-
Perhaps what Xara need to know to improve marketing (if they don't know already), is where you saw Xara first, and what made you buy it?
For me it was a demo at (I think) the Windows 95 show in London - it just wowed me - the speed and power.
What about everyone else?
www.thelondonhouse.co.uk
-
Perhaps what Xara need to know to improve marketing (if they don't know already), is where you saw Xara first, and what made you buy it?
For me it was a demo at (I think) the Windows 95 show in London - it just wowed me - the speed and power.
What about everyone else?
www.thelondonhouse.co.uk
-
I bought my first PC ever in november 1999, and bought the DRAW9 suite. I often visited I-US com andwas intrigued by Gary's Xara pages. But when I finally decided to invest the money, Xara couldn't be bought anymore, and I had to wait for this mysterious "X".
Although I don't use DRAW anymore, I still wonder whether the former version of Xara wasn't more stable than this one...
X has, for me, already too much features I never use: the drawing app would be sufficient for me. But this is the case with most software. For me.
Being a little paranoid (is this an understatement?) I feel that there is still a lot of big money busy in the background, kindling the conservatism in designers to counterbalance X's superior possibilities. Think of video2000 and Betamax: the worst, VHS, has won...
If you don't work against time, time often works for you.
-
I was a CorelDraw user. At a local CorelDRAW user's group meeting, a graphic designer gave a XARA DEMONSTRTATION. I REMEMBER HE SHOWED GRADIENT TRANSPARENCIES. I had never seen a vector program for the PC that could this.
So I went to the now defunct local Egghead store. They had a promotion with a 20 or 30 dollar discount. I bought CorelXARA used it a little and then about a year later a lot more when I needed to produce web graphics.
I MUST SAY THAT THE DEMOS ON THE DISKS ARE WHAT KEPT MY INTEREST, particularly since they showed that some pretty "sophisticated" stuff could be produced without a lot of blood, sweat, and tears.
I-US.com was the other vehicle which kept my attention on Xara.
-
I bought it on the recommendation of one:
GARY W. PRIESTER
and things have been getting better ever' since.
[img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] ...Tad
-
Thanks Erik and Tad
I saw Xara demonstrated in Huston at the CorelWorld Conference by Leah Hayman, one of the brightest people who ever worked at Corel (she left shortly thereafter). DRAW was just introducing version 6 at the time.
When I saw the gradient transparency, and drag and drop features, I was totally blown away and said, got to have it. And I bought it on the spot.
Gary
Gary Priester
Moderator Person
<a href="http://home.earthlink.net/~garypriester">
he tub mob relieves</a>
-
Looking for a photo-editing program, bought a bundle called Corel Graphics Pack II. Hidden inside was Xara. It's all I have left of the whole bundle.
Arnold
-
I was using Draw5 and following Gary's monthly tuts. He kept sneaking in Xara stuff and boasting about how fast it was. I was sick and tired of long screen re-draws.
Judi
-
A friend from England came over to visit and brought CorelXARA and gave it to my Dad about ?5? years ago. I don't think my Dad ever used it more than once. All I had known about computer graphics before that was Window's "Paint"! So when I first started using xara I was amazed by the simplest things. I started drawing boomboxes and radios and whatever we had lying around the house and was amazed by the detail I could input into the picture. I have lost those renders since then [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_frown.gif[/img] would be nice to see what I was doing back then!
Many years later after everyone else had XaraX I finally saved up some money and my Dad agreed to split the cost. Best money I've ever spent
Steve Newport
-
I'm sure there are more people than just me out there who maybe don't want to admit to it, but I owned an Acorn RISC OS computer and had used Artworks.
Around the time Windows 95 came out, and it was obvious Acorn computers had been dead and buried, I read about a PC version of Artworks. I think it was going to be called Camelot, but was released under the name Xara Studio.
So, I bought the Xara software because I'd used Artworks, written by Xara under the Computer Concepts name.
-
My first experience with computer graphics was Draw 7. Somehow I found the i-us site and Gary's tutorials. The earlier ones were done in Draw and that was part of my learning experience. I also subscribed to the Corel Magazine. In both of these sources Gary's Xara tutorials intrigued me, so I purchased version 2 through the i-us site and it's been an evolving process ever since!
I use Xara for almost all of my graphic and printing needs in my office. This includes business cards, stationery, post cards, stickers, forms, brochures, promotional materials, etc.
Regards, Joel
-
Being a real Macintosh I of course had a apple macintosh which I played around with. My office bought a 486 and coreldraw 5. I had fun playing with that because it brought many capabilities I had not experienced on the mac. I also experienced how frustratingly slow it could be.
One day I saw a two page spread in a 'Tiger Software' catalogue for Corel's newest offering - CorelXara. I suspect that ad was the only promotion Corel ever did for Xara. I ordered it from Tiger (an American company) - the final price after exchange on the money, duty, shipping, Canadian taxes, etc. was still much less than buying coreldraw and the ad convinced me it was a better product. In order to run the application I bought the first apple powermac on the market - 66mhz. Apple sold it with a 'dos card' that was a 486dx2 with 16mb ram running win3.11 if I recall correctly. Amazingly I ran CorelXara 1.0 with the application residing on a Iomega scsi zip drive! The setup, due to limitations with the dos card wouldn't print properly. Soon, growing to love xara I realized it was more important to me than a mac and in order to get more out of the program I bought a PC. I bought my upgrade to 1.5 from I/us but lost my purchase info and was therefore locked out of the member only xara content. I rather regret that I grew up with xara without the benefit of Gary Priester's influence. If I had been privy to his xara content I'm sure I could have learned much easier.
Regards, Ross
<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>
-
Mentions Xara in his book on Photoshop 6. I downloaded the trial version and found the Xaraxone through a search engine. I ordered my CD shortly thereafter. Xara is *certainly* the best you can get, for the money. I've never used any Corel graphics programs so I don't know how they compare or if they are worth the much greater expense.
-
.......I owned an Acorn Riscos computer and got interested in vector drawing via the onboard DRAW program. I saw a demostration of Artworks and had to have it. 2 or 3 years later at an Acorn Computer Exhibition CC were demonstrating the then new Xara, with it's transparencies. Unfortunately they had decided not to continue developing for the Acorn, so I had no choice but to convert to a PC.
The Acorn was a great computer, with a wimp enviroment years before Microsoft introduced Windows 3. It always amazed me how Corel Draw could be a industry standard when I saw it's crawling screen redraw and lousy screen aliasing.
But thats indusrty standards for you.
Egg
-
I stumbled across Xara3D4 on tucows site. Decided to go to Xara.com to download the demo and saw a link to I/us. There I saw the link to XaraXone. After looking at Gary's tutorials, I downloaded the beta for XaraX and the following day I bought it.
Thank you Gary, and all the wonderful people that frequent this forum.
Oh, and the wonderful people at Xara Ltd. without them, what program would we be using. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]
Soquili [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]
-
I started doing computer graphics in 97. Then I had a copy of PSP 5 and PS 4. I found a neat web site that I visited all of the time called AndyArt. They had a big contest for animated buttons. One of the prizes was Xara webster. I did not win the contest. But I had downloaded a trial version of webster and I thought I should have this program. So I bought it. Then on the Andy art web site, which was sold out to the now scream design site.
http://www.screamdesign.com/
I found a link to the I-US web site. Then I discovered there was a better program called Corel Xara 2. I remember writing to Gary and asking him about the program. After spending some time at the xara xone at i-us and seeing Gary's tutorials I decided I must have that too. Then Xara dumped corel and released X. So it was a natural progression that I should upgrade and buy a copy of Xara X. I have been here ever since i-us was bought out and the forums moved here.
-
... do it too...
I was doing some late night research (in a beautiful wine-haze) on something totally un-related... and I ended up on the "i-us" site.
Somehow I ended up browsing Gary's tutorials - I downloaded the free trial of Xara so I could do the cool looking "Target Practice" tutorial... and I was hooked!
Risto
diri@videotron.ca
-
I'm not a professional designer, just a dabbler wannabe - so had no experience of the "professional" packages.
Started with Xara 3D. Added Webstyle for quick and easy web components. Rounded off my Xara collection with Webster.
Then saw an ad for CorelXara 1.5, so bought it and discovered the XaraXone and forums etc. There was an obvious anticipation with many postings relating to the "soon to be released" Xara X, so I guess I got carried along with the enthusiasm and bought Xara X too.
So, there you have it - an example of someone who found his way to Xara's best having started with their simpler software aimed at amateurs like me.
I'm still hopeless at producing worthwhile graphics for myself, but Gary's tutorials, the gallery and the generous and helpful forum contributors inspire me me to keep trying.
And yes, I have downloaded Webstyle 2, and will be buying the upgrade... I intend keeping all of my Xara products up to date as they all have their individual place in my armoury.
JWT
[This message was edited by JWT on August 24, 2001 at 19:46.]
-
I started using Xara with version 1 pre Corel.
I saw the ad in a magazine showing the gradient transparency and just 'had to have it'.
I then discovered the I-US site and Gary's tutorials... need I say more.
I have also used CorelDraw since version 2 - doesn't get much use these days though - except for converting some graphics formats.
Christine
-
Had to transfer my old Acorn Draw and Artworks files to PC in a workable vector format, and a colleague thought Xara might be what I needed... [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_cool.gif[/img]
Peter</p>
Peat Stack or Pete's Tack?</p>
-
I bought it
1- Recommendation by Gary following his tutorials
2- Look femiliar interface and tools (CorelDraw)
3- speed
4- ease of use
5- Interactivity tools
6- Transparecy tools
7- And mostly is the antialising, i think that Xara should be a Rendering App the way it deals with colors is facinating, it gives a real nice smooth finishing output, i just love it [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]
-
Facinating. I don't remember when I first started to use Xara (I didn't buy it at that time, as you know I live in country where piracy is still quite usual thing), but only year (or two?) later I've met with "trompe l'oeil" for the first time. Only some two years of it vere running. I've leeched all of those tutorials, looked at them once and thought. I must try all this sooner or later. I didn't, but anyway since then I knew that somewhere overseas a person named Gary is the one I can always rely one when I would need to learn new things about Xara. So I got it, used it a lot and when X came out whoops. I couldn't resist to have original of the tool which I use 99% of my time. (same with Paint Shop Pro, no soap)
Roman
-
I started using Illustrator 88 (2.0) on the Mac in 1990, switching to CorelDRAW 2.0 when that came out a year later. I grew to be very proficient with DRAW, upgrading every year up to 5.0. Then, in winter 1996, I saw some reference somewhere, now forgotten, to CorelXARA - it sounded interesting. A demo CD was available from some web site; I ordered it - but when it arrrived, it did not work! I forgot about it, but a few months later I saw a full page ad for CX in a Norwegian computer magazine (yes, Corel DID promote it fairly well here!) Intrigued again, I did a web search, found that demo CD ordering info again - and, when it came, this time it DID work. And what I saw in those screen videos (complete with an elegant British voice-over) was STAGGERING! I instantly ordered the program from my regular software dealer in Oslo, and impatientently waited for two days. Then I tried it for half an hour - and I knew I was in Love! :-)
The day after, still reeling from the impact, I sent this fax to Xara (which was rather fun for me to reread, so I thought some of you might enjoy it too):
------------
Xara, Ltd.
Gaddesden Place
Hemel Hampstead
Hertfordshire HP2 6EX
United Kingdom
Oslo, May 24 1996
Dear Sirs,
I have just purchased CorelXARA, and - being so impressed with it - I simply had to write and congratulate you with having created this amazing program!
I'm a Windows-based professional graphic designer/illustrator who for several years has been using CorelDRAW, Illustrator, Photoshop, Picture Publisher, Painter, QuarkXPress, etc., - and so I like to think I now know a good thing when I see it. Even after having had it for just one day, I can say with confidence that XARA is going to improve both the efficency and the quality of my work!
I'm particularly blown away by the SUPERFAST screen draws and the speedy file load/save! Really sluggish CDR files are now a breeze to work with! And the anti-aliasing! WOW! A joy to behold - after a while with XARA, every other program is going to be a pain to look at! Transparent vector objects is a feature I've always dreamed about, but also always thought would be outside the range of the possible in the vector universe. (And it sort of is, also, since they have to be bitmapped in the EPS - right?) There are of course many other excellent features also, like the awesomely customizably interface! Love that too!
Still, there are snakes even in paradise, and so I'd like to point out some problems and missing features. I hope you will consider these issues on future releases, and that I will be notified about upgrades/patches (my version is 1.1, dated "Nov. 10/95 (683)").
Problems:
A. The preview resoluton in EPS files is WAY too low. It makes it VERY hard to accurately place images.
B. The "Behind fill" outline color feature in CDR files is not supported - VERY annoying!
C. Several EPSs exported from DRAW do not import - gives message "error in line NNN".
D. Several "plain-vanilla" CDR files comes up more or less garbled - objects are displaced.
Missing features:
A. I was ESPECIALLY disappointed to see that there in no possibility of blending objects along a path. I couldn't even believe it at first, but close reading of the manual convinced me you've just neglected this crucial feature. Shame!
B. Multi-color fills.
C. A miter limit (on an individual object basis, as in Illustrator - not global, like in DRAW!)
D. Numeric input fields for angles, starts and stops of blends, etc., - it's more accurate.
But overall, this is a VERY slick and brilliant programming job - I'm awed! Hats off to all of XARA's programmers! (Has there been any trade stories about the making of this program? Tools, problems, etc.? If so, I'd love to get a photocopy.)
While I - being a poor artist - am glad it doesn't, I think this program could sell for twice what you're charging! I hope that Corel's marketing clout will make XARA the success it deserves to be.
Sincerely,
Klaus A. Nordby
Designer/illustrator
-
I worked on an old 486 with Illustrator 4 and CorelDraw 4 and I saw so extraordinary comments about CorelXara in the magazines. At a rare moment I had some money and thus I acquired Xara without the step of a demo.
Imagine my stupefaction!
Of course antialiasing and transparencies were my first surprises, ...but the speed too!
After that I had some more money and tried all other vector programs. I have thought that Xara will became a reference but I was naive and didn't know some perverse dimensions of marketing...
XaraX still remain for me THE reference!
ivan
-
a lot of us - or at least those of us who come here - are solo people - not Senior Designers in charge of a team of 5 or 10 or 20.
How do we get to them, and persuade *them*?! What would Xara Limited like us to do?
www.thelondonhouse.co.uk
-
This is not a real advice, it's just a some sort of brainstorm I even started to doubt it when I started writing this, but anyway. It could be done like this. Forget solo. Put your head into yoke (horse leash?) and let yourself get hired by a design company. Then do your best to show them that all you do with xara is 2 times faster and 10 times better done than with any other vector program. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]
-
I'm like Simon, I originally saw "Studio" previewed in, I think, 1995, and immediately bought into the preview half-price program as I'd never seen anything like it. Ever since, I've felt that it was worth upgrading even though I'm a not-even dabbler. This forum (and i-us) have made it more than it might merely have been.
Jon
-
I've said this before, I hate tryingto understand 101 different tools. I find one I like and try to learn all about it. I did that with Corel Draw7.
For many years now I followed Garys tuts (which used to mention Draw6 with a (you can also do this in Xara) comment). As the tuts change to Xara tuts with a 'you can also do this in Draw'. I kept on with Draw7. It was just this year when I found this place that I put my money were your moth is [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img] .
Turan
-
Gary David Bouton and our favorite "moderator person". (and purveyor of fine anagrams)
I was looking for tools to do web graphics and ran across Mr. Bouton's review on the eye-wire site and Mr. Priester's comments on the i-us site. I purchased CX 1.5 fall of '97. (I actually have a treasured Xara collectable: A hardcopy manual from CX 1.5.) I, like everyone else, was blown away with the speed at which it ran on my 486. There has been no looking back. Where I work, there are now 13 copies of X, 2 copies of 3D, and 1 copy of WebStyle being used.
-
Seems to me if Xara wanted to increase their user base, they should so a mass mailing to registered DRAW users quoting the comments in this thread, eh?
Gary
Gary Priester
Moderator Person
<a href="http://home.earthlink.net/~garypriester">
Be it ever so humble...</a>
-
I like a few others have migrated to xara after using artworks on the acorn platform. I got into artworks (pre-xara) after doing some freelance design work in my early teens with a dtp package called "impression" (also by computer concepts, aka xara).
Artworks was like someone turning the light on for me, I loved doodling with computers and I used to be fascinated watching people like Gordon Taylor (I think that's correct!) demo artworks at exhibitions in the early days. I then got my clammy mitts on a copy and sat for hours doodling my mini drawings and that was around 10 years ago.
A few years later I worked for a local computer firm who had a few retail units. I was regarded as a bit of a "wierdo" (I still am *grin*) because I could mix design and IT in the same body (!!). I heard about the artworks port to the pc (xara studio) and pestered my boss to get a copy for the store and took the full responsibilty to demo it. Over a period of about 4-6 months we sold many copies of studio due to my product knowledge and buckets of enthusiasm, I even demonstrated it to a fairly important lady from Corel who came to visit my boss not realising who she was! She seemed rather impressed though I must admit [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]
Ah well, thats enough of my ranting, this is a great place to chatter to fellow xara-maniacs!
regards,
d-sine
-
If I'm right, Corel bought Xara and incorporated a lot of features into Draw7. Hence the big leap form Draw6 to 7 in speed and performance (not that I had 6 to notice).
After that I'm not sure. Corel seemed to continue to market Xara as Corel Xara.
But then seemed to drop it. why? Given as you say Gary much of Xara is from Draw users, it has been a bad business call!
Am I right? what is the history?
Turan
-
hmm.. well afaik xara was born xara studio which itself was a port (albeit an enhanced one) of artworks from the acorn risc-os platform.
xara studio 1.0 was around for a short while (12 months or so?) and corel agreed to market it under their own label. studio then have a "feature facelift" and corel xara v1.1 was born.
i think thats about it, but i've prolly missed loads of detail!! [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]
(i still have a xara studio leaflet in immaculate condition, must be a collectors item by now!)
-
D-sine - You write: "I even demonstrated it to a fairly important lady from Corel who came to visit my boss not realising who she was! She seemed rather impressed..." I think you could well be responsible for the intro of xara to corel. Maybe given the dismal history of how Corel failed to market Xara you might not be welcome at the Xara mansion. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img] Don't worry we won't hold it against you - we still want to be your friend. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]
Regards, Ross
<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>
-
I started graphics with Corel Draw 3 and eventually 5. My daughter-in-law, a colleague of Ross MacIntosh, kept saying how good Xara was and what Ross could do with it. Had to check it out.
Wasn't truly impressed until I got Xara X with the cds! The forums have helped a lot. Neil
-
Turan
There are many versions of this story floating around and this is my impression of what happened between Corel and Xara.
Xara was generating a tremendous amount of word of mouth excitement. I first heard Xara mentioned in the CorelDRAW 6 Beta Testers Conference on CompuServe. People who had seen Xara were blown away and strongly suggested others try it. THIS WAS BEING SUGGESTED IN THE COREL SPONSORED FORUM.
Obviously, Corel looked at Xara to see what all the fuss was about and decided (my opinion) that Xara represented a potential threat to DRAW in terms of price, speed, interface, and features.
Xara, being a small company, in comparison to Corel Corp., lacked the funds (my opinion) to market Xara the way it needed be marketed to compete with the major players, Illustrator, DRAW, and FreeHand.
Corel (my opinion) reasoned, they could market and distribute Xara as CorelXara, and at the same time, position it in the market place as a Web graphics and design application, thereby defusing some of the potential to cannibalize sales of DRAW. This sounded good to Xara (my opinion) because with Corel's "channel" connections" Corel could get Xara into the major retail outlets and put the dollars needed to market Xara aggressively.
Unbeknownst to Xara (definitely my opinion), the DRAW product team looked at Xara and said, hmmm, we can do that, and set about reverse engineering Xara's best features into DRAW 7. Xara owned all the code and only granted Corel marketing and distribution rights so Corel could not use the code. Plus the code with which Xara was written was more labor intensive to write and was not compatible with the code with which DRAW was written. But because of Xara's code, it could do the same things, faster, and more efficiently than DRAW.
When DRAW 7 was released, their implementation of Xara's anti-aliased screen display was so slow, it was not even the default setting. On the other hand, using existing code, DRAW was able to one up Xara with multi-colored fills and multi-value transparency.
Anyway, once DRAW 7 was released, putting a bright face on it (my opinion) Corel lost interest in Xara and it began disappearing from the retail channels. Corel was only mildly interested in upgrading Xara beyond version 1.5 but released version 2.0 for Internet sales and distribution only.
Arlen Bartch and Chris Dickman, the co-owners of i/us.com (may it rest in peace) negotiated with Corel to be one of the on-line sites where Xara could be purchased.
I was already creating monthly tutorials for DRAW and then later for Xara and Arlen and Chris asked me to develop an area on the i/us site called the XaraXone. The idea was to create a value added site that would draw in Xara users and encourage them to purchase products from the site. It was a fun challenge and I think it worked pretty well.
Chris added conferences and Xara users now had a place to meet and share ideas.
Then i/us was purchased by Getty Inc.'s EyeWire.com which in its infinite wisdom, decided to shut i/us down the first of this year.
Around the same time, Xara was developing Xara 3 (Xara X) and Corel planned to market it against Macromedia Fireworks. Good plan, because Xara is so much better than Fireworks.
About this time, Xara decided (my opinion) that the deal with Corel was not all it was cracked up to be and negotiated with Corel to get out of the contract. Corel agreed, and Xara is back in control of Xara Ltd.
After i/us closed its portals, Xara Ltd. agreed to sponsor the XaraXone, my monthly Xara tutorials (in their sixth year) and the WebXealot, my monthly tips, tricks, and on-line manual. I have tired to add content to the XaraXone including the Shareware Page, the Featured Artist Page, The Guest Tutorial, Xara Links, and more, to provide an additional resource for Xara users.
Xara took the conferences off EyeWire's hands and turned them into TalkGraphics. And while the Xara conferences are by far the most active (and productive IMHO) the other conferences are slowly building in size and activity.
And that pretty much brings us up to date.
Did I leave anything out?
Gary
Gary Priester
Moderator Person
<a href="http://home.earthlink.net/~garypriester">
Be it ever so humble...</a>
-
Gary,
Many thanks for that interesting (in my opinion) read. Like the wy there was no 'in my opinion' next to the Xara being better than fireworks [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] .
IMHO: Think Corel was right to be thretened by Xara, but drop the ball (or should I say golden egg) in not doing a better job with it.
Turan
-
Anybody know what total number of registered members is now?
-
Now Xara shouldn't asleep at the wheel.
-
I've always been wary of spending money, and am very slow about buying new software. Anyway, I was still using version 3 of the C****D*** drawing package when I saw a review (it might have ben in PCW, I forget), of Xara Studio. This looked good, but being mean I didn't immediately order it. Then, when I finally got round to wanting it, C**** had bought the rights to it, and, to all intents and purposes, had sunk it.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, eventually our 'local' PC World had a single, slightly tatty, boxed copy of C****Xara on sale for fifty quid, so I snapped it up. It took about half a minute, after installing it, to uninstall C****D*** 3. I stuck with Xara 1.5 for ages and ages, missing 2 completey, but have come up to date with Xara X.
I love it- it does an excellent job of showing up my total, complete and utter lack of artistic talent. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]
Cheers,
Phil
Trust the computer industry to shorten 'Year 2000' to 'Y2K'. It was this sort of thinking that caused the problem in the first place.