How do you feel about the 365 Program?

[Acorn]

I take Kate's point that a lot of this has been thrashed out at the start of the 365 service but we haven't seen what might happen and so are concerned.

hseiken stresses the worth of Xara's rendering engine's responsiveness, which I fully endorse.

At the same time, I am not after vector bloat in asking but I would love to see directional lines actually having a terminal point at the tip of a head or a tail and not at the line end points; more like the Quick Shape Line, which lacks a head or tail.
Quick Shapes are naff because they do not snap to anything: c.f., dark matter and our universe.
More on lines, would be to actually snap to the boundary of the shape and not the limited Snap to Objects. Once that happens aim for sticking to a touched shape.

Acorn

[cmpan1]

My biggest gripe in the past has been the in-stability of the program... somethin' always happening - even many many crashes for many reasons.... I had absolutely NO confidence in the program for any serious work.
As far as this problem, this is the most stable version I've ever used of Xara.

Now I work hour after hour, opening multiple files, moving objects between, open two or three other apps while running Xara. I don't think It's ever been better!
I could count the crashes, or for that matter any problem I have had thus far.

Regarding the 365 system... yes, like many of you, I find myself awaiting new features. Yet I'm not unhappy with what's been done so far. This program as a whole is a life-saver for me.... And as far as the yearly upgrade price
in order to keep the existing updates, again, no problem. I have dumped Adobe CC because I can work 100 times faster with easier to use features then Illustrator etc. For my skill level, and for my needs.... XD is perfect!

And... with all the savings of the half dozen upgrades each year of other apps + Adobe CC.... the Xara upgrade is a piece of cake. About having to be online for this or that... it's happening throughout the industry... if you can't
beat em', well, live with it!

I've only done one website thus far with the new version.... and I like the Xara features 10 x's better then Adobe Muse. www.specialtydesserts.com

And this week I was asked to do two Point of Sale Flyers... which was a pleasure (and fun) to do in XD. (attached)

So, I'm in the camp of.. 'I'm not unhappy at all'. I'm lovin' the program.... and am patient enough to wait the few and far between slight annoyances that always seem to get better and improve with each major upgrade.

Cliff

[handrawn]

ok - here's a specific

when I draw with xara art brushes I zoom in and zoom out quite a bit to see what I am doing - The brushes have to redraw everytime - I can see it happening as they switch from low res to high res rendering, one by one; after a short while of drawing lots of lines it becomes tedious - Affinity Designer Art Brushes are a lot quicker [and pure raster brushes, in say ArtRage 5, it appears to be instantaneous] - this even happens in xara with custom art brushes that are created with a pure vector shape

so much for the blisteringly fast xara rendering engine - it's not as if I had an underspec computer, although the graphics card is not of hi-end gaming standard - but by implication bumping that up would speed up AD too...

it depends what you are doing, does it not...

[gwpriester]

Handrawn, and others. Please limit your discussion to what you LIKE or DO NOT LIKE about the 365 program. If you want to discus specific features or compare them to non-Xara/Magix programs either do this in Dear Xara or start another thread.

[Peter Prewett]

I'm only aware of one serious problem with connectivity with the Online Content Catalog, which we posted about here on TG. Are you still experiencing problems?? But I agree it's slower than it should be.

You know, the Find function in the Designs Gallery hadn't worked properly for quite some time. We couldn't easily fix that but kept it there as better than nothing. Now we have a proper search function in the Online Content Catalog so we've removed the Find function from the DG.

So if we decide not to upgrade then we loose the online catalog and the search facility that means no way can I find what is in my DG.

And if the internet is down then lost access to search as well.

It should be local not on the internet.

The online is slow and once selected and downloaded an item one has to go through all the steps to continue to next item to download.

I just hate this method of operation.

[handrawn]

Please limit your discussion to what you LIKE or DO NOT LIKE about the 365 program.

well if, [and at this stage that's all it is: an if] this:

365 has had no significant impact on total revenue and neither did we expect it to. But it will smooth out the revenue over the year and, perhaps more important, smooth the load on our support and testing teams (not outsourced to India as someone suggested earlier in this thread, but provided in-house by Xara and Magix), which can only be good news for quality. I hope you’re already seeing the results of that in the greater stability of recent versions and faster turnaround in support.

results in an improvement in the quality of the program - from the point of stability; and/or by the improvement of features such as I mentioned [but won't repeat] that don't work properly or as well as they should; and/or even the implementation of new features that are really useful.. then obviously it's a good thing

from my point of view as a drawer only, as things stand there is no real negative side to it [having thrashed that out to death as Kate mentioned], it remains strictly neutral - proof in the pudding and all that...

I see real problems on the online catalog side though if people can no longer access asset and material they need to have control over, because they have not renewed their subscriptions - this is a downside of cloud of course, applies to any cloud service you stop subscribing to, especially if there is no easy means to download what is yours first; and there should be

but if an easy way to download locally content that was created by you or was bought outright were provided, then that would overcome that reservation

online content which is not bought outright cannot be expected to be downloaded - if anyone uses this and does not maintain their subscription, then again that is a downside to cloud; and maybe more a question of whether this sort of content should be in the catalogue at all rather than an issue with the 365 model per se - the user has the choice of whether to use it or not, if it is included

[hoja]

365 has had no significant impact on total revenue and neither did we expect it to. But it will smooth out
the revenue over the year and, perhaps more important, smooth the load on our support and testing teams
(not outsourced to India as someone suggested earlier in this thread, but provided in-house by Xara and Magix),
which can only be good news for quality.

I was the one who said this. It simply struck me as odd and impolite that your Support Staff signs Tickets with "Support".

Hence I asked for a name, so that I had someone to refer to. This person gave me an Indian name. Obviously
there's also Indian people in England but I assumed fewer of them to live in Hemel Hemstead. Sorry for this wrong
assumption.

What I can clearly say though is that the quality level of your Ticket -based Support equals typical call center based
Services – and as I also stated in the same post such nowadays simply ain't enough. Xara is the only software
I use without a company-run Support Forum and without having Core Developers interacting with users regularly.

[iamtheblues]

I decided to draw up a spreadsheet of the comments so far, divided into 3 columns - Good, Bad & Indifferent.)
Lots of posts from the same people (comments for the most part unfavourable to the 365 model) which have not been included, only their initial post has been recorded.
These are the findings:
Good = 1 (Kate Moir is the only one who has anything positive to say).
Indifferent = 7
Bad = 27

Gary Priester hasn't said what he thinks (and I'm sure we are all keen to know).

It looks like an overwhelming underwhelment (to paraphrase Acorn.)

Not that this is going to have any influence on the way forward for Xara/Magix. (Did you expect it to be otherwise?)

Bob.

[katemoir]

I was the one who said this. It simply struck me as odd and impolite that your Support Staff signs Tickets with "Support".

Hence I asked for a name, so that I had someone to refer to. This person gave me an Indian name. Obviously
there's also Indian people in England but I assumed fewer of them to live in Hemel Hemstead. Sorry for this wrong
assumption.

What I can clearly say though is that the quality level of your Ticket -based Support equals typical call center based
Services – and as I also stated in the same post such nowadays simply ain't enough. Xara is the only software
I use without a company-run Support Forum and without having Core Developers interacting with users regularly.

That seems like an odd comment to make on TalkGraphics! But that reminds me that I didn't answer your earlier question about the Slideshow Widget. If you have a slideshow in your page it will continue to run after the Update Service expires, and you will still be able to edit it. And so long as you have downloaded it to the Local Designs Gallery in your current installations you will be able to add it to new pages too.

You can find details of what will stop running on our Update Service page @ http://www.xara.com/update-service/, which also explains the main reasons why we have adopted this model. I suspect many of you are underestimating the importance of Xara Online Designer!

[mwenz]

...I suspect many of you are underestimating the importance of Xara Online Designer!

I am one who is not underestimating XOD. It is simply something that I will never use.

I use text, and in applications that support them, I use OT Features. I use drawing tools. I make print designs in XDP or in conjunction with other software.

I don't make web sites. I never, ever, need a client to edit anything I have ever made and I never need access to it off of my computers.