How do you feel about the 365 Program?

[handrawn]

....I have to tell you the image scaling change in v15 was actually intentional, not a bug, but following the feedback in this forum we are discussing this change again.

Kate...

if this was an intentional change then it really does go to show that you have forgotten what it is that a whole sector of designers/artists/animators/etc do in the real world in your rush to cater for 'mom-and-pop' photo album creators and website builders

it beggars belief - what on earth was the reasoning in not giving option on this from the off?

has your code base really become that difficult to work with?

and this is quite apart from silly little issues like leaving out filters for PSD/PDF in P&G15

no-one is perfect, but these issues with releases have ceased to look unfortunate and are starting to look careless..

it's good of you to come back on these issues, thanks... but the impression the company is giving is not good from where I stand

and I agree with Mike... FWIW

[webmaster]

Kate...

if this was an intentional change ....

Is stretching or squashing a photo something that you frequently do, and if so can you give some example use cases, that would help in the discussion we are having about this? Note for occasional use there is an alternative way of doing it, namely change to the Fill tool and hold down Ctrl + Shift while dragging the fill handle.

[handrawn]

ok - as far as the fill tool + crtl + shift goes, that will squish but it is easy to accidentally skew along the other axis [ironic when as I understand it the reason for the change was to prevent accidental changes] also will it work with clipview? will it work with groups? [I cannot test this as my ver 15 trial has 'expired'] - because of this possibility it is slow, one of the beauties for me of the xara interface was the ability to do things very quickly..[ and preferably single handedly]

so up to a point it may work thanks, but 'clunky'

there is another member here to whom the squishing of text is very important, I don't know if like me he uses 'asset' but being involved in animation I do, and if I want to take some asset and morph it in one axis in order to make it tall/thin or short/fat squishing is what I would use - it is very quick, it is very simple, it is so universal you don't even think about it not being there, can't think of another program where it is not

if I have a bitmap created in say photoshop or other raster program - I want to patch it quickly, say make adjustment to the arm; now raster lines are usually too diffuse in comaprison to vector lines to redraw easily - I suppose I could mess around with clone tools etc, but the workflow I have used since the original Xara X before such tools were ever there is to cut out from a copy of the image pieces to overlay... in order to get the lines to match squishing is nearly always necessry - again it is very quick and simple once you get the hang of it

say you have two objects that you want to align both asis, but darn they are not quite the same size.. still if precise aspect is not critical you can just align one axis and squish out out the other until it 'snaps'

.....

[mwenz]

Kate,

the procedure for adding bleed marks is arcane. I have written about it since I began using version 6 (my first version). Bleed itself is defined in the Options dialog. And bleed does get produced. But no printer's marks. To add printer's marks, one needs to pretend they are going to print, in the print dialog, one needs to click on the Options for one's default printer. Then one needs to switch to the Imagesetting tab. Then select the marks desired, then cancel all the way back out to the drawing. Then and only then will printer's marks appear when exporting to PDF.

The Print on all plates thing. When I select and object to print on all plates, say my own registration marks as used for screen printing, nothing will appear on a spot color plate that has been selected to print on all plates.

The White background in PDF was reported directly to Phil by myself on 14 September. On 15 September Phil indicated they believed they had a fix to be tested.

There is another PDF bug with the new PDF/X-4 profile. It fails preflight, which may only be due to missing metadata. But it is there and it will fail a preflight check. This is an important issue. I reported it in the Beta section 16 December, 5 days after the release of XDP 15. If y'all would have bothered with running this crap through the beta testers, this and other bugs would have been found before release.

Squishing Text. There are times I squish text for effect. Fix it.

Squishing images. Don't really do this myself per se, I do distort them sometimes.

There are more issues.

As regards P&GD--utterly useless without Pantone/spot color support.

When Xara thinks it knows better than the people using their software, that should be the first clue you are doing something wrong.

[Acorn]

The $60 renewal cost includes access to all feature updates as well (which you can see listed at http://www.xara.com/web-designer/whats-new/), it isn't simply the cost of accessing the online content. But if you don't necessarily want feature updates there are 2 options I can suggest: Firstly you can add a backup DVD to your order, if it is offered in your country, that has all the templates. Alternatively you can download all the content to your Local Designs Gallery with a right click on each folder in the Designs Gallery > Download all content. Then when your Update Service expires the content will still be accessible.

Kate Moir

Kate

There was/is a lot of confusion when upgrading to v15 to have to select Magix's Trial link and then remember your licence key. Xara went part way to rectifying this by linking from the Xara site.
I suggested allowing the purchase of the DVD for template and design content at the expiry of the support service. Has this been set up?
Advising downloading content to the Local designs gallery is all fine and dandy but you have to do it for v12 and now v15. You have not added the Xara slideshow widget back into v12. Downloading itself is not safe as Xara mucked up the metadata for an incremental OCC change which deleted all locally saved content.

Acorn

[digitalphaser]

In November, I took advantage of a profitable offer and updated v11 to v12 for 95€.

For this money, I received some small but nice improvements. Frankly, all talks about stability are greatly exaggerated. Although after freezing (quite often when importing foreign PDF files) the workspace remains unchanged. It is already good. More interesting PSD export(object to layer). Finally, there are not these crappy templates in the design gallery(never used). OpenType? I'm too stupid to understand how it works.

Obviously, that Xara concentrates on a cheap hobby segment(wysiwyg web designer and online editor). PRO version is dead. I see only the imitation of some activity.

In a word, Kate is right, I can easily live 3-5 years without updating. XDP is a great tool for rapide prototyping. In addition, there are some small features that Xara does better than any other software.

[ernie-f]

In addition, there are some small features that Xara does better than any other software.

And a lot that are worse than the competitor do better.

[digitalphaser]

And a lot that are worse than the competitor do better.

Hah, yes. I "yelled" about it a few years ago. It's useless. Xara Designer is in a deep crisis. It is obvious.

In fact, I use XDP because of the convenient concept and several useful features. For serious work it is not suitable. Retro.

[ernie-f]

Yaeh and No. Xara is still a good, I'll say designig program. But the aproach to be „professional” like the advertising is, is not given.
I think Xara is no retro but sticks in his old roots and try to be modern. Tools/features they are good are canceld. Other tools may become a freshness cure, like in AI or Inkscape are ignored.

For over 12 Years I tried Xara the first time –and it was good in this times. But standards don't stand still but Xara do or come to late with solutions they are half breeded.

Xara was one of the innovative Houses to do a vector based drawing/designing pragram.
But now it looses the connection to the market/development.

For me it is sad to see that Xara is a diyng horse.

And the best of all, they do all to be so.

[lex]

Hello,

I was first a Web Designer user, then I bought Designer Pro X11 on the cheap last year when it was already no longer marketed. I am very happy with the program and will keep using it for many years to come, so the 365 program is not for me. I do not think it is good idea for Magix, either. They should produce or let Xara produce new separate versions that address those issues their loyal professional customers have been griping about. My needs are more modest, and they are very aptly covered what I already have in Xara.

And, as I have said on this forum before, in the meantime, those users that find that something is missing, and want to use Xara and not the alternatives, might benefit from augmenting Xara's capacities by postprocessing the results with some other software (e.g. Montax imposer for bleed marks and such).