Inspired by the recent poll on the forums about suggestions for extending Xtreme's website capabilities, it's made me think of another possible route for Xara to take.

Instead of us only having an Xara Xtreme 5.0 bloat edition, how about a product that actually concentrated on vector design and nothing else?

No website export.
No Flash generation.
No bitmap filters and photo editing.

Charge as much as you do now for Xtreme 4.0, but put developoment money that now goes into all these non-vector features into improving the vector toolset and general design focused improvement (cough, layers, etc..).

I'd almost certainly switch my money to Xtreme - Vector Design Edition.

I'm not actually against the upgrades made in XXV4, but the product seems to be losing focus and I'd rather there were separate editions that focused on peoples real needs rather than taking the product into "jack of all trades territory".

Would this focus mean that people wouldn't use it for web development if html generation and bitmap handling were removed? No - I think not. I use Dreamweaver for most of my web stuff and use Extreme for graphics. Do I use Xtreme for web photo editing? No, I only really use it for cropping and cutting out bitmap shapes. Do I use it for flash animations? No, not at all.

Would I like Xtreme to be interoperable with Adobe products - you bet, but it's hampered right now particularly with the primitive layer handling.

I really would like to see the vector emphasis restored on the product - not at the expense of people who like the non-vector features - but equally I don't want the vector handling and design oriented features suffering because of the effort spent on non-vector features (and my feeling is that it has suffered).

So why not have Xtreme - Vector Design Edition and Xtreme Home Designer?

Interesting debate, eh?

I wouldn't be upset if you called the vector oriented version "Xara Design Studio". I recall there used to be some vector software that concentrated on vectors named just that. ;-)

Paul