very smoothly and I used it pretty easily without looking at the help file. Also seems like the 3D attributes can be copied and pasted to other, existing 3D objects. Enough said for "Ease of Use".
Constructive Criticism/Suggestions:
1- An XML index to store User defined Bevel Attributes ("Bevel Stlyes") for resuse and the ability so save these with a template and to send the Bevel Styles to others.
2- When you click on a light, have its identity (#) displayed in the Taskbar. Currently the light# only displays in the color editor or when you drag a color onto a light.
3- Ability to LOCK THE LIGHTS to an object so, as the object is rotated, the set of 3 lights are rotated with (relative to) the object. Perhaps implement this with an icon in the info bar (icon would be a lightbulb with a lock) AND/OR interactively by holding the Alt keys when rotating the object with the 3D Tool.
4- Ability to reset a light's position to 0,0 by triple-clicking on a light.
5- An option to toggle the lights to a "Contrast/Brightess Mode" to the change only the brightness of the object's native color. [I think the only way you can can to this now is to manually assign black to each light, then adjust their greysscale value]
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Repeal Text
Kind of wished the Text Repeal Properties had a "Ignore Dopshadow" option so that text flowed around the object but not the dropshadow.
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1 Attachment(s)
Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
Ungroup the object with shadow, remove repelling for the shadow only.
You may need to convert to editable shape first, depending.
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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Hwy101
Yup ;)
*Say, is there What's New List around? I tried a couple search; but didn't hit any. Thanks
Is this what you are looking for?
http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthread.php?t=31909
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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
Sledg, yah I already did that. Good workaround though.
Be nice if it was a "Live" function with the Repeal attribute, however, so you wouldn't have to recreate the dropshadows when the original object is reshaped.
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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
Eobet,
Your main complaint about XXPro has been the inaccuracies of the Combine Shapes / etc function. This now works spot on. Please rejoice.
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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
Egg,
I'll sure as heck rejoice. :cool:
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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jclements
Egg,
I'll sure as heck rejoice. :cool:
Me too... It's HUGE! This is the ONLY THING that was lacking for me personally... It's spot on as far as I can tell.
I thought it would be a "speed thing" - it's not... X4 still runs circles around AI and CD... It's dizzying!
It's brilliant!
Risto
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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
Quote:
Originally Posted by
RedWombat
After my first error I got this one:
This product has not been correctly installed (Error 2). Please install the product again.
Then the start screen said:
Trial version expired.
I guess my first option will be to remove it and reinstall. Thought Charles might want to know this though.
Yes, I got the same error. This is the first install of XARA that I have had a problem with. Anyone else have an idea of what might be going on here.?
s.g.
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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
Sorry I don't know S.G. -- Did you try the suggested reinstall and did it work? If I recall correctly the install advises to close other applications during the install. Did you do that? In the past with installs (not necessarily Xara ones) I have downloaded and saved the installer. I then close all open applications, and if I fully trust the developer (as I do with Xara) I also temporarily turn off my virus protection. Upon successful install I turn back on the virus protection pronto.
Regards, Ross
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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
Turn off your modem before you turn off your virus protection. Afterwards, restart your AV and then your modem.
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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
Right David. Good advice. :)
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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
I usually turn the av off but leave the firewall on, as switching the router off is not always an option [with other user[s]]
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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
mind you thinking about it you could just disable the connection in XP...?
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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
I ended up removing and reinstalling Xtreme. It worked fine after that and I didn't need to disable my av, firewall or internet connection. I realize though that these can mess things up at times, but I wasn't the only one with the same issue.
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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
glad to hear the problem is sorted :)
actually the only cases I have ever come across where it was essential to disable my av are video/sound driver updates and %&@*! corel painter [I love it really - just windows version is a bit 'tempremental' :D]
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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
When it comes up with the message about English Language if you choose "no" I think it will mess up. You have to choose UK English. At least this is what I did the second time and it installed ok.
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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
Quote:
Originally Posted by
pauland
[Added: I actually think revamping the interface icons to a more modern look could probably pay for itself - nobody wants to buy software that looks old - we do because we already use it]
Personally, I don't care whether the icons look modern or hip.
I'm not interested in eye candy. In fact, I usually find that eye candy makes interfaces more difficult to use. I look for a clean, functional, intuitive UI with icons that meaningful and easy to read.
Speed, functionality and ease of use -- those are important to me. I'd much rather Xara & Co continue to focus their energies in that direction, as they do so well.
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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
Agreed - I don't care about skins, themes or icons - as long as the programme functions. Not only that, if I wanted a different theme, I would expect to apply it as a windows theme not a localised Xara theme.
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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
I downloaded and ordered the upgrade to Xtreme 4, although I had not had a chance to use it yet. What perfect timing Xara has ! I only had to pay for shipping since I purchased Xtreme 3.2 earlier this month.
The only thing I wish Xara would do is update their interface. I am new to Xara, and purchased Xtreme due to its extreme ease of use and pricing. I would have been tempted to purchase Illustrator, but the complexity and price would not justify such a purchase, although I have mastered their Encore, Premeire Pro, and Audition products.
I agree with everyone with this one when it comes to Xtreme - the interface reminds me too much of Windows 95/98. And yes, I believe a refresh of their icons would also be very helpful.
The best interface I seen in a graphics program is Microsofts Expression Design. The interface alone and its ease of use is worth purchasing, however, Microsoft does not package Expression Design as a stand-alone graphics program. You need to purchase Expression Studio which is a bundled program that includes additional programs for web design and writing HTML code, along with other Expression packages. The cost for Expression Studio, just to get Design would cost $300 to $600 pending if you bought the Studio upgrade or full retail package. Expression is now in Beta with their version 2 release, expected to be released sometime later this year. You can download the 30 day trial of Expression Design, or the Expression Design Beta 2 from Microsofts website.
It is unclear if Expression Design 2 will be available as a standalone product, or if it will continue to be released in their Expression Studio Package. Even if you are not a fan of Microsoft, their UI of Design is one of the best UI package I have seen in a graphics program !!! Adobe should take note. I do encourage everyone to download the 30 day trial or Beta release of Expression or Expression 2 respectfully. It is worth trying out !!!
I was hoping when I purchased Xtreme 3.2 that Xara would update the interface in version 4 to something similar what Expression Design offers. If you havnt seen Expression before, download the 30 day trial, or download the Expression 2 beta. From what I seen from the 30 day trial, nearly everything is right at your fingertips. If Xara would build such a user interface along with an icon refresh of the program, along with an advertising campaign, they would put themselves in a great marketing posission for a top-notch vector graphics product, knocking on Illustrator door as the king-of-vector-graphics.
Anyone out there with me on this ?
What is the Repel feature that is offered in Xtreme 4 ?
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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
Sorry, I'm not with you on the interface update, I'm comfortable with it as it is ....... However, everyone is entitled to their opinion ....
Repel allows shapes to repel text, so that the text follows the profile of the shape.
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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
HI welcome to TG
"I agree with everyone with this one" - not everyone agrees ! :D
"From what I seen from the 30 day trial, nearly everything is right at your fingertips." - just like xara then - it depends what you are used to ;)
I see that Keith has answered your last point :)
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Re: Xara Xtreme verison 4
I'm also not too hip on the idea of skins, but perhaps that's because I see an awful lot of open source programs that fixate themselves on being skinnable or themeable before they actually implement any of the application's functionality. At least we know that Xara won't have that particular problem.
On the whole I don't see anything wrong with Xara's UI. The icons clearly relate to the function they embody, and I can click on them in order to make things happen.
Focusing on how something looks instead of it's quality seems like something best left to Junior High and the popular cliques. However, I am a bit of a dinosaur. :D