Wish List for V12

[buckobeck]

I wish Designer Pro 12 would offer more options for the illustrator.

[handrawn]

but Affinity Designer might be coming up from behind

indeed - you can put your name down for email notification of the release of the free windows beta as we speak - be out by summer all being well

I agree with almost all that Gary [gare] says in post #289

I have had a love/hate relationship with xara x/xtreme/designerpro since 2003

but last august I made a concious descision to start a new project in raster rather than vector, and it is a descision I do not regret. I had been doing more and more in raster and the last eight months have taught me two things: 1] drawing lineart in raster is now a joy rather than a pain thanks to openGL rendering and tools such as Lazy Nezumi 2] I can get used to another program's way of doing things and move on, all that is necessary is for that program to be 'good enough'

it's not just the xara photo tools that are a fudge - so are the art brushes, unfortunately, and the freehand line rendering needs a complete overhaul

I came back to the forum having got wind of the imminent start of the 'version 12' release cycle; I sympathise with xara, they need really to do what serif has done and rebuild the drawing engine from scratch, but this takes money and it is obvious from the new '365' subscription model that they are not currently getting enough of it. I can't comment on the web design side, but I'm guessing the same may apply

I am not encouraged to return to magixara and if affinity beta comes out before designerpro-365, and I like it, then that will probably be that...

[edit: for the attention of the moderator emeritus: this is the 'on-topic' bit: rebuild the drawing engine from scratch and I have avoided 'politics'; even though money, politics and business relationships go hand-in-hand...]

[Jonopen]

I've not been through the other 29 pages of this topic, so apologies in advance if these have been raised before. These are obviously too late for consideration for the initial release of v12, but of course we are now living in the world of 365 updates.

Overall I'm in the camp of those who wish for more or improved vector drawing tools, particularly perspective rulers and grids. Beyond that, I would go for anything that makes the programs easier to use. For example try to reduce potential confusion with terminology, for example there are now Shapes, QuickShapes, SmartShapes and Text panels (which are actually SmartShapes).

Other ideas to help improve using the program:

1) Make open folders in the local design gallery a different colour. The current open/close icons are so similar you have to look twice to see the difference?



2) Provide an option to choose the size of the content being displayed in the online content catalogue. With smaller content size, it would be faster to visually search and require less pages to display.

[Rob-Xar]

The content catalogue is being worked on to improve the display, we noticed this in support and forwarded it onto the developers

[Egg Bramhill]

That's good news, it's a pain to scroll through at present.

[Mike in Canada]

Contact forms. I know this sounds like a broken record, but please Xara, implement Contact form building within Xara.

Another important feature, allow sticky objects on popup layers.

Widgets that allow "full width" in the browser window

And, with the great set of animations that Xara has, could we please have an "Animate out" feature?

[Mike in Canada]

When a page is created and you want to build 'website variants", it would be nice if the newly made variants could auto-scale to their new size relative to the variant size.

For example. A page created at 960px, and two needed variants, 480 and 1200px widths are created...
Variant 480/960=.5 .5x scale applied to all items on page
Variant 1200/960=1.25 1.25 scale applied to all items on page

A checkbox should be incorporated as well to allow sharing between variants, or no sharing.

[pauland]

Autoscaling could be disastrous.

Scaling down isn't great because button sizes may be too small and text may be hard to read, images lose their detail.

Scaling up can result in large text, oversize buttons, pixellated images possibly.

It would be the lazy persons quick way to a bad page design.

[Gare]

Again, again, again, again...

Although it's nice to have Webpage construction features in Xara Designer Pro, there are more than one people(s) who use Designer Pro fro drawing and designing.

I'm not criticizing Paul or Mike for posting stuff relating to Web features; I'm just trying to balance what I feel is too much of a "Pro-Web features" movement on this Wish List.

I'd suggest, and continue to suggest that Xara Web Designer is developed independently from Designer Pro, and that the four products that used to be one product is borne out of a marketing idea and not a practical one (!). If you want to make revenue from four different products, then make them four different products, not this sub-species jazz when compared to the Pro version.

Xara, the drawing program, began as a drawing program, and me, I haven't changed my needs for drawing features, but it sure looks like the product itself is changing.

Respectfully,
Gare

[Acorn]

Again, again, again, again...
...
Respectfully,
Gare

... and without the Web and those who craft in it, we would be much the poorer. Let people come into Xara through an interest in web design and show them what true designers (yourself et al) are capable of. The Web is as much a medium as ink and paper. Think of it as a virtual installation.

Acorn