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First of all a big hello to the Xara Discussion Group!
After reading the glowing remarks from many professional graphic designers on the i-us Xara pages, I have become interested in the software.
Here's my question: If this software's so great (and also cheap), then why is it not prominently used in every design studio? Why are Tools like Corel Draw, Illustrator or Freehand used more? Where's "the hook"? Or is it really simply a "well kept secret"?
Thanks in advance for any and all feedback!
Gary Vey
p.s. i now use photoshop and corel draw (corel since ver. 2)...
[imagination is more important than knowledge - a.einstein]
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First of all a big hello to the Xara Discussion Group!
After reading the glowing remarks from many professional graphic designers on the i-us Xara pages, I have become interested in the software.
Here's my question: If this software's so great (and also cheap), then why is it not prominently used in every design studio? Why are Tools like Corel Draw, Illustrator or Freehand used more? Where's "the hook"? Or is it really simply a "well kept secret"?
Thanks in advance for any and all feedback!
Gary Vey
p.s. i now use photoshop and corel draw (corel since ver. 2)...
[imagination is more important than knowledge - a.einstein]
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welcome to xara world gary...
yes it's the graphic world best kept secret but if you promise to tell all your friends about it we'll let you in!
i once was a skeptic too till about a week after downloading my first corelxara2 demo.
the best thing about xara is it's sheer intuitiveness which i have not found anywhere else as far as graphic software is concerned....and i have tried quiet few!..add speed ...a great supportive xaran community ...all this reasonably priced...(i've just happily upgraded this evening).
if you need any convincing download the beta...tutorials and movies available.
but best of all i've lost 22kgs the first month of using xara.
cheers.
philippe [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]
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I think big companies get into a groove and can't get out easily even if they wanted too (just a theory). They've been using Photoshop, Corel Draw or whatever for years and it would be very hard to just all of a sudden switch to a different program (even if it did have better features or better user interface) and learn that and lose money in the learning time process. Just my thought anyway and I don't base a program's actual merit upon how popular it is since sometimes the most popular things have problems ... I judge pretty much on the use of the demo.
I think the demo is absolutely essential... I won't buy a program without a trial version. My web editor I bought had a 45 day trial period... time enough to become dependant on it :-). Although the 15 day trial for XaraX is alright, I think 30 days is the least amount of time any demo should be for. Of course some companies (cough *Corel* cough) apparently don't believe in downloadable trial versions and I think are foolish for being so restrictive.
Of course feedback from the software company about any bugs discovered is good. There have been several bug complaints about XaraX recently and the Xara team has always written replies to this board and often said that these things were fixed for the next download. So this info is comforting too.
DK
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you wrote "best of all i've lost 22kgs the first month of using xara"
I assume the reason for this is that XaraX is so fun and addictive to use that it greatly cuts back on the trips to the fridge for snacks :-).
The user interface of XaraX is so well designed that there is less actual mouse movement and clicking to find commands than in other programs(unlike apps which rely heavily on palettes and menu lists). So this being the case , XaraX actually reduces the amount of exercise one gets from using it. So this cannot be the contributing factor to your incredible Xara induced weight loss.
Perhaps Xara would consider having an alternate 'diet version' with all commands buried within complicated menus and pop up windows to promote more intensive clicking routines. Just a suggestion to keep us graphics users in shape a bit :-D
DK
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Hi Gary,
Gross Gut.
Part of the reason Xara's presence is not what you might expect it to be has to do with its past. Until recently, Corel Corp., had distribution rights to Xara2 in North America; hence the name CorelXara 2. My understanding is that this really hamstrung Xara Ltd., because decisions as to marketing (which were virtually null) and how and when software upgrades were released were not fully in their control.
That should all change now that Xara Ltd. has control of their own destiny.
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dk
about the weigth loss thingy..well i use xara x "lite" but seriously it was just some outrageous claim to confuse our new skeptic mate gary even more.
come to think of it i do have many more friends and my bank balance has increased tenfolds since i started using xara... [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]
philippe
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Xara is more artistic and CorelDraw has more prefabricated stuff aboard.
Xara once advertised with: Less is more.
Believe me with Xara this is true [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]
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Here's my question: If this software's so great (and also cheap), then why is it not prominently used in every design studio? Why are Tools like Corel Draw, Illustrator or Freehand used more? Where's "the hook"? Or is it really simply a "well kept secret"?
easy:
1: No CMYK export.
2. Bad Text formating.
3. To cheap. (I tried to promote this soft, but
no one believes that a 1 Million DM company
works with a unknown soft for ~DM 140.-.
Anyhow in my opinion Xara should work on printing functions than animated gif's.
U are not alone...
PS.: Schön mal jemanden aus Deutschland hier zu haben, soweit ich das hier gesehen habe bin ich heir seit jahren der einzige...
rs
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Interresting that no one mentioned the downsides with Xara (hello Klaus, where are you? I thought you would be the first to comment :-).
If we compare Xara with other heavyweighters like CorelDraw, Freehand and Illustrator, we have some (minor) issues:
1) Xara (still) doesn't support multiple pages
2) You (still) can't export bitmaps in CMYK format (and the Tif LZW compression sucks)
3) Xara is quite poor when coming to text related things.
But on the other hand Xara is a superb complement to other programs (Photoshop and CorelDraw) - or is it the other way around.
Personally I do the main work in Xara and finish it up in Photoshop or CorelDraw (depending on if it is a vector or bitmap job).
-Paul
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Xara has had a topsy turvy time with branding and market placement, this has hampered our success, and the marketing support in the past left a lot to be desired.
Pointers to the merits of Xara can be taken from Corel, if mimicry is the sincerest from of flattery then CD7 (or8) was the biggest compliment to Xara that can be given, Draw copied the whole concept of info bars, transparency tools, anti-aliasing, on-document UI e.g. linear fills, threw away their rollups and even the icons appeared to be very similar to ours.
In terms of desirable features I would say
-Performance, we have probably the fastest software anti-aliasing 2D rendering engine in the world, our redraw is many times faster than CorelDraw for instance
-All of the features are interactive and intuitive, try feathering, colour editing, bevelling, shadowing etc and compare with Illustrator, Fireworks, CorelDraw, and I believe there to be no comparison for usablility and productivity and performance
-Almost all of our stuff has on-document UI, compare with Illustrator, Fireworks, no horrible floating palettes everywhere taking up screen space and obscuring the document, our context sensitive info bar is a big help here
-We are very general in what can be applied to what, try a blend of a bevelled, transparent, shadowed object, CorelDraw won't even consider letting you blend a transparent object!! This is very basic
-We have a number of novel features such as our stretching buttons which is an enormous time saver for graphics designers
-The bevel tool provides very powerful and flexible lighting effects
-Lots of other things of course such as comprehensive and flexible brush stroking system, dynamic smoothing of scaled bitmaps etc etc
Then main aim was to provide a productive, intuitive, and flexible UI, along with a very fast and flexible rendering technology, and I think this has been achieved.
Mark Goodall (biased.... me?)
Xara Ltd
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Good points Mark but don't forget the context sensitive on-line multimedia help system. This is one of the most impressive features of Xara. Becoming productive with XaraX will be almost instant and getting answers to "how to's" will be just as fast if not faster.
No one else has a Multimedia Help system that can compare to XaraX. Just wait and see. Does any competing products even have a Multimedia help system? I have already experienced what this can do for newbies (and me too [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]) This is an awsome feature often overlooked. You gatta see it in action to believe it.
... Now where is my CD? (looking up, down, left and right) [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]
The BEST is good enough!
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Mark,
To mimicry your House of Commons: hear! hear! [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_cool.gif[/img]
And don't let Ed hurry you up. Quaility before a fast delivery [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]
[This message was edited by René van der Houwen on November 28, 2000 at 10:39 AM.]
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Here's my 2 cents worth...
Pros: very fast program (loads fast, opens files fast, closes fast, renders fast), and the best anti-aliasing and transparency around. Much easier interface than Illustrator. I use Xara for all my graphics illustration work almost exclusively. We do have Illustrator here too, but the thing is so cumbersome, so slow and so hard to use I only go to it when I absolutely have to (e.g., creating an AI9 file from a Xara original).
Paul's cons:
1) Xara (still) doesn't support multiple pages
2) You (still) can't export bitmaps in CMYK format (and the Tif LZW compression sucks)
3) Xara is quite poor when coming to text related things.
1 and 2 I agree with (although I don't have any opinion on the TIF compression, I rarely export TIF files), but you can work around 1 and 2 fairly easily (I'd LOVE multiple pages though!).
For the way I use Xara however, number 3 is not a problem for me. It excels at the work I need to do using text (mostly logos, and mostly running text around a circle).
The main trouble I've had in the past is waiting for program patches and updates (especially as they apply to file import/export, i.e., EPS and AI filters). Hopefully now that Xara has full control back, they will post these kinds of things on a regular basis between program updates.
Stan
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Wow! I never expected to receive so much great feedback in such a short time - great discussion group!
Since the majority of comments are positive, i guess the only thing left for me to do is download the trial version and see for myself, and then grab a crack from astalavista - JUST KIDDING ! :-) (My tax man likes me a lot more when i actually buy stuff!) ...
But seriously, your comments have helped a lot - it's always good to hear the experiences from other users.
the "Pros" sound really good (although speed has not been to much of an issue for me in the past).
As far as the "cons" go, (CMYK export, Text, etc) the only on which concerns me is "bad text formating" - i'll have to check it out myself, though.
(concerning "weight loss": i keep my german beer belly in check every time i work with a macromedia product :-) ..... click, dock, close ... 2 kilos gone! )
once again, thanks ... now it's off to the download section - probably i'll be back in 16 days with a load of "nervy new user Questions" ...
gruss,
Gary
p.s. moin, znd ! alles klar?
[imagination is more important than knowledge - a.einstein]
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Gary,
you will become an instant fan once you use Xara.
Try downloading a tutorial movie first. It's the
best way to fall in love with xara in 3 minutes
flat [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]
- Venu
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With regards to:
Xara (still) doesn't support multiple pages.
Illustrator (still) doesn't support multiple pages, either, and they're in version 9.
As Mark mentioned above, Xara innovated many of the features that are only now starting to appear in other programs. Without Xara, the world may have never heard of vector transparency.
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And I (still) don't use Illustrator [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]
And one more comment about exporting tifs:
If Xara would support CMYK export I would probably export a lot of my work directly to CMYK jpeg, but now I have to go via Photoshop to do the coverting (and while I am in PS I usually apply an unsharp mask as well, and if you don't - try it). And therefor I chose to export as tif so I don't mess up work, and LZW to save disk space (because I usually use a Zip-drive).
-Paul
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znd, your´re right with your above statement.
pros: lightning fast
very good onscreen appearance of your artwork
reliable output (what you see is what you really get)
easy to use
cool bitmap handling and incredible transparency fx
cons: no cmyk output
text handling (kerning is fixed now [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img])
font problems (type 1)
lack of product updates
xara x final 1.0 still buggy
anyways,
xara rules
Bye
FLySOLO
ps: to all german visitors:
holödrio aus wiesbaden [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]
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Hello
Standay said
"You (still) can't export bitmaps in CMYK format (and the Tif LZW compression sucks)"
What is wrong with the Tif LZW compression?
You could say that the TIF export 'sucks', but not LZW compression. It is just a code replacing, strings of the same digits for a code that denotes the digits.
I compared a normal tif export with a LZW in Photoshop. There was no difference.
What are you comparing the exports with?
I have just made a 5cm square image in Photoshop 6 at 300 dpi. This was 591 by 591 pixels,filled red and saved as LZW tif.
I made 5 cm square in XaraX filled red and exported as LZW tif. The Xara was 25 kb and Photoshop 24 kb.
They both open in Photoshop as 591 pixels and 1mb
Dragged both in to a document in Photoshop, differenced them, merged and equalised the result.
There is no difference, except that Xarax has a 1 pixel anti-alias that shows up as a 1 pixelCyan stroke all round.
Solution turn off antialiasing.
So I did that. The export was now 22kb.
Did the same in Photoshop. Photoshop said that it could not equalise, because the merged image had only one brightness value 0,0,0.
I had better find a new interest as I think that I have too much time on my hands!!
I think I will revive my darkroom.
Mike Engles
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Mike,
"and the Tif LZW compression sucks)
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Hello
Standay said"
You've got the wrong attribution on that TIF compression comment, I was quoting Paul's opinion about tif compression (see his message further up the list). While I'd like multiple pages and CMYK output, my comment to his TIF statement was that "I don't have any opinion on the TIF compression, I rarely export TIF files." I will occasionally use TIF when I want to import into PageMaker, as it seems to "like" TIFs, but my most common export format is transparent GIF.
I didn't want to leave the impression I don't like TIF format!
Stan
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Well everything here is all true about Xara, the software that spoils you for anything else.. I still like using 2 and will sometime soon upgrade to X.
The most pertinent comment though belongs to Gary: "..i keep my german beer belly in check every time i work with a macromedia product.. "
Freehand for example, has the ability to turn what appears to be a quick and simple design exercise into a nightmare. When life seems too good and easy, I use only Freudhand until I truly remember the truism "no gain without pain".
Xara makes me too soft. What I need sometimes is a workout.. (turn that exercycle right up to the red line..)
Q.
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Yep, it was I who complained about the tif compression. And I just also compaired the LZW compression with both Photoshop and XaraX - and to my surprise it gave just about the same result (filesizes). [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_confused.gif[/img]
AMOF I had a poster job a while ago where the filesizes of Xara and PS LZW TIF:s differed quite a lot. I also mentioned it in this discussion group at that time.
Oh well, I guess I have to take back the critisism about the LZW part.
-Paul
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Hello
Apologies to Stan.
If XaraX tifs are larger, it it usually because of anti-aliasing on the edge pixels.
This can turned off using the quality slider.
Mike Engles
