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Should Xara's interface change?
After Xhris mentioned interfaces here [post#42] I was wondering what people think about the Xara interface.
Personally I like it (even though some call it old-fashioned ... so what?!) and although there are obvious advantages in palettes etc, I find them intrusive and confusing ... it's easy to cover the screen with them in Corel Painter if you're not careful :rolleyes:, but because of the amount of options they're needed in the latter program. Xara, however, has a neat row of icons and a nifty toolbar relating to the tool at the top of the page. That was one of the things I liked when I first tried Xara. It just makes sense and fits Xara's slick operations :cool:
Some people would like palettes though because of the way they can work with them. Fine, what about a palettes option then??
What do you think?
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
I like Xara's interface. For me changing the interface would detract from it's functionality.
I dislike docking menus/galleries. That is the first registry tweak I make with all new versions ;)
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
No, Xara's interface is perfect as it is! Nothing unnecessary, everything needed is right at hand without becoming obtrusive. It just works. Keep it as it is!
Other programs have pop-up menus or rollup menu's for everything. They are just in the way. PSPX for instance is just too cluttered - I dislike it's interface intensely. There's no room to actually work. Now to be honest, I may be able to disable most of it, It's just that I dislike it enough that I haven't bothered to find out how to "fix" it.
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
In Xhris' post he mention Visual Basic 2008 Express. With minor changes/updates it is the same interface as Visual Basic 3 from 15 years ago.
I like Visual Studio's interface for writing code but not for drawing. :)
All Visual Studio development tools (including VB) use the same interface.
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
I find it very annoying when changes are made to a program interface. :confused: I have made an investment in learning and becoming proficient with one way of working. I do not want to lose that investment just because the vendor wants to make changes.
If the change is such that there is no question that the work flow efficiency or whatever is increased, I can live with a change. But, I rarely see such changes. Many vendors change the user interface to justify selling a new version. M$ is a prime example of such a vendor.
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
I'm perfectly happy with the interface and actually prefer docking galleries.
(Though I've mentioned many times about the clipart and fills galleries being much too wide. No-one is listening however :mad: )
I'm against changing it for the simply reason that if a change were implimented, Xara Xtreme may end up looking like a Magix application UI which are very 'bargain basement' in appearance.
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
No no no! I like the Xara interface just the way it is. I also like the fact that it is easy to move the buttons around and customize it. I would rather see Xara put their time and effort into improving the program itself.
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Soquili
I dislike docking menus/galleries. That is the first registry tweak I make with all new versions ;)
What? So they won't ever dock? It doesn't worry me one way or the other as I only show them when I need them and dismiss them as soon as I'm finished with them. At least with docking I know where they will show up.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
PatentGuy
I find it very annoying when changes are made to a program interface. :confused: I have made an investment in learning and becoming proficient with one way of working. I do not want to lose that investment just because the vendor wants to make changes.
Yeah, that's is precisely why I stopped upgrading Photoshop after v5.5. They kept changing shortcuts to make it easier for newbies but it was such a total PITA that I just stopped using v6 and went back to 5.5 at work. Ultimately it made me check out the competition and decide that Corel Photopaint was actually better.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
sledger
I'm perfectly happy with the interface and actually prefer docking galleries.
(Though I've mentioned many times about the clipart and fills galleries being much too wide. No-one is listening however :mad: )
You know you can resize them yourself, don't you? It won't remember the size between sessions but at least you only have to do it once per session, no matter how many times you show/hide it and if you keep them permanently docked they always stay the same size [unless you only have one docked, in which case it seems to go back to its original size].
I think Xara has one of the easiest to use UIs around. It is logical and follows a similar paradigm to many other applications, which makes it easier for newbies. What would the alternatives be? The appalling Adobe GUI? I don't think so. The only graphics GUI I can think of that I like as much is the discreet style, with a large, tabbed control pane at the bottom of the screen, but I don't find it any better than Xara's and it makes it harder to learn because it is less familiar to many people.
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
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Originally Posted by
BONES
You know you can resize them yourself, don't you? It won't remember the size between sessions but at least you only have to do it once per session
Yeh Bones I do know all that..
But that's simply not acceptable (to me).
They have needed fixing for a long time.
I assume it's in the too-hard-basket for now.
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
Xara Xtreme's interface is easy, but it lacks some comfort and clearness in some areas. Look at the tons of posts with questions like "How can I set the background colour?" or "Why is there no CMYK mode?".
You'll find no assistents in Xara Xtreme, in order to help with complex tasks. Xara Xtreme isn't scriptable. The icons are old fashioned and the whole GUI looks like Windows 3.1 instead of Windows Vista, Mac OS X or the new KDE4.1.
Other vendors invests more time and money, in order to renovate their outfit.
Remi
btw: Where are the Buttons to create a new page?
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
Quote:
whole GUI looks like Windows 3.1
Nah, it's Windows 98. The 3.1 was nothing like this. ;)
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
It's the Porsche 911 of Application UI's
It's a winner which may benefit from tweaks, but doesn't need a complete overhaul.
Designer Prettiness, clutter and flyouts don't impress me.
Simplicity does.
I open Xtreme to work on something, not admire the UI.
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
remi
btw: Where are the Buttons to create a new page?
go to menu window/control bars/ drag the slider to bottom and open button palette.... with Alt pressed drag needed butons to exist bars on your Xtreme Window
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
Well, I agree with most of remi's comments, and I think that a new interface is probably overdue. With one proviso...an option to switch to the "Classic" interface, when the program loads, perhaps? This should satisfy those here (myself included) with a brain cell allocation that decreases hourly, who would struggle to cope with the change, having taken the best part of two years to get used to the way it is now. Also, perhaps the TG members could have a hand in the design of the proposed new interface, maybe even hold a competition.
Saludos,
Bob.
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
Xtreme's interface is pretty good in general, but some areas may well need 'tweaking'.
Why not allow docked galleries to be tabbed like so many programs do? The galleries themselves look like something out of a time-warp, they could use some fresh thinking. As has been said many times, the alignment dialogue is not intuitive, yes I know a little time will reap rewards, but the first time I saw it I had no idea what the hell it was supposed to be. I'd like to see an alternative interface using standard icons - possibly setting which interface to use in options.
I know it's off-topic, but since Remi mentioned it; I'm still hopeful that we will one day get macros/scripting.
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
BONES
What? So they won't ever dock?
Yes, precisely.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
remi
btw: Where are the Buttons to create a new page?
Remi I assume you mean add a new page to the current document.
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
Is there a button for new page in the buttons palette, there's a keyboard shortcut in pro4, but I don't think there's a button for it?
I can switch quite happily between xara and CS3 and inkscape and... several other programs
The interfaces themselves all work just as good [or not] as each other, the only problem I see is if there is too much change all at once, it gets confusing...
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
ah BIll thats the one staring me in the face as usual :o
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
BONES
At least with docking I know where they will show up.
They will always show up in the last location from which they were closed.
Cheers Steve that button was there in the default toolbar for almost two versions before I noticed it :)
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
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Originally Posted by
minimiro
go to menu window/control bars/ drag the slider to bottom and open button palette.... with Alt pressed drag needed butons to exist bars on your Xtreme Window
Yes, great hint Miro. We all know, that most of the things are possible with the current GUI. And the direct drawing concepts of Xara Xtreme are great, phenomenally and unrivalled.
But: Some functions are hidden and new users asks about them over and over. Such questions are a clear sign, that the User interface lets some questions unanswered. We also know of the "workarounds" that are necessary to complete some tasks. You can see it here at talkgraphics often: Some users are happy with the necessary workarounds to reach their goal and some of them are driven away, because they don't accept too much steps. If I were Xara, I would offer more assistents in order to support some complex tasks (for example a "rounded edges assistent" for webdevelopers). And I would think about the "hidden" features and how to bring them in an easy way to the users, in order to avoid unnecessary support calls.
Maybe it's possible to overwork such things and make the GUI much more user-friendly.
Remi
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
Remi no interface will eliminate all or simple questions.
Interfaces similar to those by Adobe and Corel create more questions than Xara's. In those other programs even if you know which popup, flyout, menu, etc to open you still need to know which sub what-ever to drill down to find the function you need. :eek:
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Soquili
Remi no interface will eliminate all or simple questions.
True, but that doesn't mean that there is no room/necessity for improvements. If some questions comes up over and over (like the background color thing), it's a sign that the usage of this functions are not obvious. That's the whole point with Usability: "the ease with which people can employ a particular tool". One method in order to reach the goal of "Usability" is to make usability tests (for example by asking the user to complete various tasks), but they are costly. Therefore Xara is in a good position to own such a great forum like talkgraphics, where customers posts about their Usability problems.
Remi
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
That is certainly true Bill, but some parts of the interface are not intuitive. We all know about the alignment dialogue, but what about the name gallery? Though powerful, this gallery's interface is not at all intuitive and certainly needs re-thinking. In a way Xara make a rod for their own back with this, because so much of the interface is simple and intuitive, when we come across something that isn't intuitive, it jars.
Xtreme uses a clunky way to import brushes; copy and paste them into a doc and they become available. Why not allow brush sets to be imported and swapped like other programs?
I am still convinced that macros/scripts are the most efficient way a user can 'customise' any program to their own needs and even share workarounds and 'wizards' with others, but I promised not to go down that road again and Xara have already said it ain't gonna happen, so I'll shut up about it...for as long as I can LOL!
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
My take on it is this:
If you want to upgrade the looks of the interface (the graphics) thats fine, however don't mess with the functionality of it. The interface works. As they say in the southern U.S., "If it ain't broke, don't fix it".
That being said, I am sure that there are a few minor things that could be added to make things a bit easier for newbies. For example changing the background color could easily be an option on the right click of a color on the color bar. Of course it could also be handled in the help files better too. For example learning how to change the background (page) color in Xara is explained under the topics for Applying fill and Line colors and Web Page Backgrounds. These are not the first places that I might look. As I say, these things are minor and I think that they are mostly geared to people new to Xara but as Remi stated, the fact that people are always asking the question implies that the interface is lacking in this area.
Eric
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
Not everyone uses Xara the same way therefore not everyone will see a need for the same changes.
In what ever way Xara evolves Xtreme there will be changes that some users may or may not use. No one company can please every user all of the time. :)
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
It works. Don't change it.
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
If it ain't broken, why fix it?
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
Personally I don't believe it will be changed )
I miss just one thing - coloring in the Arrange palette... Greyed cquares work much worse than yellowed as some time before )
But I will live without it for sure... Want to see a Mesh tool a lot )
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
If it works don't change it?
A horse and cart worked...
Not that Xtreme is in dire need of a change, but it isn't perfect and probably never will be.
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
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Originally Posted by
MarkMyWords
A horse and cart worked...
And still does.. ;)
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
Ok, it seems I opened a can of hornets, but I’d also like to add my thoughts. The vaguest mention of UI changes seems to have generated strong reactions suggesting people interpreted that as changes that affect functionality should be made. I’d like to make a distinction between two classes of interface change: changes that affection functionality (which I'm dubbing ‘hard’ changes), and changes that affect the superficial gloss and look of the UI (‘soft’ changes). (I'm sure somewhere on TG in the past I've made this kind of distinction and talked about it, but I couldn’t find it; so maybe I didn’t.)
Dealing with each classification separately:
Hard changes:
There are areas in Xara’s UI that are poor (and even Xara knows it)—such as the way in which galleries are handled. In the previous post, I mentioned Microsoft Visual Basic Express 2008, and was only kudos-ing its gallery handling methodology—gallery handling being the area Xara knows is particularly weak and the area in which I would say was in the greatest need of attention (in the context of hard changes). In VB, dragging the galleries around brings up a transparent placeholder image showing the position possibilities and onto which you can drop the galleries to place them in the desired location. The galleries are resizable, and can dock, float, auto hide, or nest-tab, and in most locations of the screen for maximum flexibility.
Making hard changes to a UI is a potentially dangerous business, mostly for the reason highlighted by PatentGuy in post 5: making a significant hard UI change can cause a loss of familiarity to the UI and its use, and this lack of familiarity generates discomfort and therefore resistance. This is a universal phenomenon that applies to any change in general, and a reason why old dogs don’t like new tricks.
For the most part, Xara’s UI is optimally designed (certainly relative to the competition), however, there's almost always room for improvement. A better direction for this thread now would be to discuss areas in which Xara’s UI may be inefficient for a task you perform, and offer suggestions as to how it can be improved. In other words: when doing some task, what slows you down (specifically about the UI rather than a lack of a tool/feature)? How could a UI change fix this without causing it to be too tailored to that one single task and complicate or mess up the UI in general? The skill in UI design is in being efficient and avoiding redundancy. This is the objective, evidence-based approach to constructive criticism and the best way to get ‘hard’ UI changes made by Xara.
Soft changes:
The superficial look of Xara’s interface is, in principle, fine, but compared to the look of UIs in lots of other software (of any kind), it is easily arguable that it looks somewhat dated and unappealing. There are various technologies that can be taken advantage of out there to design new looks to a UI, such as Microsoft’s Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), which is a resolution independent, vector based rendering engine that takes advantage of modern graphics hardware. There are lots of interesting YouTube videos showing what it can do for interface design, and in principle could be used to skin Xara, or allow something more revolutionary. I personally would like to see some gloss on Xara which reflects its universal greatness.
So in general, it’s better to distinguish between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ UI changes, and it would be nice to see some of both in future Xara versions, in my small opinion.
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
The Layer gallery needs a revision. Whenever I create a more complex drawing, the Layer gallery is no great help, to organise my drawing in a neatly arranged way. The same problem comes with multipage designs.
The most asked feature request from talkgraphic users to solve this, are "nested layers". They are long overdue.
Remi
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
I can see that docking galleries working similar to VB would be a very good improvement. Please allow me to retain the ability to make them non-docking as an alternative.
Soft changes are so subjective, I cannot think of any that would actually improve the program.
A few years ago many programs adopted similar look to their interface and many people said it was more modern. Actually it was very retro and looked like applications from the late 1970s and early 1980s. :rolleyes:
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
Generally, I prefer less eye candy rather than more. It gets in the way.
The solution would seem to be to find a way to skin Xtreme so those who have a visual sweet tooth can satisfy their cravings and we who prefer plain and simple can happily continue producing in an environment we love. :;
BTW, like Bill, I'm not a fan of docking galleries. I can think of only one instance among my apps where it's really useful. That instance comprises two specific galleries. Even in that app, docking anything else is just a waste of real estate.
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
Soft changes? I don't really care, as long as the scheme doesn't get hideous and 'strobe' the eye with too much saturated detailed.
Tabbed, docking, as mentioned earlier, I'd definitely go for nested layers and if users are to get the most out of the names gallery (or even try) - it needs a serious re-think to the interface.
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
I don't want Xara cribbing from Adobe or Corel; I don't like the 'clever' toolbars and palettes that don't behave like normal OS widgets; I find them unproductive in those other apps. I absolutely don't want skins, gradients or textures all over the place or anything other than a standard OS-standard style. My art should be eyecatching, the UI frame around it should not.
Where I'd change things (starting with the simpler things and ending on the crazy things!):
0. Fix the outer-selection-blobs-toggling-on-drag bug! ;-) And move their sensitive area for rotation/shear to outside the blobs instead of inside, where they often clash with clicking on a control point in the corner of the selected object.
1. Move feathering to the Transparency tool Infobar. It's just weird the way it sits out there on a toolbar of its own, when it's clearly* to do with making things transparent.
* - no horrific, war-crime-level pun intended.
2. Some other features feel more out-of-the-way than they deserve, eg.: line-to-shape, clipviews and repel text should probably be on the Arrange toolbar, the web-related functions should probably be all together on a 'Web toolbar'.
3. Rationalise line properties. Currently the line width of the selected object can be set using a customisable toolbar control. Some other properties of a line - brush and stroke - can be accessed from the Freehand tool Infobar. Which is already a bit odd as they are not limited to freehand lines. Further line properties - cap, join, dash and arrows - can only be set from the Line Gallery, which is considerably more odd as no other gallery directly reflects the properties of the selected object in this way. Having to open the Line Gallery just to change the join type is an annoyance as it doesn't feel like a Gallery kind of operation. I'd do something like move line width and join type to the Path tool Infobar, and dashes and arrows/caps (which are kind of the same thing) to the Freehand tool Infobar, if that's going to be a home for 'extra, less commonly-used pathing stuff'.
4. I suppose really the Infobar controls should be as transparently customisable as the other toolbars, so there's no difference between the line-width and feathering controls and the other controls on the Infobars anyway, and if I want, let me put Transparency-combining-type on the main toolbar.
5. A quicker way to edit Grid/Duplication/Nudge distances than setting them all separately in the Options. A toolbar or pop-up with them all in one place would be handy, especially if you could set them all to the same thing with one unit entry.
6. Come to think of it the Options is a pretty weird mix of app-level, document-level and view-level settings, with it not being entirely clear which is which. This needs breaking up.
7. Better snapping UI, more inferences, with highlighting of the active inference. See Sketchup, Vegas for approaches that work well.
8. Open new documents in a separate top-level window. Classic MDI as Xtreme uses it has been dead for years.
9. However 'New View' probably should still be in the same window - but do it the modern way, with tabs.
10. OK so ideally, allow tabs to be dragged between parent windows, or dragged out to make their own top-level windows, or top-level windows dragged in to put their documents into tabs... this is something few implementations of tabs manage currently; really the window manager should be providing this functionality IMO, so I can't get too worked up about it being in Xtreme.
11. Views inside objects. Big one this but potentially very useful. If I've got a red circle inside a group inside a mould, I would like to be able to change it to a blue circle without having to take the drawing apart. Xtreme gives me a taste of this with the select-in-group Ctrl-click in the Selector tool, but I'd like to take it a bit further: select the mould and choose 'Open contents in new view'. I could then edit the straight-on, unmoulded objects on their own, without any other objects in sight, and watch in the other view as the finished moulded version updates to match. This should work for groups, clipview contents, live effects (including locked), extruded shapes, brush strokes and so on, and it should work recursively.
12. Modeless operation - generally considered preferable to modal UI, but difficult to apply to a feature-packed app like Xtreme. Essentially there'd be no more 'tools', you'd only ever use the plain selector arrow to directly manipulate the drawing. Xtreme already does this a little bit by giving more power to the Selector tool than most apps, but as an experiment (not something you could put in a commercial release app tomorrow) I'd like to put everything there.
[So instead of going to eg. the transparency tool, you'd click a purely-view-based button to 'show transparency controls on selected objects'*, which would add the texture position control points (if any positional ones, else a single control point by the object's corner), as little glass-texture-icons, which could be dragged about, or double-clicked to set their position/properties by typing numbers/manipulating widgets like currently in the Infobar. Same with all the other simple properties.
* - this would probably be on by default anyway, but you could do things like showing control points of all objects to short-cut the select-then-edit step.
The creative tools such as circles and lines you'd probably start by dragging them from a palette bar into the drawing; the two view tools push and zoom shouldn't really be necessary as they're done better by mouse controls... personally I already removed them in Xtreme.]
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
I think this thread is heading down a well trodden road that Xara are well aware of.
It might be fun to see members ideas as mockups, be they 'skins' (soft) or the (Hard) UI changes.
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
sledger
It might be fun to see members ideas as mockups, be they 'skins' (soft) or the (Hard) UI changes.
Why should a member do such a work? I mean, most of us have not so much free time (and willingness) to work for nothing - furthermore, it's highly doubtful that such ideas will be implemented.
Remi
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Re: Should Xara's interface change?
Remi, it was a light-hearted suggestion only for those who might like to spend a bit of time *playing* with some ideas and with Xtreme at the same time.
There are many who do have the time to enjoy tossing ideas around as seen by the challenges and Stop and Post threads.
Did you not read the word 'fun' ??
I did not suggest or even infer that any such ideas would be considered by Xara.
Please don't take my comments out of context or make them seem idiotic because you don't like them.