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Re: What small workflow improvements would you like to see in the future?
I want xara not calculate all pages on my site when rendering. I want it to just render to a browser only the page I am working on. By rendering I do not mean uploading to a hosting site, just preview.
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Re: What small workflow improvements would you like to see in the future?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
ernie-f
When exporting as JPG or PNG it is very annoying to make the settings every time.
It would be nice if Xara would remember the last settings.
That would help avoid mistakes.
This is a great feature to have, specially when setting resolution.
Also the same goes for Web Properties >Image>Web image type
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Re: What small workflow improvements would you like to see in the future?
When creating a new website variant I'd like the option to select "Based on variant (xxx)".
This is useful for three (or more) variants.
I've started with the basic full-size desktop version.
Then I created one for tablets in vertical mode (removed some stuff I don't need on this version).
Now I'm at the mobile version and it would be nice if I could have it be based on the second variant that's already closer to what I need. Now it defaults on copying everything from the Main variant.
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Re: What small workflow improvements would you like to see in the future?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Know1
When creating a new website variant I'd like the option to select "Based on variant (xxx)".
This is useful for three (or more) variants.
I've started with the basic full-size desktop version.
Then I created one for tablets in vertical mode (removed some stuff I don't need on this version).
Now I'm at the mobile version and it would be nice if I could have it be based on the second variant that's already closer to what I need. Now it defaults on copying everything from the Main variant.
As far as i know, the application uses the first Variant, default Main, as its basis for following Variants.
Simply rename it and change its size to 640px (or other small value) and work from there and make your "Main" the last and biggest.
Acorn
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1 Attachment(s)
Re: What small workflow improvements would you like to see in the future?
Please make it possible to render and upload only one page to the hosting site. I can not wait for all pages to be uploaded and there is no need.
I want to be able to just like rendering 1 page for preview, to upload to the hosting site just 1 page, the page that I am working on.
So another button where the yellow circle is but for uploading to hosting only 1 page.Attachment 125145
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Re: What small workflow improvements would you like to see in the future?
Give us a way to kill the upgrade nag with our update service has expired. On my nag for DPX, I do not have the option "Do not show this again"
I am using Xara Designer Pro X 16.2.0.56957 DL x64 Jun 5 2019
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Re: What small workflow improvements would you like to see in the future?
A button action that is a toggle for opening a popup Layer and on re-clicking the same button, closing the opened Layer.
Acorn
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Re: What small workflow improvements would you like to see in the future?
Hi Rob-Xar, I hope it’s not too late to make a suggestion. On the surface, it seems fairly straightforward and therefore easy. Whether or not that’s true, you know better than I. I apologize in advance for the length of the post.
A little background: After I had produced my first Xara WDP10 website back in 2014, I became away of the “heaviness” of certain components - things that Xara exported as image files rather than html code, which took a great deal of bandwidth to download on the user’s computer. When I revised my website the next year, I made great efforts to minimize such components, instead choosing components that I knew html could generate. But I made a mistake. I had read the manual from cover to cover before I started designing, so some parts didn’t register in my head. I inferred that components that Xara exported as image files were always downloaded.
In the last couple of weeks, after purchasing the extension of WDP16 and beginning the endeavor of the next redesign of our website, I read the whole manual for the first time since 2014. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that in fact, far more is exported to be generated by html code than I had imagined, and that many of the image files are only used by older browsers (like IE8 and earlier). I decided to figure out how it really works.
(Ignoring tiled background components) I have determined that Xara will produce html5 code that directly generates rectangles with any combination of the following attributes: rounded corners, simple linear gradient (any orientation, any color), outline with any width divisible by 0.1px, flat transparency (any orientation), any angle of rotation, any angle of skewing. This is incredibly powerful. While ellipses and polygons cannot be generated using code (instead requiring downloading an image file), I did figure out how to make circles, pill buttons, and ovals by rounding the corners of rectangles, allowing generation via coding.
Unfortunately, in Xara, flat shadowing (i.e., “wall”) can apparently only be applied to a plain rectangle with optional simple linear gradient (no rounded corners, outline, transparency, rotation, or skewing) and be coded for html. If any of these attributes are applied, it causes the component to be exported only as an image file, regardless of the recentness of the browser. But I did a little experimentation, editing the html file and inserting the shadow code (e.g., box-shadow: 5px 5px 6px rgba(0,0,0,0.25)) into the html code for shapes that included the attributes for rounded corners, outline, transparency, rotation, and skewing… and voilà… the shapes were produced perfectly by html! No image download required!
So FINALLY, for my suggestion for an improvement… That Xara would create shadows for such components with multiple attributes via html code, making the downloading of images unnecessary. With the importance of such forms with shadows in the material design concept, it would be a great help.
Thanks!
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Re: What small workflow improvements would you like to see in the future?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
gcellison
Hi Rob-Xar, I hope it’s not too late to make a suggestion. On the surface, it seems fairly straightforward and therefore easy. Whether or not that’s true, you know better than I. I apologize in advance for the length of the post.
A little background: After I had produced my first Xara WDP10 website back in 2014, I became away of the “heaviness” of certain components - things that Xara exported as image files rather than html code, which took a great deal of bandwidth to download on the user’s computer. When I revised my website the next year, I made great efforts to minimize such components, instead choosing components that I knew html could generate. But I made a mistake. I had read the manual from cover to cover before I started designing, so some parts didn’t register in my head. I inferred that components that Xara exported as image files were always downloaded.
In the last couple of weeks, after purchasing the extension of WDP16 and beginning the endeavor of the next redesign of our website, I read the whole manual for the first time since 2014. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that in fact, far more is exported to be generated by html code than I had imagined, and that many of the image files are only used by older browsers (like IE8 and earlier). I decided to figure out how it really works.
(Ignoring tiled background components) I have determined that Xara will produce html5 code that directly generates rectangles with any combination of the following attributes: rounded corners, simple linear gradient (any orientation, any color), outline with any width divisible by 0.1px, flat transparency (any orientation), any angle of rotation, any angle of skewing. This is incredibly powerful. While ellipses and polygons cannot be generated using code (instead requiring downloading an image file), I did figure out how to make circles, pill buttons, and ovals by rounding the corners of rectangles, allowing generation via coding.
Unfortunately, in Xara, flat shadowing (i.e., “wall”) can apparently only be applied to a plain rectangle with optional simple linear gradient (no rounded corners, outline, transparency, rotation, or skewing) and be coded for html. If any of these attributes are applied, it causes the component to be exported only as an image file, regardless of the recentness of the browser. But I did a little experimentation, editing the html file and inserting the shadow code (e.g., box-shadow: 5px 5px 6px rgba(0,0,0,0.25)) into the html code for shapes that included the attributes for rounded corners, outline, transparency, rotation, and skewing… and voilà… the shapes were produced perfectly by html! No image download required!
So FINALLY, for my suggestion for an improvement… That Xara would create shadows for such components with multiple attributes via html code, making the downloading of images unnecessary. With the importance of such forms with shadows in the material design concept, it would be a great help.
Thanks!
Good to see someone else with the same ideas. You can actually stack box shadows for very delicate shadowing.
You omitted text: https://www.talkgraphics.com/showthr...421#post586421. Once you have these, you can use scaling, rotation and cropping to make very complex vector shapes.
In my opinion, the worst of Xara's approach is depicted in its NavBars as these produce an excess of graphic images, bitmaps fonts and look awful at scale.
Acorn
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Re: What small workflow improvements would you like to see in the future?
Quote:
In my opinion, the worst of Xara's approach is depicted in its NavBars as these produce an excess of graphic images, bitmaps fonts and look awful at scale.
Long overdue a replacement solution.
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Re: What small workflow improvements would you like to see in the future?
Thanks for responding, Acorn. I only did a little investigating into assigning attributes to text. Indeed, I found it very limited. From what I can tell, you can’t apply gradients, transparency, rotation, skewing, etc. in Xara without causing it to be exported as images… never as html code. The only thing that worked for me was a flat (wall) shadow on unaltered text.
As you mention, you can produce some fairly intricate details in shadowing for unrounded rectangles in Xara. In fact, as I continued with my research after my previous post, I found that code following the material design concept usually involves two, and typically three, shadows (umbra, penumbra, and ambient) for any shadowed component. The result is realistic and awesome. To be able to accomplish that in Xara, I suppose one would have to manually insert the code into the exported html file (which would be time-consuming and risky), or overlay multiple copies of the rectangle, each with one of the shadows. The latter option is not too bad as the little bit of extra coding wouldn’t be too heavy for bandwidth.
Unfortunately, that method of creating “buried” copies with shadows still won’t work for rectangles with rounded corners, rotation, or skewing, as even the most basic of those shapes export as images.
I’m glad you agree that fixing this would be a great addition to the software.
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Re: What small workflow improvements would you like to see in the future?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
gcellison
I found that code following the material design concept usually involves two, and typically three, shadows (umbra, penumbra, and ambient) for any shadowed component. The result is realistic and awesome.
What to do is add the code as CSS? and that give a class name to each shape requiring the fancy shadows.
Acorn
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Re: What small workflow improvements would you like to see in the future?
I replied to someone else who was talking about something similar:
Basically the reason why Xara is very bitmap heavy is that back way back when HTML didn't have the capabilities to do a lot of things it can these days, so if you rotated text or added outlines for example, Xara would export it as an image to maintain the WYSIWYG aspect (some browsers could do this, but another thing Xara was big on was full compatibility on both modern and legacy browsers).
Wind forward a number of years and both browsers and HTML/CSS have developed quite a bit where these things are possible now without exporting everything as an image, either natively or using things like webkits. Its the same reason Xara uses IE protocols throughout.
There is no reason to keep supporting websites on IE these days, especially when MS say it's just for compatibility support on older websites, and I'd like to see Xara drop the need to make sure everything works on IE. Would immediately strip a load of time off testing.
Hopefully in future versions we can go overhaul the whole website side of Xara.
Oh and there was a comment on uploading just one page - If you have fast publish turned on Xara will only upload that page if it has been updated. If you have updated a repeating object then it will update every page this is used on. Having a single page upload option would be problematic for many reasons.
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Re: What small workflow improvements would you like to see in the future?
According to Wikipedia, while IE once had the lion’s share of the browser business, it currently accounts for only about 6% of usage around the world. (Some estimate that it’s closer to 3%.) And of that, a substantial majority is IE11, the last version Microsoft released. Usage of IE10 and earlier is around 0.24%. Since they introduced Edge, even Microsoft doesn’t fool with IE. So, the question is how long Xara (or any other software developer) should cater to such an infinitesimal audience.
Rob-Xar mentions that it would be much easier for the Xara developers not to have to do the testing to accommodate IE. I would add that for us users, ignoring IE10 and earlier from consideration would make our websites much more efficient (i.e., not exporting of many of the bitmap files). It would also allow the developers to concentrate on bringing things up to speed Chrome, Safari, and other modern browsers.
It would be advantageous to the software engineers, much better for the users, and the only ones who might notice a difference are the 0.24% who still use IE10 and earlier. It seems like the ones making the decision should take that into consideration.
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Re: What small workflow improvements would you like to see in the future?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
gcellison
So, the question is how long Xara (or any other software developer) should cater to such an infinitesimal audience.
From Xara's standpoint - I don't know but I can't see it being supported far in the future.
From a web developers standpoint - they shouldn't be catering at all to IE. It adds a large debt to testing and development time for very little benefits.
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Re: What small workflow improvements would you like to see in the future?
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Re: What small workflow improvements would you like to see in the future?
That was the link in my post #133 :P
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Re: What small workflow improvements would you like to see in the future?
so it was :p:p forgive me, but at least we are on the same page :D
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Re: What small workflow improvements would you like to see in the future?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
handrawn
forgive me
Never! I'm grabbing my pitchfork.
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Re: What small workflow improvements would you like to see in the future?
I hope you know how to use one, it's not quite as simple as they made it look in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit - make sure you have that anti-tetanus jab, just in case ;))
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Re: What small workflow improvements would you like to see in the future?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Acorn
What to do is add the code as CSS? and that give a class name to each shape requiring the fancy shadows.
Acorn
Hi Acorn. When I saw your earlier post, I was intrigued. The possibility of adding your own CSS code to affect the attributes generated by Xara sounds very powerful.
My programming skills are not bad, but my website designing skills are restricted to what I can do with Xara. I’ve figured out a few tricks and hacks to get it to do some things that aren’t obvious, but whenever I’ve started investigating programming (HTML, CSS, etc.), I haven’t gotten very far.
In pursuit of your suggestion, I attempted using Placeholders and even inserting code directly into the html file, but I had no luck. I did a search and found an article on the Xara website advising that editing the CSS is of no value when using Web Designer because of the way the software is set up. You obviously have a different opinion. Do you happen to have a link that would explain how to go about adding code?
Thanks
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Re: What small workflow improvements would you like to see in the future?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
gcellison
Hi Acorn. When I saw your earlier post, I was intrigued. The possibility of adding your own CSS code to affect the attributes generated by Xara sounds very powerful.
My programming skills are not bad, but my website designing skills are restricted to what I can do with Xara. I’ve figured out a few tricks and hacks to get it to do some things that aren’t obvious, but whenever I’ve started investigating programming (HTML, CSS, etc.), I haven’t gotten very far.
In pursuit of your suggestion, I attempted using Placeholders and even inserting code directly into the html file, but I had no luck. I did a search and found an article on the Xara website advising that editing the CSS is of no value when using Web Designer because of the way the software is set up. You obviously have a different opinion. Do you happen to have a link that would explain how to go about adding code?
Thanks
There is a lot of power in using xara Placeholders. This link, https://www.talkgraphics.com/showthr...ing-calculator, is an example of how you can leverage others' efforts into useful constructs. Note the need for <script> <style> wrappers. If it is to show on the page, it goes in the Code body. If it is calculations and effects, usually Code Head. Xara Names equate to IDs. Name of htmlclass="fred" adds class Fred to object(s).
There are a number of other Threads/Posts here: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Atal...eholder&ia=web that might assist you.
Acorn
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Re: What small workflow improvements would you like to see in the future?
Fantastic, Acorn. Much appreciated. I look forward to reading up on it.
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Re: What small workflow improvements would you like to see in the future?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Rob-Xar
From Xara's standpoint - I don't know but I can't see it being supported far in the future.
From a web developers standpoint - they shouldn't be catering at all to IE. It adds a large debt to testing and development time for very little benefits.
Just a final procrastinated lash to make sure the dead horse is really dead…
For a while I’ve maintained three YouTube accounts. One is for news and investigation, another for entertainment, videos, etc., and the last one for fluff. Since they constantly give you recommendations, I figured it was an easy way not to have interference from one realm to the next.
Rather than signing in and out, I use a different browser for each. Internet Explorer for news (just because I opened up that account first, when IE was still the prominent browser available), Google Chrome for entertainment, and Edge for fluff.
Why do I bother you with these details? This evening when I opened up the account in IE11, a banner across the top advised me, “We’ll stop supporting this browser soon. For the best experience please update your browser.” I’ve already moved it over to Firefox… no big deal.
But it makes it clear that EVERYone has essentially stopped making any effort to support IE. Xara should feel justified in doing the same.
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Re: What small workflow improvements would you like to see in the future?
maybe first all the big corporate IE users resisting change and the cost and effort and hassle involved will need to switch
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Re: What small workflow improvements would you like to see in the future?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
handrawn
maybe first all the big corporate IE users resisting change and the cost and effort and hassle involved will need to switch
You may be right, but I hope not.
Since anyone can easily install the most modern browsers for free and with little effort, I don’t understand why corporations would resist. More so, when they would surely be developing their own websites to be state of the art, with bells and whistles that most versions of IE couldn’t handle.
And if they see that IE, in all its versions, maintains only about 2% of the market, it would be a wise corporate move not to make efforts to force the survival of IE. Particularly since even Microsoft no longer supports it.
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Re: What small workflow improvements would you like to see in the future?
It's all down to technical debt.
Xara has relied so long on keeping the desktop applications there as cash cows that it is now inconceivable to it to rework the product into a more modern guise as all of that would show no visible customer benefit.
Most if not all of the third party products are stale as well so let's all pretend it not there, spend the money on Xara Cloud and hope we get away with it.
Ever more the cynic,
Acorn
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Re: What small workflow improvements would you like to see in the future?
Afterword. In answer to the original Thread question: any.
Acorn
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Re: What small workflow improvements would you like to see in the future?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
gcellison
You may be right, but I hope not.
Since anyone can easily install the most modern browsers for free and with little effort, I don’t understand why corporations would resist. More so, when they would surely be developing their own websites to be state of the art, with bells and whistles that most versions of IE couldn’t handle.
And if they see that IE, in all its versions, maintains only about 2% of the market, it would be a wise corporate move not to make efforts to force the survival of IE. Particularly since even Microsoft no longer supports it.
for example the use of IE as core component in an intranet, aint necessarily that simple to switch
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Re: What small workflow improvements would you like to see in the future?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
handrawn
for example the use of IE as core component in an intranet, aint necessarily that simple to switch
I'm sure you're right. I hope those companies will get on the bandwagon soon. It's not just that IE is no longer supported, even by Microsoft, and therefore doesn't recognize or execute a lot of modern coding, but that issues like security risks are not addressed. As hackers become more and more sophisticated, I assume IE becomes an easier target.
Again, my apologies for beating a dead horse.
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Re: What small workflow improvements would you like to see in the future?
Some good suggestions here for me small improvements that would/could make a big difference in my daily workflow:
- Align object points (currently somewhat possible by using a grid)
- Reset object rotation/size/other attributes (as far as I can tell currently not possible other than eyeballing it/aligning to grid)
- Fill shapes (as far as I can tell currently not possible other than using a combination of actions)
- Contour option without holes, ie a solid shape (currently only possible through a combination of actions)