XX5 and WD

[bde2012]

Hello,

I have a few questions about hese 2 products. I installed the xx5 trial and it will soon expire. I downloaded the WD trial but never installed it because I wanted to look at XX5 first.

Praises first. These are really great products. I have been lurking around for a 2-3 weeks and the sites that have been created are very sharp. It also looks like a very active and helpful bunch of people here on this forum. I come from NOF and was looking to replace the product and go on down the rooad with something new. Just tired of the bugs.

From my understanding WD is a brand new stand alone product for Web design with the same functionality is in XX5. For the price, I can easily be swayed to get XX5.

Will Xara be keeping this functionality in XX? At least for say 3-5 years?

How often do new versions come out?

thanks.
Brian

[Soquili]

Hello Brian,

Welcome to Talkgraphics.

The time between new releases of Xtreme have been getting shorter over the past 9 to 10 years. Xtreme 4.0 was released in 2008 and Xtreme 5.1 was released this year.

Xara Web Designer was released in March 2009 and Xara Xtreme 5.1 was released in June 2009.

[slavelle]

xtreme has a TON of handy features that you don't miss in XWD unless you are used to using them. Things like contours, bevels, shapes other than circles and squares, a mould tool that lets you distort things to make them fit shapes (like perspective type on a billboard or a soup can label, for instance), a 3d Extrude tool that can do some really cool things fast, Live plugins, and line strokes and brushes, where you could spend a whole month exploring things to do with them, and other manipulations are handy for creating things like buttons, icons, text headings, and a rediculously long list of other things.

In short, xtreme is a full graphic design studio, where XWD is really more limited to the basic toolset you would need to create a basic website, expecting that you would be using another tool, such as Xtreme, Illustrator, Photoshop, PaintshopPro, or whatever.

xteme5 has basically the same toolset as 4 (plus all the web enhancements, objects gallery, and the other 98 they advertise ) There are a number of things lurking in there that can be useful for different occassions, like the content aware stretching...a great way to extend those pictures that you want to use in a banner, but can't because they are just a little too small - or a zillion other uses.

xtreme5pro adds a few things that may be of interest, but at a larger price tag, namely, the ability to create keyboard shortcuts and the expanded Object Gallery which goes all the way down to the objects on each layer on each page (see my video here: www.technicalrs.com/XaraStuff) - plus all the other Pro stuff that was there before, like Pantone, multi color outputs, high end pdf output, etc.

Even just the ability to browse through the pages of your website easily, the xx5 (or pro) gallery having each page listed all in the same view is really handy. Other things that have been added, like the ability to have all layers available on all pages can be really useful if planned correctly. For example, I've been using this to build my basic page on which all of the navigation popups exist, then turning the feature off so that I can create individual unique popups for each of the pages and their content.

Hope this helps.

[bde2012]

Thanks for the quick responses, I really appriciate it. its helpful in making the decision.

I do have a question about XX5 Pro. I notice there is an upgrade from competiter discount as well which also brings the price difference of XX5 Pro and xx5 more attractive as well.

Do you know if NOF would be a valid program to upgrade from?

Thanks

Brian

[steve.ledger]

Do you know if NOF would be a valid program to upgrade from?

In the past, other drawing/illustration applications have been considered for the Competitor Upgrade offer, it would be interesting to know if Xara will now consider HTML editors as a valid upgrade path.

You will need to apply to Xara for this (use the form on this page).
But please, let us know the result because I'm sure there are many others who might jump ship

[bde2012]

Okay I have sent the requestand as soon as someone gets back to me with an answer, I will post it.

Thanks
Brian

[bde2012]

Update:

The competiter upgrade discount from NOF is accepted.

I just cant pass up the Pro version now.

Thanks for your answers.

Brian

[steve.ledger]

Thanks for the update Brian