Apparent Bugs in Web Designer Premium 365 - Large File Size

I am building a website for a landscaper. It is a two size responsive design with 28 pages now, perhaps more in the future for SEO. I have noticed some bugs that show up here and there now that the project is larger. I thought I would ask advice or report the bugs. The actual site is at http://risingsun-landscaping.com. It has a lot of images, needed for this industry.

I am using the 64 bit version of Xara Webdesigner Premium 365 and my machine is a fairly powerful 8-core Intel i7 with 24 GB of memory on Windows 10. The current size of the .web file is about 54 MB. I optimize images with that option in utilities. Overall I am impressed with the program -- good job! I always want more though!

Here's what I noticed. Item (4) is the worst one at the moment.

(1) More frequent Crashes

WDP365 crashes more often now that the project is large. Sometimes there is an error and the program can continue to run. Other times it just crashes and tells you it will close. I am not happy with the file recovery capability of the program during a crash as sometimes when I launch the program again, the file is not recoverable. That's not good at all. I have resorted to saving frequently and rotating between 2-3 file names in saves so I can recover the file should it crash. It appears that WDP365 auto saves the file when you try to close the program after an error -- which is like suicide for the file. I would like to request a more robust file recovery capability in this program. Seems like a good investment in your reputation.

(2) More frequent blue screens

Since Windows 10 is so horrible, I don't know if I can blame this on Xara, but I'll mention it. Same solution as above. Not much I can do about that.

(3) Opening the file WDP365 fixes mysterious file errors

Sometimes when something goes wrong, and even when it doesn't, sometimes opening a file WDP365 will issue a number of file fix errors as it processes the file. Sometimes there are something called live shares that are messed up. Sometimes objects are wrong or missing and replaced with something else (like a frame? or rectangle). I forget the exact wording ... about 4 or so different things, sometimes related to image shadows. I really like that the program is scanning the incoming file for errors and trying to fix it -- good robustness technique. But... it shows there are some reliability issues and bugs in the machine for large projects. If my file is corrupted somehow, then a more robust scanning and fixing routine is is order. So far I can continue but not sure if this will become a fatal problem in the future.

(4) Image unwanted grouping issue with variant

This one is really strange and just started happening. On the Xeriscaping page I wanted to add some images. My typical approach is (a) add the images to the regular variant including shadows, (b) anchor the images to text that is shared with the variant, which apparently automatically shares the image with the variant... not bad. (c) go to the mobile variant, turn on text repel on the images, and resize and reposition the images. That's usually fairly efficient and fast and normally a "hat's off to Xara" for a quick way to manage a variant.

Problem now is that when I put a fourth image on the main page and do this process, then go to the variant, the fourth image is somehow grouped with the second image I uploaded. I try to move either of these images around on the variant page and they move together. That should not be happening. I can't ungroup them because I don't think they are really grouped, there is some bug grouping them. I have tried to go back and un anchor and delete but sometimes this deletes the images on the main variant. I seem to be stuck at a point where I can no longer anchor the images and have them duplicate on the variant without this bug occuring. I can add unanchored images on the main variant, and perhaps the mobile, but this breaks my pattern of usage and the feature use in WDP365.

Thanks for any insights you can provide!

Quote:

---

It appears that WDP365 auto saves the file when you try to close the program after an error -- which is like suicide for the file. I would like to request a more robust file recovery capability in this program. Seems like a good investment in your reputation.

---

you can use task manager to close the file without any of the termination routines - right click task bar for task manager, select the xara task and click end task button

can't help you with the web design issues, but hopefully someone else will

however in general, if you are getting blue screens something may be wrong with your system; personally I get less errors with win 10 than before, one of the reasons I like it [assuming it's set up right, and that can take a bit of doing I will admit if you don't want cortana and the like; best to have win 10 pro maybe]

Thanks! Windows 10 updates so frequently that such instabilities come and go. That was really not my primary concern. Good idea on terminating the program through the task manager, but I would still suggest Xara creates a more robust file save/recovery approach.

Xara also auto-saves backups. See if you can see an uncorrupted xar file by going File / Open Recents / Backups and open the last saved back-up of that file.

Also I'd check your memory for faults. This may cause file corruptions and blue-screens.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Egg Bramhill

Xara also auto-saves backups. See if you can see an uncorrupted xar file by going File / Open Recents / Backups and open the last saved back-up of that file. ...

---

Wow, thanks. I did not know about that set of backup files. They are ".web" files in Web Designer Premium 365.

to do what egg suggests and check memory in windows 10 - type mdsched into windows search on the taskbar and run the windows memory diagnostic app - the computer will need to restart

Thanks very much for the suggestion. I had run the manufacturer's diagnostics and found no issues. I just tried what you suggested and no issues. Windows 10 and all the other software is fairly complex, so an occasional blue screen when exercising things makes sense. I am also at about 5300 ft above sea level, so it might be an occasional cosmic ray somewhere through the computer electronics.

Issue (4) still persists on one page on the website noted. The problem occurs when I anchor a non-variant-shared image to variant-shared text. That automatically shares the image to the variant. Normally this has worked just fine. In this case when I do this with another image, it groups that image and another on the shared mobile variant.

I checked, and I can share each image across variants and there are no problems. This may be a workaround. I've not tried then linking those images to text so they scroll as text is changed.