Wish List for V12

[Gare]

If I were only to read the past, say, dozen posts, I'd assume that Xara Designer was built for website development.

Is this because so much more work needs to be done to the web side of Xara Designer, and less work needs to be done to the graphics features?

I've said this before: I don't want Xara Designer's progress diluted by spending 90% of programmer's time on web features. I respectfully ask whoever is in charge of this thread to split it into "Xara Designer" requests and "Web designer" requests.

If all the features on this thread were implemented, the program would burst at its seams, so it's sort of a good time to think "priorities", if this input is to become more than a wish list.

My Best,

Gary

[pauland]

the program would burst at its seams, so it's sort of a good time to think "priorities"

Gare, good point.

Recently a favourite iPad drawing program of mine (Pencil) had an update. They enhanced it with a load of new features - OK good. Some really nice stuff.

Along the way they ditched what was until then the heart of the program - a journal (as in physical moleskin book) type interface and a simple set of tools and pallete - killing the vibe of the program completely. They took a beautiful simple proposition that everyone loved and killed it in favour of a mini office type thing.

It's not that the new program is bad but that for drawing, the old one was a way better (and simpler experience). The userbase is in uproar and the ratings have plummeted as they express their frustration.

I sometimes feel that Xara could be heading that bloatware way.

[Gare]

[B]I sometimes feel that Xara could be heading that bloatware way.

I was (more or less) speaking in jest about Xara Designer actually becoming "everything to everyone", which is the tone of this thread, Paul. It cannot: not with the release schedule upped from a comfortable "when we feel like it", which was usually far more than a year, to this faster-than-light release date(s) for three limited editions of Xara Designer, and then the main program.

This is why I feel Xara should either divide and conquer—throw some more programmers at the challenge of making three distinct programmes, each with their own destiny and a little I/O crossover, or—

Far more companies are going to give Xara a stiff competition if they haven't already zoomed by in the "just make me a web page and I don't care how it's done" arena of software. What made Xara unique in the market were the advanced tools Corel and Adobe then had to follow.

God, I miss those days instead of this catch-up stuff like implementing a version of responsive pages way after everyone else is doing it. If you follow trends, trends always switch, and you're chasing instead of leading.

"The web is the place to be", when you have an excellent drawing program isn't far off from decoming a dentist because you're a terrific brain surgeon.

I'm not in Xara's position, obviously. If I were, I'd let web design take a distant back seat to Xara's core strength: an innovative company that makes blindingly fast software that scales. But a bitmap editing program, for God's sake and stop kludging around with tools that were never meant to address an individual pixel or groups of pixels than need a bell-shaped curve when painting and selecting. ArtWeaver is shareware/freeware, and would complement Xara Designer in the truest sense. Illustrator has a companion pixel editing program, and I don't see people switching. So does CorelDRAW.

There's a very real need to ford the gap between pixels and vectors if one is to design either for the Web or for print. Without re-thinking, stepping back and really taking a holistic approach, I don't see The Xara Group playing on its strengths in the market.

And the inevitable will happen.

Sincerely,

Gary

[Acorn]

If you search my posts, you;ll see I have a few ongoing queries at the moment. For which I am extremely grateful for the help from TG members.

BTW, the thirty day trial took me most of that time to get the hang of how WD works generally.
As you'll see in my posts, I'm struggling with various things. One of them is uploading with a very slow connection.

My comment was not meant to sound like sour grapes.

More for others, you can download the Xara Designer Pro for 30 days and when that runs out use Xara Web Designer Premium (I think) for another 30 days. Each can read each others files.

Acorn

[Egg Bramhill]

Mac Hine

One of them is uploading with a very slow connection.

Yes, but that's not a problem that Xara can solve Members have also suggested ways you can circumvent you upload issues.

[toejam]

My $0.02 worth: add rotating/scrolling banner widget. There's old threads in the forum on this from early this year - got lots of ideas from the forum experts, but, this should be a standard widget with the Xara product.

The idea is to have a widget that will scroll through images (used as banners) and have the ability to click on each image and go to a specific website. This can be used to sell advertising space on a website that we develop. Xara already has scrolling image widgets, but, you can't click on an individual image and open a new tab to a website specific to that image.

Probably beating a dead horse, but, it's practically mostly built by the existing scrolling photo widgets, just need the click-through capability.

[Rut]

I use DataTables for this. It is external (a jQuery plug-in) but why integrated something that is already functional.
Xara is never going to be a database engine.

Acorn

my precious WD brother acron. I dont like wordpress,even if I know, lot of people will change WD to Wordpress, simply coz they couldnt find ordinary modules, like "most read" and "last article" and so ... Anyway, we both are WD addicted coz this is simply cult matter. WB developers doesnt wanna sell more copy of WD coz WD is not for everybody& there is higher principles then money, in this world. All this is secret like freemasonary lodge and I wanna ask you, like WB lodge member, what can I really do to get "most read article" modules and "last article modules" ?

You gave me link to the "data Tables" website, but I dont know programming (that was reason,why I buy WD) ... is there a hope for me ? If so, please tell me, what would you do ?

thank you for your time

WB cult member Rut

[Gare]

Rather than (or in addition to) having the Name Gallery report on fonts used in a document, do you think the fonts used could go "above the line" on the Fonts drop-down list? That way, we could get right down to work on a document instead of hunting down what we used in the last Xara session.



TIA,

Gary

[Gare]

WB cult member Rut

Rut, is this a typo, or is there a "WB" product I'm unaware of?

Last time I looked, Warner Brothers had "WB" all sewn up.

That could just be the Right Coast in me, though.

My Best,

Gary

[Gare]

Two more that admittedly are straight out of CorelDRAW's playbook, but a designer's dream regardless of what program:

• Align control points. Just like aligning shapes, but applied to control points you lassoed. Control points that are close to, but not dead on centre, left, top, bottom, and so on alignments. So you can align elements within a shape instead of dragging out sticky guides, which you usually have to delete later anyhow.

• "Relaxed" group movement of control points. Corel calls this "Elastic mode"; you lasso a bunch of control points along a curve, use Elastic mode, and when you move the control points, the distance scales proportionately. The result is smooth path segments between the moved control points.



Please, please? You already have control point contraints by holding CTRL, and control handle constrain of angle when you hold CTRL.

TIA,

Gary