Adobe & Xara/Xara3d in bed together?

**doane** · 07 December 2005, 05:26 PM

This is very interesting, but also a bit scary...

I just bought Adobe CS which has the excellent image browser, Adobe Bridge. I was amazed to find that Bridge will show the thumb nail images for Xara .xar files and for the Xara .x3d files. This is the only browser that I have found that will show the .x3d thumbs, and one of only a few that will show the Xara thumbs.

Why is it a bit scary? Because... why would Adobe accomodate showing thumbs of thier rival to Illustrator, which they have so integrated into Bridge's ability to handle versions of files, etc.? Is this an indication that they may be on the make for aquiring Xara? I would hate to see this, only because it might end up in the back room some where, never to be seen again.

Any comments?

**ivan louette** · 07 December 2005, 06:23 PM

Yes, you are right ! Very scary !!!

**Don Lamb** · 07 December 2005, 07:37 PM

Bridge also accomodates two other Illustrator competitors Draw (.cdr) and Canvas (.cvs) vector thumbs and most of the other raster and vector image file types I have tried including X3D. I find it handles more types than XnView, ACDSee or Infranview. Given this, I don't think there is enough info to conclude that Adobe has it's eye on Xara, rather I think they are trying to expand the utility of their own product(s).

**Soquili** · 07 December 2005, 08:32 PM

Not scary at all. Even Windows explorer can show the Xara3D file thumbnails without any support from other programs. The .xar file thumbnails aren't all that difficult to view either, and is supported by some third party file browsers as well as Xara X¹. I know that Xtreme is supposed to provide this feature, but my own experience has shown that if I haven't installed Xara X¹ on a machine the Xtreme only install doesn't provide the thumnail view in Windows Explorer.

Adobe simply doesn't want to be the only file browser that doesn't support it's competitor's thumbnail images. If it were, it would lose some of it's customers.

NOTE TO Gerry Iles: On a machine that has never had Xara X¹ installed, I have tried manually registering the dll required to view thumbnails and it reports that a module is missing and will not register.

**doane** · 08 December 2005, 03:46 AM

Wow, you're right, Windows XP Explorer does show the v5 x3d thumbs now. I just updated to v5 this year, I had an older version before and the x3d thumbs did no show in Explorer. Still can't see the x3d or xar thumbs in ACDSee v7, and Thumbs+v7 wasn't able to show x3d in earlier versions but can also now show xar and x3d v5 thumbs. maybe this had something to do with my new install of XaraXtreme? (I had Xara1, then XaraX before)