Quote Originally Posted by Joe Skeesick
You know guys, it's ok to be disappointed in the upgrade. It's not a personal slam to see the latest release as less than expected. I've had that feeling since the first Xara upgrade. The program isn't appreciatively different than when I first bought it some 10 years ago. They keep focusing on the nifty neato and not the serious tool set and it is frustrating. There have been some good things along the way, but not as much as I'd like to see.

As I said before I can't say (or imply) it's not worth the upgrade price as it is more than reasonable. Seems your taking your feelings towards James and attacking the message because of the messenger. If you don't agree and you think it's great, good for you. Enjoy it. Filter your a** off and we'll all be looking at chrome bugs, flowers, cars, quickshapes and the like for the next 6 months (or more... most likely MUCH more). Meanwhile issues like the abysmal text tools which haven't changed since day one again pass through without a nod. No worries though mate, cause we've got Alien skin plugins and blends out the wazzoo.....

Now, to back up a bit. I love Xara and it's amazing that a product that is so similar as it was 10 years ago is still very usable today. It's fast, it's intuitive and it produces great results. I'd buy the upgrade if there was less to it than there is now if only to encourage Xara to continue their development efforts. I LOVE that they are building on the product again, that there have been 2 upgrades (no matter how much I loved or hated them) in a relatively short period of time after seeing nothing coming out of them for years. I also am intrigued by their open source move. I do hope that it lives up to what they hope. I'd love to see an expanded user base for Xara. That all being said, I'm not going to give them a pass and fawn all over the new release that forgets core tools in favor of window dressing.

Well, I've said my peace... fire away if you want.

J
Here here. I too have long (and silently) awaited the type toolset to be much improved. I DO have Photoshop, and i'm quite adept at using it. So i really can't see myself being inspired enough to be flogging through plugins in Xara; Not unless they improve its usefulness on a more practical level. More purposeful functionality is what i'd like to see. Xara has enough 'tricks' in its bag to last awhile now. More potato, less sour cream please!

PS: i too am a die-hard Xarian... so don't take this as a bash, but rather a plea.