Remembering Xara's Flare plugin...

[Ross Macintosh]

I remember. It was great. For those who don't remember it was a browser plugin developed by Xara that would display xara vector graphics in your web browser. It worked well and it really was stunning seeing the vector graphics plus the added benefit that the xara graphics file used were often so much smaller in file size than the typical high resolution png or jpg.

Xara had proposed the flare system as an open vector format that developers could use as an alternative to Flash. It seems the idea never really caught on and it seems Xara stopped promoting it when Macromedia opened up the Flash format. Xara eventually started calling it the xar format and still have this info about it on their site. I don't think the browser plugin is available any longer.

I'm wondering (ouch!) if with the success of Xara-WD as an authoring tool if it might be an interesting idea to make the browser plugin available once again. The idea is many of us creating sites with Xara-WD might find it attractive to develop content that uses the plugin to display vector graphics in our sites. Site visitors willing to install the plugin would get to see true vector graphics in all their glory.

Would the old plugin still work in contemporary browsers? If so is there any chance Xara Ltd. could make it available for Talkgraphics members to play with?

Let's give the old plugin mouth-to-mouth and bring it back to life. It will be fun!

Regards, Ross

[covoxer]

Why would you like to force users to instal Flare plug-in if they already have Flash? XWD has comprehensive SWF export features so you are free to use Flash to show vector in all it's glory.

[steve.ledger]

That's true John, but a number of standard graphic effects used for even the Xara WD templates do not export with flash.



But that said, bearing the caveats in mind, yes Flash could quite easily be used with Web Designer to export the entire page, links work too

[covoxer]

That's true John, but a number of standard graphic effects used for even the Xara WD templates do not export with flash.

Except for non mix transparency - WD does not support any other transparencies too.
Yes, not all effects are supported by SWF, but no animation was supported by Flare.
Exporting entire page as a SWF or Flare is a bad idea because of SEO and accessibility reasons, nevermind the compatibility with exotic browsers (that don't support neither flash nor flare).

So it stays where it is. Development of such plug-in doesn't look very reasonable because everyone has flash which is a bit worse here and there but also a bit better from the other side. Why force people to get one more plug-in to their already bloated browsers?

[Markku]

As an option, exporting entire page as flash would be a great idea. I'd like to see it compete with all the cheap flash creation apps out there and win them hands down with its usability, simplicity and power.

If developed even more towards flash creation, WD could take head to head with Adobe Catalyst, the application which is Adobe's future solution for rapid prototyping.

For rapid prototyping using flash I don't see any problems there, just more possibilities when dealing in different customer environments. Tweaks and WD are a match made in heaven, but there can be cross browser problems as the tweaks get more complicated and customers have very conservative IT rules. I'm currently taking a speed hit at customer's trying to get tweaked WD html to work here. I am more a struggling tech geek than a designer at the moment.

Flash would be a fantastic solution for me right now.

[steve.ledger]

Exporting entire page as a SWF or Flare is a bad idea because of SEO

Hmm - there are tons of all flash sites though, and Google is indexing text and URLs in Flash now.

I think it's a good idea if that what you want. It's a choice.

[covoxer]

and Google is indexing text and URLs in Flash now.

Ok, ok, but does it index Flare?

[steve.ledger]

Maybe