XX5 - Woooo! Another Let Down

[kinetica]

If left to the vector community, Xara would already be dead.

wow, thanks

if it wasn't for the vector community xara would already be dead

[handrawn]

xara was [almost] dead - only corel life support saved it [at a high price] - at that time it was a vector program pure and simple was it not..

this is all very silly its a commercial product get used to it - the core functionality is what xara decides it will be...

[sgiff]

I think that John's honesty should put an end to these pointless debates and complaints.
Xara is in business to survive.

I think if this were true they would have created a Mac version a long time ago. The vast majority of people who use Adobe apps use them on the Mac at least it's true for print software so if they had offered Mac users Xara as a competitor to the horribly resource hungry and frustrating Illustrator they would be making a lot more money than they are now.

[morphonius_821]

what additional tools would you add to XaraXtreme?

Most experienced users would have a list of "pet wants" mine personally is topped mainly by User Interface improvements,

(although totally new tools are always nice if they are useful and nicely implemented, but I would argue that part of Xara's appeal currently is its compact UI...
I.E it does not have a thousand icons like Corel does...
So fitting in with this philosophy and expanding on it I would rather see new development not necessarily rolled out as "NEW TOOLS".... as this suggests....NEW ICONS, NEW BARS and NEW CLUTTER...
But as overhauls to the way some of the existing functionality is accessed so as to optimize things overall and minimize icons across the board and if possible to integrate new functions in such a way that does not necessitate new icons on the FACE of xara.)...

Examples...(off the top of my head..not really looking)

1) the fill icon....

(have it work on a "raster level" like inkscape's does so you can fill any shape of enclosed pixels that may be created by several intersecting shapes with one click with-out having to muck around....)

2) Gradient steps.....

(have a default that can be preset, (not just 4) and when set to 0 (no new steps) this same tool could function as an expand or contract tool. With the addition of a make as copy function by holding a hot key.)

3) The shape editor tool...

(just my humble opinion but the way you have to use keyboard shorts or click on icons to switch modes just to mix up between corners and curved nodes etc ruins this tool for me...ie renders it all but useless.)

4) The input tools generally....

I personally think we don't need 3 separate icons for these (freehand, shape and pen), rather I think they should just have one input tool/icon and introduce more flexibility to combine all 3 methods so that the feel is one of switching "modes" rather than tools. As well as streamlining the interaction and hot swapping between these this would also eliminate 2 icons.

5) Styles list for selection....

I don't know what the new object list can do...(maybe i am speaking too soon) but i would like this to double as a styles list so that you could not only view all the objects in the design in the current way i.e by colour order then z order ETC.... but also by their own innate properties....
This way you could re-order the display of the object list by their properties themselves and make quick selections of different objects across the entire design simply by selecting all of them by way of selecting their shared property.

6) Fix the color picker

After 6 months of using Xara and the color pickers both on the palette bar and color dialogue (Extensively) i still can not a get them to work at all reliably.
And when i find a certain color simply will not select (despite zoom) i find picking a color from the palette and trying again usually remedies this apparent bug.

7) Fix the View Quality Slider

We need to see raster images rendered in the "wire frame stop", and if this is not desirable for some reason then to create a new stop with wire frame render plus raster images.

8) Improve feathering

A) - Implement external(by actively expanding the object at the same time)/internal feathering using an onscreen UI device the same as is currently employed for the contour tool.
B) - Also implement a linear feather direction control (like the linear fill arrow control) so the feathering "weight" across an object can be altered.


9) Wacom Pen style tools?

Update the freehand tool so the nib can be made to change size depending on pen pressure (my apologies if this has already been done.
Also i would like to see an add mode so you could build up fill shapes in the same way as you would in a raster app...(can this be done currently?)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Anyway i have already said too much and many others have very different ideas to mine.
But I hope this answers your question in some small way...obviously others would have different angles of attack...

[pauland]

I can't say that I like this "buy XWD for the web, upgrade Xtreme for more of the same plus a bit more" tack.

It's interesting to see that this piggybacking of Web development functionality is already causing confusion..

http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthread.php?t=39257

I really don't blame people for being confused about what Xara product does what - I would be if I didn't follow the forums here.

[covoxer]

Errrm... We still have a trial period, don't we?

[remi]

Errrm... We still have a trial period, don't we?

But also still a bad marketing: Add this to your website together with a simple drawing, in order to give your customers orientation:

Web Designer is a truncated version of the Xtreme5, and Xtreme5 is a truncated version of the XtremePro5.
On the Web features side, WD has all the functionality present in X5 and XPro5. What is missing in WD are design features, like drawing tools,DTP functionaluity, export/import filters to the formats not used in web designs, more advanced bitmap editing tools e.t.c.

Regards,
Remi

[covoxer]

Good idea! I guess.