Why did you release Web Designer 10 when it clearly isn't ready for release?

Xara's Web Designer 10 software (hereinafter "Xara's new software") doesn't even upload simple 4 paged websites to prominent hosting companies' servers. It's supposed to be "plug and play" software, not "plug and PRAY." Xara is aware of the problems, but prefers to sit day-after-day saying it will tend to the issue, without actually meaningfully doing so. This, despite Xara's having personal and confidential FTP uploading data, while having been notified that third parties are suffering increasingly amidst the unforeseen delays. Xara's support staff nevertheless stops "working" promptly at 5p.m. each day, as if to telegraph to the world how goods and services emanating from socialist nations can hold back naive, overly-trusting entrepreneurs in more capitalistic ones.

Meanwhile Xara's new software's linking feature doesn't function properly. Links installed using the same commands yield varying results, with no rhyme or reason to it. But since the site can't be uploaded even using modern equipment and Windows software, I suppose that that's all immaterial...

Xara's new software doesn't even properly upload (for website template inclusion) logos designed using Xara's logo-designing software. It's as if Xara's aware that they released Web Designer 10 before it was ready for prime time. Meanwhile Xara stalls in hopes that still more patches can resolve the issues and customers who complain can be made to seem like whiners. Well consumer rights legal protections exist to protect unsuspecting customers from such callous, if not flagrantly dishonest conduct. I wish I had not heard of Xara. As an attorney with considerable knowledge of consumer rights, I plan to volunteer my time helping to protect future victims from Xara. Let me assure you that I have no investments in any software companies, and no incentives to belittle Xara other than a sense of moral indignation like I would expect you to feel if and when you are ever robbed. I don't fly off the handle and criticize prematurely, but it is fortunately rare to come across such laziness, incompetence, and callousness like what Xara has knowingly and repeatedly displayed. Worse still, my money hasn't been refunded, even as the several dozen hours that I squandered learning Xara software's intricacies are forever down the drain. Please, Xara, keep your products to yourself or at least the search engine advertising within your socialist homeland where efficiency isn't expected of purchasers. Elsewhere we have to be efficient and are held accountable for lax procurement selectivity policies. I analogize your performance to driving a vehicle on public roadways while under the influence of alcohol.

Welcome Rixar,

Perhaps you'd like to explain in more detail the problems you're experiencing with XWD10? (We're so looking forward to it)

I'm sure the forum would be more than willing to assist you. It would be of great help if you could list your somewhat numerous problems in greater detail so members can follow exactly what you are trying to achieve.

Egg

Are you able to access Xara support tickets? Here's one I created more recently, after having tried for days to interact with Xara when your support ticket system was knowingly down and it was possible merely to e-mail:

[XOL #TDI-748-97228]

It has some confidential server-specific information in it that I'd prefer not to post openly here. But it otherwise helps one see with greater detail the ordeals that I've gone through which software that's actually ready for prime time wouldn't have put me through.

My webhost has spent hours with me this week trying to figure out what the heck is wrong with Xara's software. It has since given up and suggested that I try WordPress. If only I had done that before, I'd likely not be suffering and having a beloved client suffer this month because of my misplaced trust. Xara has become my new "four letter word", I respectfully submit. In our country, we are potentially liable for making silly procurement selections. I'm of British descent and it pains me to see such mediocrity emanate from my ancestral homeland.

Hi Rixar,

"Are you able to access Xara support tickets?"

Obviously not. These tickets are confidential between yourself and Xara.

"My webhost has spent hours with me this week trying to figure out what the heck is wrong with Xara's software."

We are completely unable to assist you unless you explain your problem in greater detail.

Why is your host suggesting Wordpress? This is a CMS system, in no way related to Xara's web design software.

As a matter of interest in which country as an ex pat do you reside. Cloud cookoo-land?

Your final query suggests that you do indeed work for Xara, and resent how I've called to the public attention what you guys know all too well behind the scenes: Web Designer 10 isn't ready for Prime Time even as your team has profitably duped folks into making purchasing decisions favoring Xara over the competition. As for countries, I'm an attorney in the U.S.A. And I'm increasingly sympathetic to why Scotland will vote to secede this September. The U.S.A. is by no means perfect and secession's highly welcome for at least some of our states, but at least there's still the right not to be deceived by inadequate vendors. We are a bankrupt country but not as much as the U.K.

http://www.usdebtclock.org/world-debt-clock.html

By procuring from Xara, I did what I could so that we could work together and pull our respective entrepreneurs out of financial ruts. If I ultimately stood up for my rights a bit too much like Thomas Jefferson, maybe it's because he founded my law school (U.Va.). He visited Washington D.C. a grand total of zero times during his final 20 years of life, despite living just a hundred or so miles away (in Charlottesville, Va.). In other words, we don't have all the answers but if a vendor of ours put a citizen of yours through what Xara has put me and my own through this month, there would be legal recourse in favor of yours at the expense of our vendor. As there should be. That's not cookoo-land; it's capitalism.

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Originally Posted by Rixar

...If only I had done that before, I'd likely not be suffering and having a beloved client suffer this month because of my misplaced trust. Xara has become my new "four letter word", I respectfully submit...

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So, you have a client. Check.

You built said client a web site. Check.

Did you do the first thing a professional does, such as see if the particular piece of software was fit for its intended purpose first? Heck, I upgrade most all the software I use for design work every release. It is highly improbable I will ever do something mission critical with any of those software titles before thoroughly, and I mean thoroughly, testing it.

Hello again Rixar,

I've really enjoyed your very low quality flaming. x

MWenz:
We have a mediocre (non-Xara) website, and need to upgrade it. The Xara-designed beta version (the improved version) can't even be uploaded to our hosting service, which is a prominent one by the way: (http://www.Pair.com). If you saw the e-mails with which Xara has tip-toed around such issues, figuring I can just wallow in mediocrity while Xara might eventually resolve its software's bugs at its socialism-imposed leisure, you'd likely share in my growing ire. I was very polite day after day after day but enough's enough.

By the way, my client is primarily a legal / business client. But part of its solution (now that I've accomplished what it needed for me to achieve in court) is in reforming its business marketing. I had figured that Xara would help us do that by way of a website designer. Xara's doesn't work though. Neither does Xara's support staff, from what I've witnessed.

Egg:
To my knowledge, this is a forum for correspondence directed at Xara. That you saw fit to jump in, throw eggs at me and get your jollies in the process is water over the dam, I suppose. To each their own. Have at it. :rolleyes: But personally, I favor entrepreneurs' consumer rights regardless of what nation they came from. Our laws classify any business worth less than $20 million dollars as a consumer, by the way.

First I'd like to welcome you to the forums Rixar. :)

Now I'd like to clear up a few things The moderators here are volunteers and are not Xara employees. There are some Xara employees who do frequent the forums but you should be able to tell from the labels beneath their screen names.

Egg is not a moderator nor a Xara employee and his remark about Cuckoo land was out of line.

As others on here have tried to tell you please give us some information that we can work with to help you. For example are you using the share menu? or are you using the publish feature? If using the share menu you need to be using the publish feature. if using the publish feature please list the steps you have taken and what does or doesn't occur and any error dialogues that may come up, screenshots can also be helpful.

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Egg is not a moderator nor a Xara employee and his remark about Cuckoo land was out of line.

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Okay Frances, nothing in this forum has changed, flaming is acceptable. Goodbye. Egg

Hi Angelize:
Thank you for the reply. I will be happy to share what I can, out of a zeal to see entrepreneurs thrive universally. Maybe Xara has some well-meaning folks who simply lack control of the cancer within, which I am happy to do my part to help remove.
I will return soon with answers to your interesting questions. :)

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Egg is not a moderator nor a Xara employee and his remark about Cuckoo land was out of line.

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I've never pretended to be such Frances. My remark about cloud-cookoo land is valid. Rixar is flaming the forum.

For publishing (or attempting to do so) in Web Designer 10, I go to:

File --> Publish Website ---> Publish (button).

No change to the hosted website occurs whatsoever, even as Web Designer 10 tells me:

"Publish Complete".

I use Windows 7, have a modern and powerful Dell computer and the hosting provider is http://www.Pair.com (which is prominent). I would prefer not to publicly share the website's address at this point, given the hostility that folks like Egg have already displayed. But Xara is well aware of it, and has not demonstrated much of an earnest desire to get its own software to function for this paying customer. I tried to help the underdog, the overseas newcomer to U.S. search engine advertising for those seeking web software. :(

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Originally Posted by Rixar

Hi Angelize:
Thank you for the reply. I will be happy to share what I can, out of a zeal to see entrepreneurs thrive universally. Maybe Xara has some well-meaning folks who simply lack control of the cancer within, which I am happy to do my part to help remove.
I will return soon with answers to your interesting questions. :)

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If web designer has issues uploading the site, use FileZilla. You would need to export the site to disk, configure FZ to connect with your host, but then publishing is quick and painless.

If you have trouble connecting FZ to your host, there are details in the hosting email they would have sent you that are not setup correctly in FZ. And therefore may not be correct in the Xara software you have.

But we wouldn't know without some more details on your part.

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I understand your frustration. But unless you are actually conversing with a known Xara employee here, you are only conversing with other users. Egg is a very helpful person. His patience level for tirades is only a little less than mine is. Probably a male thing. Dunno.

But as mentioned early into the first thread you posted to abotu this issue, one does catch more flies with honey. That doesn't mean one needs to be a mat that gets walked upon. But civility is always the best course...and like in most of life, someone has to be first.
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Mike

I wasn't saying you were Egg just correcting assumptions Rixar made in post #5

Everyone in this thread needs to step back and try to get along :) let's see what information Rixar provides when he comes back and go from there. :)

Nicely put Mike :)

My webhost (Pair) actually recommended FileZilla, but I think for WordPress. Someone in these forums responded to me that WordPress isn't what I need though, web design-wise. (It wasn't said by that person tongue-in-cheek, ;) ). They mentioned CMS. And yet, my webhost says:

"the Wordpress CMS is by far the most popular for web design. You can find more information on wordpress at https://wordpress.org/. On that site they also have examples of sites created using the Wordpress CMS."

This, only after they invested hours in me this week trying to enable me to keep using Xara's software. Is CMS inferior to web designer software? I'm asking sincerely. The sooner I can finally get the modified website up, the sooner I can try and help the (ailing) business client's other needs.

Up front, let me say that I do not use my Xara Designer Pro for web sites with the exception of aiding others. In fact, I don't use WYSIWYG web authoring software for anything except quick mock-ups.

FileZilla is independent of any authoring system. Even when I publish web site stuff for helping others on a forum, though everything I use has the ability to upload directly, I still use FZ.

https://filezilla-project.org

CMS software such as WordPress isn't inferior to WYSIWYG software for web site building. I believe it is inferior to other web publishing platforms, but that is as much a preference thing as reality. WordPress, and other such platforms, have a steep learning curve if one wants to actually make the site(s) not look like a cookie-cutter made it. The require a deep understanding of HTML, PHP, etc., in order to customize the look, feel, and actions of the web site.

Mike

Why all the snippy comments about the UK and England? Very un-attorney like and offensive as well as being ever so slightly off-topic. I hope the moderators will make it clear to you.

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No change to the hosted website occurs whatsoever, even as Web Designer 10 tells me:

"Publish Complete".

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I can only state that if this is what you're seeing then the site is being uploaded. However it's being uploaded to the incorrect folder/file and as such will not be visible when you view your site.

Hi Egg:
Unfortunately the technicians at Pair haven't been able to find whatever's supposedly been uploaded. But I sincerely appreciate the insight.

Xara is complacent because of the creeping crud of socialism!!! Sheesh! Warped world view from lack of knowledge or what! And you brought it up totally off topic.

Have you filled in the sub-folder option? Oh, you're an attorney in the US, of course you will have. I'll crawl back to my Soviet cell in a basement.

I'll join you John.

Check this set of screenshots I've put together. They outline the steps needed to publish from Xara. I've used Designer Pro 9 for these but the process is the same. and you should be able to open the .xar file in WD10. Once you go through this if you are still having problems let us know at exactly which stage publishing stops or if any error dialogues come up.

Hi Zaphodeist:
I did indeed try the sub-folder fill-in option. Indeed, my webhost and I varied it a bit, experimentally (to no avail).

Lets please keep on topic. As this is very much an international forum please lets keep politics out of it :) Forum Rules

Oh bottom, lets keep to the point and dispense with all this political crap!

I'm still downloading Angelize's document. Hopefully I'm not getting hacked by someone hiding behind the picture of such an innocent looking, well-meaning woman. :cool:

Hello!

If you require assistance then please ask for it.

Egg

I do, please. Laugh all you like but unfortunately when I activate the "full screen" feature of the image that Angelize kindly created, it doesn't enlarge. Merely the surrounding backdrop sort of does. Out of admitted ignorance I ask: how can I enlarge her screenshot, please, so that I can read her notes and such there?

I can enlarge the pages that she submitted (by right-clicking on them and going to "page options"), but the images contained therein do not get bigger...just the backgrounds. Ah well. It was good of her to try.

Attachment 102365

In the spirit of tovarishch-ship may I suggest you run through the basic videos from Xara and the many provided here? Xara has a shallower learning curve than other programs.

For the publishing, download and run De-Bug [before you open WD] while trying - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/s.../bb896647.aspx - then send the log to Xara ... and/or Pair

You really need to back up and learn to communicate what it is you are wanting to accomplish. You, at the same time, need to learn web development especially as regards whatever application you are using.

You are putting the cart before the horse and setting yourself up for a far more difficult time than it needs to be.

I think you indicated you already have something designed in the application. Have you bothered to download and installed FileZilla? Have you published to disk what you have made? Have you tried to configured FZ to upload the site?

Work on the design after you see if you can even upload.

Frances and others can help you design-wise. But if you still are having issues uploading, it will be all for naught.

Thanks for the video suggestion, Zaphodeist. I took up viewing, weeks ago, the Xara-hosted versions (often repeatedly).

Your screenshot did the trick, elegantly enough. Thanks for that as well. Success breeds success. Newcomers to Xara's Web Designer software have the potential to engage in elaborative rehearsal, moreso when initial success makes it feasible to obtain the additional experience. I'm glad that you had enough success (and / or training) with Xara's products for that to happen.

MWenz, et al:
Is the Word Press web design software's learning curve more steep than the one with Xara's Web Designer? If so, by approximately how much please?

To zoom in on the document click the maginfying glass on the left or on the top toolbar or you can go to utilities> options and click the mouse tab and set the scroll wheel behaviour to zoom in and out.

Edit: I missed John's screenshot but hey you can never have too many :)

Thanks Angelize. Are you guys depriving yourself of sleep over in the U.K., or are you in North America? I suspect the former. Please don't lose sleep for me. At any rate, your dedication is astonishing. Perhaps Xara's worthy of your loyalty?

By the way, I've been experimenting with FileZilla (FTP software). In what format should the Web Designer-generated template be saved in, please? It presently appears in the .web format. But at least in the Web Designer 10 software, the "Save As" feature doesn't seem to provide one with the option to save it into whatever format might be necessary. Perhaps .gif? Feedback would be much appreciated, please.

I'm in Canada, on the west coast, so no I'm not sleep deprived, at least not yet :)

You don't want to save it. Export it. File> export> choose website(HTML) from the list. Then in Filezilla you need to navigate to the file on your computer on the left side of the screen and drag and drop it to the correct location on your web server which will show up in the right side once you have entered in your ftp log in details and connected.

I've had some awesome apartment mates down in Mexico City, Mexico from Canada, right as NAFTA was going into effect and we were exploring our Southern neighbor (while I tried my best to help it reach its democracy potential through campaign finance reform, which worked swimmingly well I'm delighted to see). Those were the days! :-) If only the drug cartels hadn't managed to set up shop after being successfully run out of Colombia. I maintain hope. Anyhow, great to meet you Angelize! :-)

Do you believe Web Designer 10 can actually function? Earlier today I canceled my purchase of it (but that hasn't been processed by Xara yet). But if it can actually work, then I'm all for using it because of you folks and our spirited & meaningful interactions. I don't seek freebies though but it would be a shame to see the dozens and dozens of hours that I've spent trying to learn this software go down the drain. I'm actually a terrific customer when I'm not feeling substantially cheated. Right now I've got a legal client that really needs for me to get the website going (as I can easily prove). It's sad that I've thus far not succeeded. They're really nice folks. Maybe because they know I work late hours when needed, 7 days a week, so that folks won't feel abandoned. Xara is soooo lucky to have you loyalists out there. I'm amazed. Perhaps Xara software isn't the ripoff that I'd feared. Their 3D logo designer has worked well for me over the years. Your sincere feedback would be much appreciated, although I sense that I know what the answer is or you'd not be volunteering here... Hmm...

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Originally Posted by Rixar

...Is the Word Press web design software's learning curve more steep than the one with Xara's Web Designer? If so, by approximately how much please?

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In a word? Magnitudes.

Imagine this. I am not a lawyer. And I don't play one on TV. Please don't take this the wrong way, but from reading your latest posts concerning Web Designer, I suspect your being able to learn WordPress would be akin to me arguing a case before the Supreme Court. OK. Maybe that is over the top, but it is closer to that than me preparing a brief.

In order to make any customizations, one really needs to work on the site on the local computer. Because you cannot actually see the effects of what you are working on (it's code), you need to review the alterations inside a web browser.

In order to view the files and the changes you are doing in a web browser, you need to set up a web server on your computer using a technology such as XAMPP or WAMPP. This is so you can even view the thousands of files WordPress (or Joomla, etc) is comprised of on your local computer. The last Joomla installation I did a while back, post installation (bare-bones installation) has 4,598 files in 882 folders. Now, one is not going to edit all of those files, but that should give an idea of the scope of what such a site really is.

The XAMPP/WAMPP server is also needed in order to install and use MySQL, the database technology where the data of such a site resides. Depnding upon what one does with a site, you may well need to alter that database--I have needed to on every single installation of WordPress, ExpressionEngine, Joomla, Drupal, etc.

Now, using the installation your host's c-panel likely has is an almost turn-key matter. Until you need to customize it. That's when all the above, and more, comes into play.

This is why WYSIWYG applications abound. They have limitations. Those limitations are the trade-offs for being able to see what you are building in a print-centric sort of way. What I mean by "print-centric" is that using a WYSIWYG application is akin to using a graphic design package to lay out a letterhead for your office. What you see is what you get. Indeed, most all the popular WYSIWYG web designer applications have some sort of roots in print design as regards to how one goes about the designing of a web site.

While I too am on the left coast, I am beginning to turn into a pumpkin...

You are in good hands and will get good advice from the people in this thread and others here who use web designer to build sites. If I could make one suggestion it is this:

Less metaphor and off-topic stuff and more honest questions. One question/topic per thread will also aid those coming after you or who are just reading the forums to find specific solutions to specific needs.

Thank you for the feedback. I am astonished at the loyalty that Xara has won from several of you here at these forums. It would seem that they deserve more of the benefit of the doubt than I had previously thought. Xara is blessed to have your loyalty. I just swam a mile to unwind from a long day, and have since sent a polite e-mail to Xara inviting them to live up to the expectations that they have sought to create in potential clients like we used to be. I have reversed our cancellation (for now, anyway) and let them know that they have good reason to appreciate you folks. To be continued... (and by the way, I can easily prove everything I've reported in these forums in case anyone suspects fabrications of any sort on my part).