Xara Xtreme is a complete Disappointment ...

[Mark (theKeeper)]

You know guys, it's ok to be disappointed in the upgrade. It's not a personal slam to see the latest release as less than expected. I've had that feeling since the first Xara upgrade. The program isn't appreciatively different than when I first bought it some 10 years ago. They keep focusing on the nifty neato and not the serious tool set and it is frustrating. There have been some good things along the way, but not as much as I'd like to see.

As I said before I can't say (or imply) it's not worth the upgrade price as it is more than reasonable. Seems your taking your feelings towards James and attacking the message because of the messenger. If you don't agree and you think it's great, good for you. Enjoy it. Filter your a** off and we'll all be looking at chrome bugs, flowers, cars, quickshapes and the like for the next 6 months (or more... most likely MUCH more). Meanwhile issues like the abysmal text tools which haven't changed since day one again pass through without a nod. No worries though mate, cause we've got Alien skin plugins and blends out the wazzoo.....

Now, to back up a bit. I love Xara and it's amazing that a product that is so similar as it was 10 years ago is still very usable today. It's fast, it's intuitive and it produces great results. I'd buy the upgrade if there was less to it than there is now if only to encourage Xara to continue their development efforts. I LOVE that they are building on the product again, that there have been 2 upgrades (no matter how much I loved or hated them) in a relatively short period of time after seeing nothing coming out of them for years. I also am intrigued by their open source move. I do hope that it lives up to what they hope. I'd love to see an expanded user base for Xara. That all being said, I'm not going to give them a pass and fawn all over the new release that forgets core tools in favor of window dressing.

Well, I've said my peace... fire away if you want.

J

Here here. I too have long (and silently) awaited the type toolset to be much improved. I DO have Photoshop, and i'm quite adept at using it. So i really can't see myself being inspired enough to be flogging through plugins in Xara; Not unless they improve its usefulness on a more practical level. More purposeful functionality is what i'd like to see. Xara has enough 'tricks' in its bag to last awhile now. More potato, less sour cream please!

PS: i too am a die-hard Xarian... so don't take this as a bash, but rather a plea.

[roman]

Ah yeah.. problem with deadkeys for character punctuation is still there ;-) (deadkey is still producing 2 unnecessary marks (which have to be deleted later) and then after pressing the desired key, the correct character.. ) ;-)

roman

[Michael]

Well. that's a bit harsh. But I have to agree that I had high expectations from this release and they're not fulfilled. My main wishes: proper pressure sensitivity and SVG im/export

1. Proper pressure sensitivity. The Stroke shapes/pressure profiles don't respond to pressure senitive input at all (in my case a bog standard TabletPC; i.e. a Wacom stylus). And when trying the alternative way I mentioned about two months ago (create a brush by drawing a dot and make that brush presure sensitive) it seems to react to the input and scales the line according to the pressure given (screenshot 1.jpg), the line in the lower left corner), but once the stylus is released the line is drawn bog-standard. (screenshot 2.jpg. Mind that the line in the lower left corner is drawn as a default line. And don't pay attention to the other vector software lurking in th background. Though I used it to test if pressure sensitivity was still functioning properly. This program rendered all the effect well and without noticable lag. What's "fast" anyway, given the processorpower and amounts of RAM today?)

2. SVG export ? Wait for a plugin? And if that's paid for, what have i bought then? A ticket to get a place in a queue to by a ticket?

Even if I feel very sympathetic towards Xara and even though I'm inclined to grab my copy of Xara when I have to knock up an illustration very fast (knowing that I take risks when it comes to pre-press work) I'm not willing to pay something around €20 each year just to have a fresh copy or new bells and whistles.

But I do hope that by going open source someone might add proffesionalism to the package and some really usefull features and functionality. I'll keep lurking these pages to follow the whereabouts of my dear X.

[roman]

I'm quite happy about current improvements to tell the truth. ;-)

[michaelward]

Xara is built on very solid foundations (it's graphics engine), and they've been adding some funky new rooms to the Xara house (live effects, etc.) but the wiring is getting old and needs replacing before it burns the house down (printing problems, lack of autosave, import/export filters, and all those other bugs or crappages that are plagueing real Xara use amongst pro's).

Don't forget the maintenace Xara, even though you want/need to build that fancy new extension to the house.

[masque]

I’ve been using Xtreme for a few days now. For £20odd pounds I can’t complain too much, or at all perhaps.
I’ve exported a few of jobs to print via PDF which worked out great, whether it worked out better or quicker than exporting them to PDF via Cute is hard to say but no real complaints there.
The ability to turn everything I draw chrome or place a 3D lattice over it is of questionable importance to me, I just dread the opening of the ‘eye candy’ gallery.

I am disappointed, as was a previous poster, about the lack of enhancements to the text handling. Tabs, linking text boxes, fine text adjustments, with or without a spellchecker, are more important than gimmicky plug ins and can it be to hard to just scan a pencil sketch straight into Xara to help a drawing get started?

Docked galleries …. Great!!. No more having to open and drag each gallery to a convenient size and location on the screen each time you open Xara, just leave the most used ones docked to the side of the screen and there they are when you open Xara next. They are there alright but have jumped back to occupy a third of the available workspace and have to be dragged to a convenient size and position on the screen each time you start work which takes every bit as much time as just opening them as you need them and sizing them as before. Even Corel can manage a docked gallery or two that remembers it's specified size.

I’m sure, as wish lists in the past have shown that you can’t please everybody all of the time but attending to the serious improvements is more important than gimmicky add-ons that save people having to produce a chrome fill for themselves or whatever other labour saving effects the live toolbox holds.

I just hope that the open source revelation will help attend to the serious stuff in due course.
If Xara can provide a tool that helps people make money then they will make money, I was relieved to see that there are no Greetings Card wizards just yet.

[minimiro]

Yep, so and I...

Can someone explain me one simple thing...

why Xara cross out press functions in Xtreme?
X1 needed just from one normal CMYK Bitmap import filter, and little press/prepress/calibration touch up's

Plug-ins...ok..someone, hwo found graphic software last week may be will be impressed... but another said "I don't use them in Photoshop, why I must use them in vector package"??? and I think He was absolute right.

another usefull thing - Linux and Mac OS, thats sound great, but not for us, this is good news for future users and for Xara Ltd.

PDF export is good thing, but Xara Xtreme continue to read/export just Ai7-8
CMX5-6 and CDR5.... and avcource again without EPS import
Why when Corel come with version 13
Ai already come to CS2 - PDF based etc
Pshop - come with DCS2.0, layered TIFs etc etc

I think that Xara Ltd think that most people use Graphic software just for drawing, or for web, ... but I think that they must change their opinion - one simple example:

I make drawing or just design for something or someone... And I Ask the people hwo will make prepress/press what kind of files you need... can you accept Xar?
-?!?!?!??! Xar?????
-Ok I'll give you EPS (with RGB elements included, avcourse) or CMX, or TIF avcource
with my comp I can give up and 30000x30000dpi TIF, but this is not professional people

for me - this is just minor update, with some good think included and same amount usefull things exluded

[Bob Hahn]

I agree that it would help if they expanded Xara X to include these other needs. But at the same time, if you look at the Xara site and how Xtreme is advertised, it does all it's ment to do. Maybe we're making it a bigger program that what it really is, or they're just slow at adding requested features.

Instead of having Xara bending backwards, exporting to other formats, what would Xara have to do to have the xar. file more widely accepted for print jobs?

-Bob.

[stlewis]

I agree with many of the minus comments but don't come down so hard on the plugins. Many of us will have enough experience to use them wisely - for example with transparency or behind a 'standard' vector shape. The benefit of them is that they do bring a more organic feel or texture to a shape very quickly.

And with Xtreme so cheap it can appeal to the education and home markets where 'amateurs' can learn not to go over the top with effects. This will bring a steady income to Xara - as I expect they get from the other, sometimes derided, products such as Webstyle. As I have commented before, software development is costly and painful to the cashflow - having a broad portfolio of products evens it out.

[masque]

"if you look at the Xara site and how Xtreme is advertised, it does all it's ment to do. Maybe we're making it a bigger program that what it really is"

I think Xara is underselling its own software and making it a smaller program than it really is by not fully attending to the serious users requirements and needs sometimes. Having said that, and previous negative comments, I personally couldn't be without it. I can still do more in an afternoon with it than any other software at my disposal, dispite having to take the long way round sometimes with things like page layout.