User Interface Change?

[ernie-f]

What Mike says.

@Phill:

It's not necessary to have lots of tool bars open to use the program productively. The tools offer context sensitive controls in the infobar, the right-click menus offer context sensitive commands, there are keyboard shortcuts and you can make your own custom bars contain just the controls you need.

Where is the possibility to save the workspace?

I 've my own workspace and every time Xara crash (this is two or more times in a hour when I work on big projects for professional offsetprinting) I'd to reorder my workspace. The reg-hack to save the MormalBar.reg works not perfect. Ever I recontruct it, are the toolbars on an other place or other thinks are in it. This is frustrating and steels my productivity time.

In the last time I use more and more Affinity Designer and Photo and I see that I can do almost the thinks I do in XDP without the frustration of crashing and then reorder my workspace again. The only I miss is the web think.

If Xara will go the way in the cloud and not the local (desktop) program install, so without me. In this case I will quit with Xara and spend my money elswhere.

Servus Ernie

[PhilM]

Ernie,

I was talking about the program maintaining different workspaces for normal and full-screen modes. They are both saved when the program quits cleanly. If the program crashes or if it is prevented from writing to the registry because your user account permissions aren't set correctly then it will not save any changes to the workspace that you made.

Try to set up your workspace how you want and quit the program before you do anything else. Then it should be restored to that state whenever the program starts, even after a crash.

I hope you have reported your crashes to support.xara.com. If you we will try to fix them and make the program as stable as we can.

Phil

[ernie-f]

Ernie,

Try to set up your workspace how you want and quite the program before you do anything else. Then it should be restored to that state whenever the program starts, even after a crash.

I hope you have reported your crashes to support.xara.com - we will try to fix them and make the program as stable as we can.

Phil

Hi Phil,
thanks for quick responding.

That what You are writing is corrctly the way I do. I made several times backups of the registry entry, but it doesn't work.
My crashes at xara.com I'd reported must fill now few cabinets.
It will be fine when Xara give a feedback what happens with all the crashreports I'd send in the last four years. My problems aren't solved until now.

Again thanks Phil for the try to help me.

Servus Ernie

[ernie-f]

I am creating a flyer for a journey. Thre are a few fotos and text. Nothing else, no effects or other things.
This happen after a hour and half and many pics I paste, but the last one did the error …

https://s27.postimg.org/8m3mtwc67/Screenshot_37.png

… and again I rebuild my settings for the workspace. I hate it. Pls fix this boring thing.

There is an other post where a member is the meaning XDP64 is not 64-bit. I think also that Xara don't run in native 64-bit. This will be the think why it crash with a few big fotos. If it's not 64-bit it can't handle more than 3 GB ram. My Workstation has 32 GB ram and I haven't any problems with other 64-bit aplications (Adobe, Corel, Serifs old Win-Stuff, Affinity, Inkscape, Artrage, SketchUp, Resolve etc., etc.). Maybe somebody from Xara can bring clarity to this.

Servus Ernie

[PhilM]

Hi Ernie,

The program really is 64bit, I can assure you, but you may have encountered a bug that accidentally corrupts a memory address when it gets bigger than 32bit. I'm looking into it.

There's no reason that a serious error should cause the program to lose settings that it has previously written to the registry so that's a separate issue that may indicate a configuration problem on your computer.

Phil

[ernie-f]

Hi Ernie,

The program really is 64bit, I can assure you, but you may have encountered a bug that accidentally corrupts a memory address when it gets bigger than 32bit. I'm looking into it.

There's no reason that a serious error should cause the program to lose settings that it has previously written to the registry so that's a separate issue that may indicate a configuration problem on your computer.

Phil

Again thanks for reply.
After all crashes I got and restart, XDP set the workspace to the default settings. Xara don't remember the settings in the NormalBar.reg. This behaviour I got on four workstations I chnaged in the last four years. It began on Windows Vista with XDP 7 end is still there on Windows 10 Pro with XDP 365. I don't think its a PC or OS problem because I got the same on an older laptop with XDP11 32-bit too.

I thought it's maybe an anti virus problem but without (I uninstalled them) it is the same scenario.

[hoja]

Re. Creating in the cloud:

Here's an open question to everyone: Imagine that cloud.ixara.com can do everything that Designer can do in the desktop, and maybe more, with a more modern UI. Would you still then prefer to use the desktop version to create and if so why? (Being old-fashioned is an acceptable answer.)

Hi Phil,
I understand that there's some interesting aspects in offering software exclusively running in a Browser.
Probably the most outstanding one is cross-platform availability. Suddenly it no more makes a difference
whether a user prefers win, mac or any flavour of Linux.

But there's outstanding disadvantages too and I can say that with testing experience in various fields of work, including
fullblown, very feature rich CAD applications, running in the cloud. What turns me off mostly is listed below.

Extremely poor support for custom keyboard shortcuts (> the ability to set own shortcuts is probably the main reason why
I use Designer and not one of your lesser packages). Further poor support for context sensitive RMB menus. One in my
experience mainly dependent on using visual elements to drive the app. Large mouse /pen movements and having visible
toolbars all over is nothing I'm interested in.

There's afaik still no support whatsoever for pressure sensitive input in any Browser.
Xara already today has only extremely basic support for pen based editing. By moving to the Browser you afaik would lose
this capability altogether.

Latency. One can have the most awesome Computer and Internet connection:
Editing online still doesn't feel remotely as snappy as dealing with Desktop applications.

Upload/download times. They again impact snappiness. There's good reasons why Adobe only calls things "Cloud" but
still delivers Desktop applications. 500mb Photoshop files open swiftly on my system – I sure would not want to wait – and
I don't want to cause totally needless internet traffic. All the unjustified traffic (also by Music and Film and other streaming
services impact nature a lot more than printing a few sheets of paper every day).

File handling. With Desktop applications, especially on Windows one has countless options available to organize, tag, group and
access files. While a few online software products support basic drag and drop actions one would be depending on more or less
on what the Browser supports.

Flexible Viewport handling, such as the capability to duplicate document views and being able to move these to another screen.
Xara in contrast to pretty much any 2D graphics app doesn't offer this powerful feature. You should really work on this –moving to
the Browser will not cure the problem. You might be able to completely clone document windows but having two wired Windows,
displaying the same document view but not the same arrangement of toolbars and pallets is nothing I have seen yet
(let alone being able to store this config across sessions).

Licensing. At least here in Europe we effectively own our software and can usually run the software for as long as we can provide
matching hardware. With Browser based apps the service may simply end for whatever reason and the user couldn't do anything about it.
Even if the software maker wanted to supply a perpetual option (say before going out of business) he probably could do so.


These are just a few of my concerns. Online apps just suck across the board, imo.

[handrawn]

Phil

I think MIke and Hoja have said a lot of what I would say, I would simply add - if your given deadlines are hours away, not days or weeks or months, are you going to take the risk?

not me

Mike also made good points about the code - if you can somehow make the online program as good as the offline one in every respect, if not better, then I see it as a good thing - but I still could not take the risk for the work in question; another reason why I am moving away from xara, bit by bit.... because I do not want to rely on a program that is moving towards the cloud rather than recoding the existing app

[Jonopen]

Phil, re your open question in post #14

Apart from email I don't currently use any online apps at the moment so can't really comment on how that might work, but I can definitely say I would not like to rely solely on an online version. Where I live we have an unreliable internet service, despite being a superfast, fibre optic broadband enabled area. Also poor connection speeds and reliability are not just local to me here in the UK. What about users in other countries with even less developed networks?

As mentioned by somebody else, the best long term solution, I believe, even if it takes a few years, is to dismantle and separate everything, clear out the old junk and rewrite the bits you need to from the ground up incorporating and utilising the latest tools and modern techniques.

btw I wouldn't describe myself as particularly old-fashioned but probably more 'old school'.

[MarcT]

I wouldn't use an online version.

I mainly work with Xara because of the productivity, speed, simplicity, cleverness and customization for creating vector graphics.
I have carefully weighted other options and it still wins on these fronts.

I would greatly appreciate some effort a redesign of the UI instead, to make scalable and adapt resolutions.
Cross platform would be very much appreciated.

Marc