You only need to press the selection bounds key and uncheck the smart transform once, and then now all your objects behave like the old method of simply dragging a handle to stretch. Xara's default stance is to treat images and objects in a non destructive manner by cropping (which can be uncropped), and stretch being a more deliberate action. Again you can change the default behaviour with 2 clicks, which I know, is a lot of steps for this "ritual".