Xara have completely redesigend their home pages with a fully responsive design.
Have a look, it's very slick. I'm, impressed =D>
► http://www.xara.com
Attachment 106917
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Xara have completely redesigend their home pages with a fully responsive design.
Have a look, it's very slick. I'm, impressed =D>
► http://www.xara.com
Attachment 106917
Hi Steve, this is what I call: Walk the talk...
Ciao
Roly
Their pages look very good, but their maths are a bit... unusual. Designer Pro is supposed to be all three apps in one interface but it costs $299 which is $19.03 MORE than the individual apps. If Designer Pro is more than the sum of it's parts they should say so to justify costing more. If not, it should cost less than the individuals IMHO.
No, it's all three app PLUS more, much more.
► http://www.xara.com/us/designer-pro/compare/
Well, I get about $119 more for XDP but who's counting. It all depends on what products are used for the counting. I chose WDP & P&GD.
But if you add in the lame duck P&LD, then I get about $29 less than XDP.
I really think it should be $199.
Ain't math fun?
While I really like the look of the page - are all of the features/effects achievable using Xara products?
I was wondering that too. I particularly like the Disney-esque foreground/background scrolling.
No.Quote:
Originally Posted by nobbyy
Well, yes many are achievable if you are skilled enough and know what you are doing with placeholders and code snippets.Quote:
Originally Posted by nobbyy
But if you are asking if all the affects used on xara.com are INCLUDED with Xara Web Designer or Designer Pro, then as Mike says - No.
Xara.com is not built with Xara Web Designer.
Me too. Thanks for the heads-up.Quote:
Originally Posted by steve.ledger
I pity the newcomer to Xara though. If you pick any category you are presented with a load of products, all supposedly able to tackle your job, all with almost the same name. It really highlights the mess that Xara and Magix's product names and types is.
Really confusing.
Great job on the website, shame about the product names and choices.
I will be more impressed if this actual responsive design ability finds its way into the version 11 products.
But is true RD still WYSIWYG?
Interestingly, WYSIWYG Web Builder approached the problem in a very similar way to Xara.
Absolutely not.Quote:
Originally Posted by steve.ledger
I think it's about the only option for WYSIWYG.Quote:
I think the closest one can come to semi-WYSIWYG web building and RD is Pinegrow. My trial expired and I haven't decided to purchase it or not. But after one gets past the (to me) odd work environment, to does produce decent code.
Yep, it was a rhetorical q.. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by pauland
Just looking at PineGrow at the moment; it is interesting.Quote:
Originally Posted by mwenz
Acorn
Acorn,Quote:
Originally Posted by Acorn
I just received an email minutes ago that version 2.0 is released. If your download isn't 2.x, I would re-download it. They added WordPress Theme support along with other new stuff and bug fixes.
Mike
Mike, thank you for the heads-up. I think the cost of Pinegrow is now worth considering for the WordPress theming alone. It means i can better integrate WP CMS into my Xara static sites more easily. i never fancied learning all the PHP coding to implement custom theming before now.Quote:
Originally Posted by mwenz
Acorn
Couldn't agree more Paul. Xara software completely baffles me now so what the hell it does to a novice user is unimaginable! I find it more and more difficult to answer someone who's using Xara Chicken & Mushroom as opposed to Xara Chinese Chow Mein :)Quote:
I pity the newcomer to Xara though. If you pick any category you are presented with a load of products, all supposedly able to tackle your job, all with almost the same name. It really highlights the mess that Xara and Magix's product names and types is.
I can't help but wonder how much of a load it puts on the technical and marketing teams supporting a load of products that are so similar yet still need to be supported and marketed. It must be a nightmare and dilute that effort.
It's one thing switching a logo, but these have all kinds of feature differences and all promise to do virtually the same job.
The new look seems like a branding effort. Whenever your design a new website, you take into consideration both the chrome and the topography. I can't argue that if Magix wants to be profitable, it stands to reason that you put your products up front, but it's still not as good organization, as it is "slick".
I can't get over two things, for all the bright and shiny look:
• Because Gotham Black is used for all the headline of the products, the only realy way at a glance is to look at the pictures on the "boxes". Wouldn't it have made more sense to brand MAGIX at top and then used fonts more specific to the thing a software product does?
• I count the brand "Xara" listed exactly once on the top page, of...um xara.com.
Isn't that a lot like showing all the products Bershire Hathaway or Heinz Kraft offers while putting the company name once in the upper left corner?
Technically, it's a dandy piece of work. I think the priorities and organization need help from a developer, not a designer.
-g
I don't think I'm with you on this one Gary. :-(
Sorry, Paul—
My remarks, strictly speaking, are off-topic, given this is about Responsive Design and Xara.com. So what is to follow really isn't a defense or an argument, but merely an observation from a promotional point of view.
"Clutter awareness" is what the net thrives upon: there's nothing "break away", nothing that separates this site from the herd. You could put a different company's name at upper left and it would be the same site. Advertising isn't marketing, never has been.
Small example: if you know you have four products to sell on the top page, I'm sure responsive design can neatly lay them out vertically, but on a Desktop, I've got three large product images, and then a single one flush left below the fold. Surely there's a design solution that can accommodate both layouts equally well? Does one begin with the Desktop layout and then scale down, or vice versa, remembering that this website wasn't designed with a Xara product?
There are some excellent Wordpress themes which are fully Responsive. Maybe we'll see the XaraXone updated for mobile devices soon?
;))
Xara's website does work nicely on my phone. Better than XU :-O
XU on my phone has so little info displayed that I have to visit a forum to determine if there are new posts. I know I could log in and click to see new posts, but I would rather just glance at the sections from the main page. If there were more new posts, I would do the log in thing.
On my screen, I can see four large product images, so I don't see the three then another below.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gare
This is the problem - all our screen widths are different, so "fixing" this problem isn't so easy. They could do it by dynamically changing the images sizes, but that cause the images to blur, or you could dynamically substitute the images used. Similarly, where the fold is also varies between our machines.
There's an argument for both methods. I don't think it matters.Quote:
Does one begin with the Desktop layout and then scale down, or vice verse
They could use the max-width property. That's what I did/do, pre-responsive and post-responsive that is.
Should be fine Mike, XU is fully responsive. Works fine on my Samsung phone and mate's iPad.Quote:
Originally Posted by mwenz
(It also passes the Google Mobile friendly test, for those who care about that :D ► https://www.google.com/webmasters/to...ara-users.info)
What you're talking about are personal preferences rather than RD.Quote:
Originally Posted by mwenz
New posts are indicated via a red marker. But they won't be new if you aren't logged in.
Why don't you just check the 'Remember me' box and save the New Posts URL as default?
Also, it's a phpBB system, we're limited by it's limitations :)
I'm disappointed with Pinegrow's support. I had a look at v2.0 and upon opening a copy of our home page as they suggest, I see that characters such as a copyright symbol, registered symbol or an apostrophe are all shown as <�> in the main screen and the tree, or as <a black diamond with a white ?> in the code editor. My site is made and maintained in Xara WD10 premium and displays fine on all browsers. Anyway I signed up for support and sent them a detailed query but after 11 days it remains unanswered. Just saying...
That's disappointing, but there have been a few Xara users who have said exactly the same thing (not that that's an excuse for pinegrow). I'd give some pinegrow forums a whirl.
PineGrow, as far as I know, is basically just a husband and wife team. I suspect they have or will grow as long as they continue a decent development pace. Each of the support emails I have sent were answered in about 2 days.
And like Paul wrote, no excuse unless they are completely submerged in support requests...in which case they ought to at least have an auto-responder support ticket mechanism that can remind them of open tickets/support emails.
As for the font thing. Not seen that problem with it. But I have not tested it on a WDP site.