Xtreme Pro 4 way too big!

[BONES]

X1 comes with a footprint of around 10 MB on my hard drive, X4 with 116 - that's a whopping 12 times as large!

In the same time-frame, HDD capacities per dollar have probably increased three or four times as much. Maybe you need to update your thinking if you still worry about every little kb.

Other than that, try to optimize the code as you've done in X1 - small, fast code and not bloatware: not everyone of use wants to invest into new hardware...(I'm switching to Mac now because I can't stand Windoze anymore and definitely Vista is the wrong way to go).

So, apart from the obvious, "so why would you care what happens with a Windoze-only application", I'll tell you that I think you're making an ill-informed decision. The only people I can recommend Mac to are those who don't push the limits of what their computer can do or those who need something that is Mac-only, like Final Cut or Logic. You should do some testing before you switch because I would be very surprised if you get anywhere near the viewport performance in Cinema 4D that you are used to.
I think you'll find that a lot of the extra space it takes up actually contains useful stuff like clip-art, fonts [which generally seem to take up a lot of room these days], help movies and such. When I was using X1, I would definitely have taken the time to remove stuff like that because I only had two 2Gb HDDs but my current laptop has 160Gb and my workstation more than 1Tb of storage, so I don't see the problem. Even if Xara is using more memory now, my PCs have four to eight times more RAM than they did back then, too.

there is away to avoid even the error message - but I forget

Its easy - don't double-click an image. I think that might have happened to me once or twice, ever. I blame my own ineptness for those occasions, not Xara.

It is not a question of cheap storage space! Your answer, gwpriester, comply the level of this board and its software, sorry pal. Because harddrives getting cheaper, there is not necessity to fill them with poor written software.
I cannot understand why it is not possible to write good working software finaly?

I am sure that is not the issue. Earlier versions of Xara did not install any clip-art or fonts and things like the help movies had to be downloaded before you could watch them.
Even if that weren't the case, what is the advantage in wasting development time saving HDD space when it is so cheap? It would be like a car manufacturer trying to build a more spacious car without increasing its dimensions. It would require a lot of effort when the simple solution is to widen the track or increase the wheelbase. As long as it fits in a lane and you can park it, it really isn't relevant, is it? Surely as long as the user experience is slick, it is of no consequence how many lines of code are used? So why waste time that could go into putting in more improvements and features?

We use computers for nearly 30 years on this planet, we fly to the moon and build up an international space-station out there, but working with computers is always a pain in the ass!.

Really? I find my PC to be one of the great joys of my life. I love it and it requires a lot less maintenance effort than any of my other great joys, I can assure you. e.g. I spent three hours on Saturday afternoon washing and cleaning my car and the only thing I got out of it was a clean car. OTOH, I spent 5 minutes installing Vista SP1 last week and my computer now runs measurably faster than it did before.

It is really, really sad, that there is no good working vector-graphics-software out there! As I came to Xtreme a couple of years ago, I liked it small size and its speed. But now it is bigger than Adobe's Illustrator 10, which I use on my machine, and its speed is gone long ago.

I think this is mostly in your mind. have a look at the Xtreme.exe - PRO 3.2 was 6.85Mb, the new one is 9.5Mb. So for all the cool new features, I've had to sacrifice less than 3Mb of my 160Gb HDD. How is that any kind of issue at all?

I give the Xtreme developers some advices: Do NOT put more and more so called features in your software, because some amateurs demand them! Instead get rid of all the bugs, make your code better and develop a userfriendly Interface.

I think Xara already has a very user-friendly interface - it is simple, elegant and extremely powerful. I really can't think of any way it could be greatly improved. Sure, there will always be tweaks that could be applied but the basics are very solid.

But I'm not sure why you think that disk-space, which is essentially free at this sort of scale, is a useful guide to quality.
The real negative consequence of a feature being added which you don't want is *not* the disk-space which it uses, it's that the developer who added that feature wasn't doing something which you'd have preferred.

Finally! Someone with a brain in his head. Hallelujah!

I am not against new features. The problem with Xtreme is the same like Nero Burning Rom: The developers added more and more features which have nothing to do with the core funcionality. At the beginning Nero was a software for burning CDs, now it has features to rip and edit Audio, encode and cut movies etc., etc. But all these features do not do their job very well and the software wastes more than 100 MB harddisc-space and thousands of registry entries so you need special knowledges to get rid of it, if you decide to uninstall it.

I would disagree here. I have used most of the functionality of Nero over the past year and at times it has been a life-saver [when I had to create a DVD with menus for my showreel in a hurry to get a job]. It has saved me from having to spend money to do something I only need occasionally.
With Xara it is even less true - everything in Xara is relevant to design. If you want to pidgeon-hole it so narrowly, that is your problem and I am really glad that the company has a little more vision than that.

The same with Xtreme: with every upgrade there are more and more new features which do a poor job, while all the bugs and usability flaws still remained. For example the HTML-page-feature! Isn't Xtreme a vector-graphics-software? If I'd like to build HTML-pages I get a software, that do this effectively. The websites, generated by Xtreme are worst - the code is worst - unusable, if you want quality.

This is, for me, an excellent example of exactly the kind of vision I appreciate. Xara has taken a process that involved a lot of fiddling around - exporting dozens of individual graphics, placing them in an HTML editor, testing, going back to Xara to tweak things, refreshing the web-editor, trying again, etc, etc. Now I can lay out a page, export once and get exactly what I was after. I can finally now take PageMill off my system, which gives me back more HDD space than the new version takes away. So I'm back in front!
The bottom line is that the less often I have to switch applications, the easier it is to do a first-rate job and to let my inspiration guide my work.

Look into the forum! There are bug reports over bug reports. A software, that produces so many bugs after a new upgrade cannot be named well written. But there is no need to read bug-reports, a single look on the wasted amount of harddrive-space after installation tells you the quality of the software. I know what I am talking about, because I am part of the IT-business and I have learned to program.

This is a no-brainer for me and none of it comes close to making Corel or Illustrator or anything look like an alternative. There are a few issues I have but I see it as the price of progress and I am more than happy to pay it.

Don't forget: the hard drive in my computer - however big or small - is **my hard drive** and **I** want to decide what will be installed there and why and when.

So where does that end? What if I want to be able to choose which tools are compiled into the application? Maybe I don't need any transparency tools but it would be absurd to think that I should have the choice to install that functionality or not. You choose to install Xara or you don't. beyond that, I have no interest in how much space it takes up with clip-art, fonts and movies that I know I will never need or use. As I said, I think you need to modify your expectations. If its really an issue, take a look at your installation and remove what you don't want. e.g. There is a 146mb of clip-art and 35Mb of fills, if you desperately need the space that will just about halve the size of the installation. Take out all the templates and themes and you'll get a little more space. but why would you bother? By the same token, I wouldn't like to see the developer's waste their time on such trivial stuff, any more than I would waste my own time removing it after the fact.

I'm with pauland, I see almost no resemblance between what is written here and my own experience. Xara is slick in every way that matters to me and has no more bugs than anything else [and I use some very expensive software].

[Tao jones]

I am not sure why people both knocking xara when any new version comes out. If you don't want it don't buy it, stick with what works for you. I personally like the fact that xara keeps developing their software. If they put something in their that I don't use what the heck someone else may love using that part. I never use the flash but I think it is good it is there....taojones

[handrawn]

Quote:
Originally Posted by handrawn http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/buttons/viewpost.gif
there is away to avoid even the error message - but I forget


Its easy - don't double-click an image. I think that might have happened to me once or twice, ever. I blame my own ineptness for those occasions, not Xara.

It is only too easy to do by accident for those of us who are less clever or agile or whatever - that is the point - it should have been optional.

It is a common complaint - however as xpe is on the way out - not a problem for much longer

Only trying to be helpful - I don't remember blaming anyone - it's just a pain for us ordinary 'less able' mortals

Like right click duplicate copy - should also be optional

Maybe what we really need is a mouse click program like we have for keyboard shortcuts in pro ?

[pauland]

I actually prefer XPE to the integrated version..

[StevenWWinters]

I would be very happy again if I could deselect the installation of the movie player, the 3D option, the web function, the two photo editors!

I actually tend to agree with Jens that a little granularity in the installer would be a good thing and not that difficult to implement; but only for items that are not tightly integrated with the core product.

Externals such as photo editors (XPE, Magix), movie players, the 3rd party panoramic editor, etc would seem to be relatively obvious choices. The new 3D option would seem to be more tightly integrated with the guts of Xtreme and not so easy to exclude, IMO.

However, it would be interesting to know how much drive space would actually be saved by such options, if drive space is the real issue. I could be wrong, but I can't believe that the HTML export filter (for example) consumes much in the way of resources...

[gwpriester]

Heh, heh. You made quite a reappearance, Jens. We have not had such a spirited conversation since Klaus Nordby left the conferences in a huff many years ago.

I think every Xara has a different opinion. It is human nature.

Many don't think web page creation is a useful addition. But I have received dozens of e-mail messages from new users who want to learn how to create a WYSIWYG website. And about 1/2 of these people upgraded or bought Xtreme for the first time.

But to Jen's point, having the option when you install to do a Typical or Custom install is a good thing. And that was the real point of the thread.


Sorry to interrupt. Carry on with the thrash.

Gary

[pauland]

I'm about to go away for a couple of days, so I'm going to miss it.. :-(

[willdean]

But to Jen's point, having the option when you install to do a Typical or Custom install is a good thing. And that was the real point of the thread.

Sorry to interrupt. Carry on with the thrash.

Well, if Garry says 'carry on....'

I'm going to try and avoid being tempted into repeating this after this last attempt, but:

1. No feature exists except at the expense of another feature. Nothing which increases complexity to save people USD0.01 of diskspace can be simply called 'good' without deeper consideration.

2. Out of the total costs of publishing mass-market shrink-wrap software, up-front coding is but a small proportion. There is such a long way from 'Hello, World' to a box on a shelf (or, more significantly, 100000 successfully deployed installations). Nobody who's ever shipped a lot of software is as glib as many of the posters in this thread are about installation.

3. Aftermarket support costs are potentially devestating to small publishers of low-price mass-market software. Call or email Xara to discuss any problem with your app or installation, and they'll now have lost money on you as a customer.

Just look at some the struggle people around here have to open a command prompt and run expandxar on a file - then just try and imagine a telephone call where you try and discuss with that person (and one of you is not speaking your first language) why the '3D Extrude' icon doesn't appear on their toolbar since they re-installed Xara software. Don't forget that they won't be using nice clear terminology like button, toolbar, window, cursor, either. They'll also deny having even done the reinstallation or changing any options if they did. They won't tell you that since they 'caught a virus', the neighbours' son who "knows a lot about computers" came around and fixed their computer before they called you.

And they'll have a sense of entitlement which may well be quite some way from what you think 30 dollars buys.

Support is expensive, disk is cheap. Intelligent software vendors trade one against the other.

[The Alien]

I don't want to intrude too much in this thread, but suppose Xara made it possible to deselect the option to install the Magix photo editor... I don't think Magix would be very happy about this. And it wouldn't make the Xara-Magix relations much better I think. AFAIK the Magix photo editor is the only "tangible" presence of Magix in the Xtreme software. Giving users the option to remove this presence is almost like indicating you don't want to work with Magix :\
Making the Magix photo editor part of the "core" install, but making XPE optional obviously isn't going to work for Xara.

I'm not standing in their shoes, but I think these considerations also play a part in this matter.

[willdean]

Xara don't 'work with' Magix, they're completely owned by them.