Update 18 UI/UX Problem: Icon Sizes too small on 4K monitor

Hi, I'm a longtime Xara user (since 2009). I recently updated from Xara 17 to 18, and have a couple issues.

Parallel installs?
(I don't know if this is a "feature or a bug" in developer talk, but I consider it a bug...)

1st) When I updated, an entire new instance of Xara was installed on my machine, instead of just updating the current installation.

Attachment 129817

• This means I have to go through various tasks, like replacing my startup and taskbar shortcuts, and try to find any other customizations I've made in 17 and copy them over to 18 (custom templates, the backups folder contents...
• is there anything else? Do I need to do this with fonts or anything? If so--where are these locations I need to copy over?).

Do I delete the old one?
After I get everything copied over and settled, can I uninstall the old install? Was there a way I could have installed this so it just upgraded the 17 version? It seems there's too much nonsense that goes along with this type of update--please consider improvements here (unless I'm the only one who feels this way, then disregard I suppose)

Icons Too Small
2nd) After updating, the icons in some views are too small to be useful to me.

See this screenshot of the 17 and 18 versions of Xara side-by-side:

Attachment 129818

• This is a real UI/UX problem for me, even a "deal breaker" with some apps (I rarely use GIMP anymore because they can't seem to get their Icon sizing to work for various viewport resolutions, and it makes it difficult to use those apps.)
• I primarily use a 4K monitor, which may have something to do with this, although I don't understand why the icons look okay on 17 and then are so small in 18. Further, when it comes to a pro graphics app, I would think a lot of your clientele have hi-res monitors.

Here's that screenshot in 2 parts--seems this forum software doesn't like the size of the original image:

vsn 17 side:
Attachment 129819

vsn 18 side:
Attachment 129820

• If there is a setting I can manipulate to make the icons useful again, please let me know.
• Otherwise, please fix this soon and issue an update (I'm being warned I have 5 days left on my upgrade period, so do I try to "downgrade" to 17 for the better UX, or do I hope you fix this in time?)

I've chosen Xara over Adobe or any other vector design app (now that I think of it, I've even made websites and animations using Xara) because it's intuitive and provides excellent value. So I hope you can fix some of these issues.

Thanks for any help

Parallel Install & Older Version Delete
- You are gaining an extra version so keep both.
- Key one is Local Designs gallery > Download All.
- Hint: change the Backup folder location.
Sizing
- Others will probably advise this is a Windows setting.

Acorn

P.S. Moved Thread to Dear Xara forum.

Quote:

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When I updated, an entire new instance of Xara was installed on my machine, instead of just updating the current installation

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this as always happened when moving from one version to another; this time the version changed under the update service, rather than manual install, but it was aways so with a version change

I agree with acorn - keep the previous version - at least until you know the changes and are happy with them

what 4K monitor do you have - mine is a 24 inch cintiq; unless I am doing detailed drawing I use the windows recommended settings for it in display settings

have you changed the windows 10 settings in xara program properties [right click program icon, compatability tab] - if so you may need to reset them for the new xara version now that it supports 4K resolution when the previous version did not by going back to default and tweaking from there as necessary

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Acorn

Parallel Install & Older Version Delete
- You are gaining an extra version so keep both.

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I really don't want 2 versions of a software platform on my machine. Just the one I'll be using. I don't think of this as a "bonus" to have apparently obsolete files filling my hard drives.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Acorn

- Key one is Local Designs gallery > Download All.

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I right-clicked on each folder and chose "download all".

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Acorn

- Hint: change the Backup folder location.

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I don't want to change the backup location from the default. I would rather move the contents of the old default folder into the current default folder. (This is starting to sound like a "User Story" from where I work as a software developer; "As a User, I want...")

It would be preferable if the software architects didn't make these things version-specific--i.e.; make the default backup directory be {User}/appdata/Xara/backup instead of {User}/appdata/Xara/FlavorOfTheWeekVersionedDirectoryNumber18/backup. Then the user wouldn't have to worry about any of this, and the UX would be much improved for future updates (and then there would be fewer bad "upgrade" experiences punishing users who then decide it's not worth it to pay for Xara software due to how much work they have to do every update).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Acorn

Sizing
- Others will probably advise this is a Windows setting.

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So why do the icons look appropriately sized in the vsn.17 and unusably sized in the vsn.18 app, both apps opened side-by-side simultaneously on the same Windows machine?

vsn 17 icons
Attachment 129821

vsn 18 icons
Attachment 129822

Others can tell me it's a windows setting, but until they demonstrate which exact setting and how adjusting it makes just the xara vsn.18 icons the appropriate size (as opposed to making every icon in every app suddenly too large), then I'm skeptical of this notion.


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I'm thinking I need to "downgrade" to vsn. 17--as I had no complaints for this forum then. In light of what Handrawn mentioned about this being installed via the update service instead of a stand-alone install, it reminds me that it should be easy to just uninstall the new version and I'll be left with the vsn. 17. Hopefully no issues with this process and I can forget about all these questions and problems with an "upgrade".

I have Pro X v16.3, v17.0 and v18.0 installed on a 24inch 4k Dell AIO with 150% scale-up.

The icon issue in the dialogue box to which you refer, I do not believe, will be resolved by any Windows10 setting, I have exactly the same issue - v18.0 introduced HiDPI and I understand the difference we see maybe related to the application not seeing ALL the icon sizes required by Windows to support HiDPI. The full set of icons would have 16px, 32px, 48px, 64px, & 256px bitmaps. The original HiDPI beta tests did identify a few similar issues that were fixed before release. Could be completely wrong here, but experience from building apps to run with 4k scaling suggests this could be the root cause.

That said, I can live with the issue and for me v18.0 with HiDPI support is a solid upgrade from v17.

Gary

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DesignerRants

I'm thinking I need to "downgrade" to vsn. 17--as I had no complaints for this forum then. In light of what Handrawn mentioned about this being installed via the update service instead of a stand-alone install, it reminds me that it should be easy to just uninstall the new version and I'll be left with the vsn. 17. Hopefully no issues with this process and I can forget about all these questions and problems with an "upgrade".

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ironically , a manual update is easy to uninstall; you may not find an update through the update service so easy...

can't see an issue with more than one version installed myself - those who provide support on lots of versions have lots of versions installed

This is a much more satisfying explanation, and makes sense as I've ran into this issue of providing the various sizes of bit maps for each icon or favicon for web apps. And I WAS thinking the menus looked a little higher res in 18, which is nice. But I didn't have an issue with 17, it seemed to scale up fine on my monitor. I'd rather have the solid UI than the tiny click targets and invisible icons. At least the tool tips still work. I'll probably just go back to 17, hopefully it's not difficult to uninstall 18, as handrawn mentioned it could be. I dislike cluttering my OS with different versions installs unless I need to. Maybe I'll try again in a year or two if they get the adaptation to hi DPI ironed out (GIMP still hasn't several years after their big UI redesign, but they're also free software, so maybe that's a reason... )

IMO, graphics and content creation platforms have UIs packed with tiny icons and switches. If they're too small they're unusable. Maybe I'm an edge case since apparently not enough people have complained to GIMP to get them to fix their nonsense. Thanks for the idea on the icons being an oversight of a hi DPI support rollout, makes sense.

ok - fwiw everything UI is too small on my cintiq at it's native resolution [EDIT - without the windows scaling Applied] - if i wanted it otherwise i would have bought one at 32 inch [but had neither the cash or the space, nor thought it cost effective :D]

Quote:

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Originally Posted by handrawn

ironically , a manual update is easy to uninstall; you may not find an update through the update service so easy...

can't see an issue with more than one version installed myself - those who provide support on lots of versions have lots of versions installed

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I'll give it a go next time I use it, hopefully it's not dug in like a tick. I actually think it gave me the option of removing it because it kept promoting me to update even after I had, so I thought maybe it was another service pack or something and tried to install again, but it was the same download and so it asked if I wanted to uninstall. Now, maybe that uninstalls everything. I dunno. Will find out soon.

As far as multiple versions, I don't like. Not unless I have to (there's been some cases, but that was usually for testing backward compatibility, for work). With all other software, just give me a single stable version.

My monitor is part of my Lenovo p73 laptop, fyi. I think it's supposed to be fancy, I remember opting for something like (can't remember name of company that has color codes for paints and everything) color calibration? And it's exactly twice the resolution of a 1080px monitor as a 1920 x 1080 image fills exactly one quadrant of the monitor, which is what I think 4k is? And that has been my hi res monitor expert opinion.

Thanks for the info.

Right, and I'm not trying to be argumentative, but on your cintiq everything is too small --together--. You don't have some icons too small, some much smaller than that even, maybe some too large?... It can all be scaled up by windows together, appropriately. It's the inconsistency that ruins the UX for me.

first off _ i have designer pro+; the designer 18 implementation of 4K support has not afaik been documented as different, but who knows for sure outside of xara/magix

I have not noticed anything in the xara UI that is not consistantly very small at native 4K, no scaling

long shot, but you do have graphics hardware on your computer capable [for multiple monitors if you use them at the same time] and all the drivers are up to date....

I posted the screenshot of a 17 and 18 menu open side-by-side in Windows. One (18) has inconsistently small icons. I don't know what more I can do to prove this is an actual UI bug that should be fixed by Xara.

Here's Xara Pro 17, all menu icons are appropriately sized and scaled
Attachment 129840

Here's Xara Pro 18, not so much:
Attachment 129841

These icons are not going to be fixed by scaling Windows, because the icons are inconsistently sized. Look, they're smaller than the checkbox input. A clickable icon button should not be smaller than the typical checkbox input control.

Windows is already scaling everything on my machine, since it's a hi-res monitor, so the fact some icons are too small to read means that they are the objects with poor configuration, not everything else in the viewport.

I'm sure Xara will get it fixed eventually, but this is a bug for them to fix, not an issue with my environment.

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BTW, if anyone wondered, I was able to uninstall 18 from the apps menu in Windows. It didn't cause problems even though it was installed via an update prompt rather than as a standalone package.

Attachment 129839

I can confirm that happens with 'save template' in designer pro+

so - does it happen anywhere else that you have noticed ?

it is possible xara have not updated that particluar dialog box which has been around for a long time; unlike the save/save as dialogs that were updated in line with windows a year or so back

did it cause any issues [apart form being difficult to see

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DesignerRants

BTW, if anyone wondered, I was able to uninstall 18 from the apps menu in Windows. It didn't cause problems even though it was installed via an update prompt rather than as a standalone package.

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Thank you for advising. It has always been the case that major versions in XDAs have always been a fresh install. The recent notable change is Xara now tries to carry over most of the prior version's user configurations.

While it is your choice to uninstall v18, there will be a time this UI issue will be fixed and you may lose the opportunity to re-install as your Update Service may have lapsed before you noticed.

For anyone else, I would suggest installing and accepting updates and use the earlier version if you prefer.

While you are at it, always download a second install to another device; you may need access to a working XDA in a hurry.
All in all, I am suggesting a disk usage increase of a factor of three. I have 12 versions of XDAs installed and it doesn't hurt.

Acorn

OK so I just bought the all new HiDPI version of Xara Designer Pro after sadly having had to wait for HiDPI support for many years, and almost dropping Designer over it.

Attachment 130998

Only to find that, of all things, NOT EVEN the icons on the main toolbar are HiDPI but instead still old and blurry.

Come on Xara Team, this is ridicoulus.

Attachment 130997

Sheesh, that looks like the old 256 color model.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by David.P

Only to find that, of all things, NOT EVEN the icons on the main toolbar are HiDPI but instead still old and blurry.
Come on Xara Team, this is ridicoulus.

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David, the option has been out there for quite a time so I find it amazing that you have discovered such a failing, yet no one else has reported it.
I hear it went through extensive beta testing.

I cannot affirm your statement as as do not have a 4k monitor.
Instead, I use my XDA across monitors with different resolutions and I cannot detect any problem.
I have used MS Magnifier here, at 1000% scaling and text and icons seem no worse than those on the Desktop.

Attachment 131001

After all this, I do find Xara Xtreme 5's toolbar to be crisper and cleaner.

If anyone has a mechanism to determine the efficacy of Xara's implementation, I would appreciate hearing how.

Acorn

it is not as quite as crisp as some other programs such as painter 2022 on my 4k cintiq, either at 200% scaling [recommended] or 100% scaling [native]

Attachment 131002

can't say I notice the difference when using the progams though