Xara X is a fine product with its speed, transparency handling and price being its biggest advantages for me. To think that it will one day rule the graphics world is perhaps a pipedream (what a great little programme that was!) so where does it find its niche in the market?
The ability to talk more effectively to its "industry standard" peers in in the graphics world in terms of import/export has to be a priority. Perhaps most annoying is the fact that it doesn't talk to Webstyle, which is a Xara product. A lot of folks out there would like to see these two combine to enable web templates to be easily produced. However Xara's Webstyle templates provide a constant revenue stream and providing this facility could effectively kill off that income.
Xara Picture Editor is fine for a quick fix, Photoshop its never going to be but used in conjunction with Xeus-like enhancement, it would go a long way towards meeting my needs. Basically I use it to produce website graphics, I'm not a rocket scientist.
An improved tracing capability would be really good.
Multi-page documents. My printers use Corel Draw full stop. They marvel at how quick I can produce some effects in Xara but the printshop doesn't do native xara files and it's too much clatting about to get a .xar file into something they can use. Add to that Xara doesn't do multiple page documents, so they'll never entertain it
I've used to use Impression/Artworks years ago and that was the reason why I bought Xara last year... I'd heard of it. The overwhelming majority of fellow IT teachers look at me gone out when I mention Xara, they've never heard of it. A foothold in education is worth a lot and companies like Serif are constantly offering "free trials" of their products to teachers. I don't recall ever having received any promo material from Xara. Does Xara see the education market as a priority but in the long term to be successful, surely the company must address that area.
Charles is a cool cookie, most of the comments that have been posted on this thread, he will have already has thought about long ago, so the question begs, "When will X2 arrive?". If some of the suggestions put forward are to be implemented, then I'd say not for a while yet which is a pity. Then again, it could be just around the corner and Xara will spring it on us out of the blue, saying there you go... we knew what you wanted!
"Second class fairway is better than first class rough!"
Bookmarks