What do you want Xara/Magix to do?

[Ron Duke]

Please do not make this a specific feature request. These should be posted in the Dear Xara forum.

I would greatly appreciate it IF "THE Team", (our awesome developers), would focus primarily on improving existing drawing tools. I really would appreciate it.




This wonderful program has been a very positive aspect of my life.

[bobmurden]

Look at what other vendors are doing that appears to work.

Save money - Scrap the disc, Make it download only and charge extra for the disc. We can all make our own disc these days or buy a pen drive just for your Xara ESD's

Make the last program version download available that was published before the end of your update year. (Allow the full ISO to be downloaded for full offline use withiin the first 90 days of your subscription)

Give us the shortcut card on PDF. Surely we can all make our own card.

Put the activations back up to three. Currently deactivating a copy may not be possible if both your activations are set at work and you are at home

Consider a single activation version for home only users at a reduced price

Build brand loyalty by offering other group products at special rates. e.g. A lot of media developers may appreciate Sound forge that you acquired from Sony

The partnership with Panorama studio resulted in me buying in to their software. How about a similar deal with APfil that calculates your toner/ink coverage - or write your own. This is very important if you are preparing documents to print in house on long runs. You could also then calculate the breakeven point before outsourcing the print job.

[hoja]

It is pretty obvious that a lot of veteran users would like the Xara-makers to re-focus on Vector editing.
Some of these users also have adapted Xara's image editing tools and find them useful.

I don't belong to both of these groups.

If I need line-drawings / diagrams and illustrations (what's rarely the case) I'm usually a lot faster and more accurate
with CAD programs. Imported to any Vector program one then can quickly embellish them with fills and fonts etc.
In terms of bitmap editing I consider Xara far too basic for my needs.

Personally I therefore don't care for improvement in the vector workspace and I couldn't be less interested in using Xara for
image editing. Already in version 1.5 Affinity Designer offers far deeper Vector editing workspace and costs a small fraction
(~ 1/6) of Xara Designer.

And bitmap editing? Only considering that Xara with all it does is limited to 8bit per channel app I honestly see zero
development potential here. Dozens of free or very cheap image editors are greatly superior – some are even high end
for very little money, Affinity Photo and Photoline come to my mind.

To me the single reason to use Xara is its approach to Website design.
This feature could be it's unique selling point. Unfortunately the makers of Xara have always focused the utterly wrong
customer base – likely because also the remaining apps in their portfolio target consumers and prosumers.

People who want to create a website quickly, those who can live with template based design, those who wish to set up
content once and want the software to reflow text and images automatically... are all without any question and exception
far better served with cms based webdesign.

After one year of spending a lot of time with cms based Online Shop Design it is so refreshing to experience the freedom
Xara allows for in Website design: There's no conflicting design rules and no external encapsulated modules one has to
accept the way they are. There's no framework which tries to be smart and indeed comes in the way ten times a day.
Xara doesn't force it's users to use the dreadful streamlined design concepts which have become common place.

Xara (or at least a version of it) could get marketed as a tool for truly exceptional, bespoke Webdesign.
Authors can focus on typography and pixel accurate element placement – due to static layouts one has perfect control
of site appearance on any type of device. Output code may not be the cleanest, but as html sites they are still light weight
and fast compared with cms based sites.

Seeing however how hard the Xara makers are pushing Xara Online Designer (that's a Nogo in all aspects) I think it's time to leave.
If anyone knows a Desktop Web-Software which allows for comparable freedom in Web-Editing as Xara (and is not by Adobe)
please let me know.

[wizard509]

I think Xara should upgrade Photo and Graphic designer so it is the equivalent of Designer Pro, but with the web stuff stripped out. Whilst I have no objection to a 'flagship' product, I have come round to thinking Drawing and Web Design should be kept separate in so far as is practicable, and ideally recoded from scratch

agreed

[stygg2003]

agreed

I totally agree with you Larry as regard handrawns suggestion, doing as he has said would suit me fine +100

Stygg

[Acorn]

This is a simple request.

For the Line Gallery Arrowheads, allow heads and tails to be fully interchangeable.

This is a harder request.

For the same line, ensure the length of the line is fixed, regardless of the line width and head and tail choice.

Acorn

[Egg Bramhill]

+1 Shouldn't be difficult. it's an age old request.

[ypson]

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes.

It's easy to get carried away in the light of the new changes at Magix and we forget to be thankful for all the years of joy and for some of us, livelihood, that was generated with the help of Xara products. Think about that for a minute before posting

So thank you very much for all the hard work that Xara developers have put into this software since CorelXARA (that's where I started). Thanks to Kate Moir as well for always assisting me with the order process as I've had special requests and she handled them to perfection every time all these years, much appreciated!

Onto the issue at hand, I think the main thing which causes so much anger and missunderstanding is the target market which Magix is focused on. While Xara (up to about when it was purchased by Magix) focused on professionals, since Magix took over, it has gradually shifted into appealing to a more broad market which obviously includes non-professionals. Statistically speaking it's obvious that there would be more non-professionals out there than professionals thus the balance of features and direction of the software leans toward appealing to this majority.

If you ask a professional what they want from their design program they will probably tell you they like stability, a lean interface efficient software while the non pros would generally want the kitchen sink. Which you see, is what Xara Designer is becoming. This direction has caused Xara Designer to become bloated, slow loading and with increased complexity the chance of something getting broken is also increased which has shown up around here numerous times.

Personally I have solved this problem: I upgraded by downgrading to Xara Designer 6 - fast and does all it needs to do for vector work. I keep X11 installed if I need something from the fluff department This arrangement works for me, it might not work for everyone. Personally I have no use for the content such as templates etc, I never download them. I have decided to not update before I knew what's coming with the X365, since I got the X11 as it felt too bloated already plus the 2 activation limit. Of course, seeing this X365 model completely turned me off any updates until and if situation changes. I don't feel bad for being stuck with what I have, it works great for me and I'm set however I do feel sorry for the Xara developers as Magix have taken away my ability to support the development team - I cannot possibly throw money on what X365 model is proposing and the bloating direction. If I need bloat, I already have Microsoft taking care of that

For the future of Xara under Magix leadership, please consider these suggestions:

• Segmenting the market more and target the professionals and loyal users with a lean Xara Designer Pro version without all the fluff and bloat just like in the good old days of around Xtreme Pro 5 - Designer Pro 6. This way you can keep targeting the masses as well, business is business, we certainly can understand that but please don't forget that you are where you are because of your loyal users.
• Since your infrastructure both at technical and logistic levels seems to be lacking (based on the issues vented thougout these forums), perhaps you should consider returning to the yearly releases, together with further segmenting your market it should work better. Professionals don't mind having an update once every 2 years, if that means reliability and real updates such as fixing bugs and improving the EXISTING tools. When you use Xara for a living, you don't want fluff to stand in your way.
• Eliminate or increase the number of activations, it is ironic that the paying customer gets hassled by these rules while pirates would be able to use the software as they please without paying anything. Those who would not pay, would not pay anyway, it's part of the world of software and nothing will change that; surely you won't lure in such a person with draconic DRM while this draconic DRM pushes away the paying customer, you are punishing the wrong person The world has evolved and spreading work on 3-5 devices is not for the rich anymore, most people now have a tablet, a main computer, some laptop and so on.
• Seriously work on the communication with the customers. The X365 is turning into a fiasco mostly because of lack of proper communication before this was introduced and in regards to real world expectations. The wording you have used leaves a lot of room for interpretation and you see the results - some people feel cheated.
• You have a gold mine here called TalkGraphics and the good users who provide valuable feedback, these are the people actually using the software in real world scenarios, please consider a more serious way to filter this feedback and incorporate it.

I put myself in Magix's shoes and from a business standpoint, some of these moves and attempts makes sense and as I said in the beginning it has to do with target market but is it worth at the cost of dismissing your loyal base? Will your newly found target market be as loyal as those who are with you since the days of CorelXARA?

Thanks to the TalkGraphics team for the opportunity to voice my opinion and suggestions and looking forward for the day when I can feel excited again in regards to new versions that cater to the professionals as well.