Gallery Request: Can XaraXtreme learn from DrawPlus X2?

[Robert H]

Thanks Steve...

The posts were not meant to showcase DrawPlus but as requests for additions to Xara with graphic displays as to how another app accomplishes these features. I like Xara much better but would like to see these additional functions. So I think it would be better in the original forum. Thanks.

[Robert H]

Thanks for viewing and your reply John.

[Soquili]

When I see these requests for interface changes to make Xtreme look and feel more like another program I think of the old lawsuit between the makers of Print Shop and PrintMaster.

Broderbund (Print Shop) sued Unison (PrintMaster) for copyright infringement.

PrintMaster's interface was almost identical to that of Print Shop and the courts decided it was a violation of Broderbund's copyright.

http://www.law.berkeley.edu/journals...l2/heckman.pdf


Until Broderbund eventually bought out Unison the two programs had to have different interface designs.

[MarkMyWords]

I don't think this is just about the look of the interface Bill, Xtremes galleries are a bit 'clunky'. Those tabbed galleries do look good though.

Some niggly little stuff that just grates; Why can't you drag and drop into a gallery (especially the clipart gallery)? Why can't you copy attributes from a gallery object and paste them onto a document object (this would make loading custom brushes much slicker)? Why can't you change the icon size in galleries?

On the colour editor why the hell have a dropdown list for two choices? This just seems like adding mouse clicks for the point of it. Come on Xara, just let us left and right click on the eyedropper in the colour editor for fill or line choice. Why is the 'no colour' chequered box in the advance section of the colour editor, stick it under the eyedropper for goodness sake.

Can't we have a preferences option to use the industry standard Alignment icons instead of the 'idiosyncratic' Xtreme alignment interface? - It drives me up the wall. Can we change the line thickness using the bracket keys - like almost every other graphics program does, what is it with Xara and dropdown menus?

[Robert H]

When I see these requests for interface changes to make Xtreme look and feel more like another program I think of the old lawsuit between the makers of Print Shop and PrintMaster.

Thanks for replying Bill.

I don't want Xara to be like DrawPlus, Xara is a much better app. There are just somethings that are really awkward about the galleries in Xara, and if addressed, would make the product so much better. Being able to point to examples in other programs gives the developers a point of reference to draw on.

The stacking of categories in some of the galleries takes up so much screen space. Tabbed galleries are used in many apps, and for good reasons. To be able to automatically expand and collapse all the galleries (as some FireFox addins and DrawPlus does) makes a lot of sense. If there is a good design out there it is worthwhile learning about it. We all stand on the shoulders of those who came before. I spend so much time with it. Let's make Xara the best that it can possibly be.

[Soquili]

I infrequently use any of the galleries so they have little influence on my workflow.

I do use the Colour Editor and find it to be my favorite of any application I have ever used.

Differing tastes for different people.

[steve.ledger]

I guess it all depends on how much time you invest in those other apps and how accustomed you have become with the UI and the workflow.
Xara is renowed for simplicity and an uncluttered UI and, though you say you prefer Xara over others, you are now are asking them to consider following a younger application's UI layout because you prefer it (who themselves have followed others perhaps in order to be noticed.)
Xara was creating software years ahead of Serif UK, who's main claim to fame has been free versions of their applications rather than innovative tools and technologies..
Is 'Industry Standard' similar to plagerism? (Which is what Bill was pointing out) or is it just a 'me too' thing.. Should applications become so similar to each other that 'learning curves' become a thing of the past?
Can copying something that already exists elswhere be called 'innovative'? (please leave MS jokes at the door
I'm all for innovation and change so long as it is 'better' rather than simply different or worse is 'me-too, copy cat' stuff..

"All of the people some of the time'....

[MarkMyWords]

I think industry standard means using common conventions, no one is asking for Xara to 'clone' other programs. I use several graphics programs and find myself wrong-footed many times by Xaras hot-keys and other unique ways of doing things. To some extent the hot-key editor may help with this, but there are other little quirks too.

I do understand, that in most cases it is about making functions easy to figure out and logical to access, but where you have the majority learning one way of doing things, should there not at least be an option for them to keep that way, even if Xtreme were to keep its own idiosyncrasy's too? Would it be too much to put an option to have the widely used 'alignment icons' or the alignment interface we now have? Or to include a right and left- click option on the eye-dropper in the colour editor as well a the drop-down? Why not have line thickness adjusted using the bracket keys, -as well as keeping the drop-down?

As for the galleries in general, I'm sorry, but they look and feel like they are from a much older program, their functionality is not what it should be. Drawplus X2 may not be a great program in comparison to Xtreme, as a whole, but it tries and does get some things right.

This is not an attack on Xtreme, if I did not think it was the best software for the job I wouldn't be using it. That is not to say that I cannot see areas I think need attention. In many ways Xtreme is, by far, the best vector software I have ever used, but in others it seems that it goes out of its way to add unneeded steps in some functions. For me this may be partially just the way I work, I don't know how others use xtreme, so I can only give my viewpoint.

For instance when creating line-work (my main use for xtreme) I use for the most part, my favourite, the shape editor, but to apply stroke shapes when using the shape editor, I have to click on the freehand tool, click on the drop-down, click on the shape I want, and then finally click on the shape editor for applying my next path, four clicks for one simple operation? When you take into account each image has hundreds of lines this gets wearing. I could keep the line gallery open, but the icons are so big that to view most stroke-shapes, it takes up a lot of space and even then you often have to scroll to access some -clunky. If we could re-size the icons in the galleries, I could keep the line gallery open and all the strokes visible for all the drawing tools.

While I understand some of these 'niggles' my be just related to the way I work and not affect others, the fact is that xtremes galleries are clunky and need work.

[Robert H]

When I was looking for a new drawing program, having used several versions of AI and hating it, Expression 3 until MS bought and sat on it for over a year and a half (and then removing most of the cool features and charging a fortune), I bought both Xara and DrawPlus around the same time. I'd go back and forth using one then the other. What I really liked about DP initially was the brush strokes, which were very similar to Expression 3 and the style gallery. What really bothered me about DP was the lack of customization, no toolbar creation, few shortcut keys, stability issues, a very inflexible UI.

I started using Xara more and more. I miss not having the skeletal brush strokes of DP and E3 but Xara is a great program with many innovative features and great speed. But the galleries are crude. In DP and Photoshop I can have over 12 galleries open at the same time and using the same screen space as 1 or 2 Xara galleries. Layouts are consistent and don't overlay the drawing area. You don't have to continually resize the galleries, and the pallet well is not constantly changing widths. And a lot less scrolling to locate elements.

The clipart gallery is currently a repository of third party graphics. I have a 21 inch monitor and 4/5ths of the screen is taken up with categories before even a single item is displayed. It could be so much better. Having a dropdown list of categories frees up huge amounts of screen real estate. Allowing drag and drop of objects from the drawing area to the gallery facilitates easy reuse of drawing elements: buttons, separators, backgrounds, logos, headers, surface textures, etc. making it so much more powerful. Allowing the creation of user categories streamlines organization and workflow. Most of the same issues exist with the Fill Gallery.

Tabbed interface elements, dropdown lists and menu trees are used everywhere in software not because people are trying to copy cat each other, but because they are proven useful tools for conserving screen space, organization and getting things done. Icons (with tool tips) as opposed to named push buttons , are used everywhere because your brain can process them much faster than having to read the text on a button, especially where there are a lot of icons to choose from. Industry Standards make sense in a lot of instances, but certainly not all (the Space Bar in Xara for switching between tools makes much more sense than the standard of the push tool, when you have a 3 or more button mouse). Not everything needs to be unique.

I want my designs and art to be innovative. I want my tools to powerful and efficient. If program X has a better idea on how to setup the workspace, use it. Save the innovations for speedy drawing algorithms, memory usage, bitmap manipulations, Boolean operations, color control, printer output, export, vector handling, etc, the main focus of the application.

[Robert H]

Thanks MarkMyWords. I agree with most of what you say. I too love Xara and my comments surely are not an attack. I just want it better.

Thanks Bill and Steve for your comments.