The Arbitrary closing of Threads

I refer to the closing of https://www.talkgraphics.com/showthr...883#post620883 5 minutes ago.
A number of Posts were deleted in advance of this closure.

webmaster has decided to offset a flare-up of the perennial issue of the Update Service, citing the OP's concerns have been addressed.
I was in the middle of a Post when the Thread was closed and as I was cited in the webmaster's Reply, I wish to indicate I was misrepresented without the right of reply.

This is what I was about to Post:

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Originally Posted by webmaster

#1 If I had not posed the questions, I would not have seen this document
We created this document for TalkGraphics members. We've posted a link to it in Announcements and the moderators have been briefed to link to it as soon as any question is raised about the Update Service to try and prevent exactly the sort of meandering and sometimes confusing answer we've seen in this thread! Acorn prefers to point to his own thread, Magix prefer to point to their own generic Update Service page but this TG FAQ is tailored to the exactly the questions we see asked in Xara support (with input from the moderators, and if I remember rightly Acorn) and it's hopefully clearer than both!

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Kate, your memory is a little shaded. I contributed to the FAQs and I was a Mod at the time. There was absolutely no other Mod input and very little flex from your side so a lot of my observations were omitted.


I don't recall a single Thread where a Mod has Posted the link to the FAQs; I have seen you do so but no others.


Not every Customer of a Xara Desktop application (XDA) is a viewer of TalkGraphics. It took me 10 years to even realise it was useful to me.
To abrogate your responsibility of fairly describing your products' capability to all your Customers with a TG-specific FAQ document is amazing. I have suggested many times that the Download All option should be an XDA built-in option. You are quite liberal in putting hooks into the program to sell Magix products and renewal of the Update service, so this is fully in your gift.


A search in the Xara Desktop Help Center for "download all" returns 202 hits! None explicitly link to a page. By chance, https://help.xara.com/article/50-the-designs-gallery, which not longer exists, being the Local Designs gallery, and https://help.xara.com/article/113-wh...ontent-catalog happen to have an image of Download All, with no word of explanation! After a lot of reading and searching for "download all" in quotes, we find https://help.xara.com/article/185-ho...gner-templates that doesn't really stand out for XDPX users, does it? [https://webdesigner.xara.com/support.../download.jpg]. It is nigh on impossible to raise a Ticket with Magix. All this is a picture of the real word experience your Customers face.


You (Xara) fail to distinguish newly added content which will only run with a particular XDA version so when the Update Service expires and an unfortunate Customer has to reinstall the XDA or even MS Windows, the entire Cache content could evaporate and your 'valued' Customer is left high and dry as the Components in their design file not longer work. To assume this is no big deal indicates that what Xara is offering in its updates is minor. If you did value your Customers, you would be advising of the risk or provide mitigations.


My Thread on what to do after the expiry of the Update Service and XDA reinstallation might better explain things like the limited recovery of the Page & Layer gallery > First Look > Free Example Components or how to extract Components from one's stock of XDA design files. I could even publish a design file that has the kernel of all of your Components (as so many are replays of the same underlying code). It should not be down to me or TG.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by webmaster

"as to what other companies are doing..." Yes, we all do it differently. Adobe for example has a different model, where obviously you lose access to everything, program and all, when your subscription expires. We have all made our different decisions about the best way forward, and what we must all try our best to do is explain how our model works.

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The point is your "model" does not work equitably in the real world.


Acorn

so is it up to webmaster to decide if the OPs query has been addressed fully; would it not be good practice and good customer service, and maybe even just plain polite, to ask first ?

as far as the issue[s] go, all of this could be avoided if xara/magix gave a dialog, during installation, that explained exaclty what the situation is..

i am particularly concerned about the reverting to purchaesd version if you reinstall on another computer - this would be fine if you were not locked in to the updates you have received meantime, ie: could still access - but if you can no longer access then you have every right to consider this unfair if you were not explicitly notified upfront.. sooner or later, someone will fall foul of this, and loose money, and then they will sue.. and in English law it will depend on what the courts consider to be fair.. I hope xara/magix understands what that means

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Originally Posted by handrawn

so is it up to webmaster to decide if the OPs query has been addressed fully; would it not be good practice and good customer service, and maybe even just plain polite, to ask first ?

as far as the issue[s] go, all of this could be avoided if xara/magix gave a dialog, during installation, that explained exaclty what the situation is..

i am particularly concerned about the reverting to purchaesd version if you reinstall on another computer - this would be fine if you were not locked in to the updates you have received meantime, ie: could still access - but if you can no longer access then you have every right to consider this unfair if you were not explicitly notified upfront.. sooner or later, someone will fall foul of this, and loose money, and then they will sue.. and in English law it will depend on what the courts consider to be fair.. I hope xara/magix understands what that means

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I agree, it is "the poodle in the microwave" meme to a tee.

Acorn

P.S. Lest anyone takes offence. I have two large Standard Poodles and even they understand what a joke is.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Acorn

... P.S. Lest anyone takes offence. I have two large Standard Poodles and even they understand what a joke is.

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;)) ;)) ;))

Visiting TG daily I get depressed with a disproportionate number of posts requesting clarification re the much disliked 'subscription' service instead of requesting general help on using Xara software.

Yes Kate, there is the thread you refer to at https://www.talkgraphics.com/showthr...ting-Explained. But perhaps this would be better placed at the root of the forum (not under announcements) and on posting, this thread is left open for questions from TG members such that Xara employees can answer rather than expect your customers doing so on your behalf.

This way you can avoid misguided TG members from posting misleading information prior to you closing a thread.

A small correction to my first Post in this Thread.

The link to the Download all image had a closing bracket in error.
It should be https://webdesigner.xara.com/support...s/download.jpg.

Attachment 126505

I find it amazing that I need to perform a file compare of the v16 sub-versions and hopefully soon v16 to identify and audit those files that are different and those which will not work in the earlier version to which I will "fall back".
I also find it amazing that xara locks out a number of key Components in blocking access to the Online Content Catalogue (OCC). You need to augment your basefiles folder. The decision to omit SmartShape Tables and Charts and to block the OCC access to First Look > Free Example Components is absurd.

Acorn

Actually I had a question I wanted to post in the original thread, I'm going to ask it here.

handrawn posted "uninstall reinstall, as it updates captures the update"

My question is how do you capture the update? I plan on reupping my update service when it gets to 17.1 as Acorn suggested in another thread and I want to capture the update every time my program updates and save them to my backup drive so that what happened to me can't happen again!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gypsyjoe

Actually I had a question I wanted to post in the original thread, I'm going to ask it here.
handrawn posted "uninstall reinstall, as it updates captures the update"
My question is how do you capture the update? I plan on reupping my update service when it gets to 17.1 as Acorn suggested in another thread and I want to capture the update every time my program updates and save them to my backup drive so that what happened to me can't happen again!

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I am also interested. I have never bothered in the past as I had assumed that if I re-installed a later version, that it would require registration all over again and so I would be forced to "fall back". I therefore thought any such approach would need the correct Registry entries and other esoterica that Xara must have to "protect" their Update Service.

Acorn

P.S. Note to self: find the best free VM product and install second licenced install onto it and run safely thereafter. There is bound to be a gotcha to this as well.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Acorn

P.S. Note to self: find the best free VM product and install second licenced install onto it and run safely thereafter. There is bound to be a gotcha to this as well.

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Ok call me dumber than a box of rocks, but what is VM product and how do you install second licensed product onto it maybe this is a solution when I buy into 17.1. Also if you find such a product Acorn how about sharing it.

I think it dawned on me, do you mean Virtual Machine? If so I am still interested in what you have to say about it Acorn as other than name I have no clue about it.