One thing that surprised me not to find in Xara Xtreme in the new version was something similar to CoreDraw's Dynamic Guides or Illustrator's Smart Guides. I'm a user of CorelDraw and Adobe Illustrator and other vector software with many years of experience and I know that for regular artistic drawing that is more "loose" or "irregular" many of these programs offer more than enough features to get the job done but when it comes to technical type drawings or logos, modern artwork that has more straight lines or is more angular and regular or for more regular shapes in general Dynamic Guides or Smart Guides (they both work very, very similar) are incredible time savers, after working with them I realized that I didn't want to work without them.

This is one thing that I was hoping would be included in this version of Xara but it wasn't, to it's credit the Xara people improved the snapping functions of Xara and that is definitely a step in the right direction but this doesn't compare to Dynamic Guides or SmartGuides, trust me on that one.

If you want to draw things like in Isometric view (and there is a lot of modern artwork that uses it and not just technical drawings) those tools make your life a whole lot easier and they are terrific to rearrange polygons or group of polygons in 3D paper models creation. I use that feature of CorelDraw X3 in particular with Blender's unfold script and together they have synergy, it's just terrific. I really think that it not only should be included in Xara, this should become a standard tool in Illustration programs.

One of the coolest features about these type of tool is the way that they sort of "remember" a second vertex or segment once the cursor passes over it and then "projects" that so you can find the point were it intersects with the previous vertex or segment that you brought the cursor from in the first place. That's why I think that Adobe called it Smart Guides. Maybe you could put this in Xara and call it Intelligent Guides or something similar.

Many CAD software already offer similar features and you might argue that some CAD features are for CAD design but I'm not talking about including all the features of CAD software in an illustration program because that would probably make the program too complex for illustration, just a few but at least this feature because like I said it works for just more than technical drawings, it does have many uses in the artistic area and a few technical drawing features don't hurt if you need to do some type of artwork related to this and as an artist I have found myself in several occasions doing that in Illustration programs precisely. It just make one single tool that does a lot, one that is very flexible.

Don't get me wrong, if you think that I wrote all this as Xara bashing that is not the case and by far because it happens that I appreciate any good piece of well created software and I like Xara a lot, why? What's not to like would be a better question. I think that Xara has already become one of the best illustration programs out there and to be honest I think it has truly the potential to be the very best, period. Xara only needs a few features to be just that and in many things it's already better than most starting with it's incredible performance (it is the fastest of the bunch, no questions) but it has many features that I think makes it a terrific illustration program, perhaps too many to name.

I write this because I have observed Xara's history closely (I have been using computers since I was a young teenager around the early eighties) and I do know that Xara has been a pioneer in some features that many people think started in other Illustration programs but that I know really started in Xara first. Being the pioneers that the Xara software people have been I expected them to have included something like Smart Guides in Xara Xtreme by now. Common Xara people, I know that you definitely have the capability to add this feature to your program and maybe make it even better than the other guys, your software is already pulling ahead in some features, make Xara stand out from the rest, you can.

You have a terrific piece of software in your hands, make it even better. Keep up the good work, your software it's definitely going in the right direction.