Biting the Bullet Challenge

[Acorn]

Xara is extremely moribund in updating Components its Online Content Catalogue (OCC).

The Xara Desktop application (XDA) is predominantly a vector product.
With recent versions, Xara has introduced new functionality and rendering that makes some of its Component design particularly bad.
The Challenge drives to the heart of the matter; TG needs you to revive the following:

• Go to OCC > Components > Print & web Components > Bullets and Numbering.
• Import any of the Bullets.
• Create a test page with the Bullet clone a number of time, scaled or embedded with text.
  
  • The point of this initial exercise is to get you to Preview and look at the output in as high a magnification as your browser allows --> Jaggies!
  • If you care, look at your index_htm_files folder in a local Export and see each Button has its own associated image.
  • If you deconstruct the OCC Bullets, you will find a general laxity around symmetry and the use of editable shapes rather than building up and arranging more regular shapes.

Now, I created a testbed for trying to convert these Bullets in to sleeker, crisper versions:
Bullets.xar

The Buttons with a Red background are the OCC versions.
The Buttons with a Green background are my implementations. I accept I compromised by ignoring Shadows.
Those in front of yellow are my failed attempts to deliver better.
You should Preview the testbed page with the Old Xara Bullets layer hidden to see that there are only images for the yellow background Bullets.

Tricks you should know

• Xara renders a Circle as an image (bad).
• Xara rendered a Rounded Rectangle as a SPAN (no image); you simply change the rounding to maximum and you get a Circle (no image so no jaggies).
• Such a shape can be squished/squashed and it stays a SPAN.
• Xara allows Simple Fade Linear Fills to be rendered as CSS linear gradients (no image).
• You can double-click to add Fill Points along the Linear Fill to force sharp colour transitions.
• These colours can even be 'no colour'; you get a white shape but it renders transparent (no image). A Transparency renders as an image (jaggies).
• From XDA v16.0, Xara introduced Web Properties >Image > Group images > Separate images for group members.
• There would be no point is creating all these sleeker, crisper Bullets if youur grouping forced an image to be rendered (jaggies).

The Challenge

Create you own Bullet without a rendering image for a shape or its background fill.
Your design can by any sensible multiple of 64px; I would expect a real Bullet to be only 32px tall.
You should use Named Colours to show Xara how it should be done.
You will find the 'yellow' buttons quite problematic so any solutions here will be lauded.
One Button (family) per design file please.

Do not limit you imagination to the testbed examples, create your own. It could be a rollover version if you like.

Show Xara what design is all about.

Acorn

[gwpriester]

Not to mention, a circle once is it converted to editable shapes, often loses the same arc. Not quite sure why this happens and it is most noticeable at much higher % than normal, and maybe at normal print or bitmap resolution not a problem. But still.

[handrawn]

Show Xara what design is all about

dare I say, not using ephemera such as the OCC... ?

[Acorn]

dare I say, not using ephemera such as the OCC... ?

You may but avowing it does not address the fact that you are paying for the OCC each and every update.

Show we can do better and that we object to third-rate mechandise, repackaged.

Acorn

[handrawn]

I wish you luck... I suppose it is more suited to TG than showing we can do better in another application full stop.....

[Acorn]

I am sure there is no other graphics package than can natively handle something like this:

Xara - Yin-Yang Bullet.xar.



Acorn

[handrawn]

you may well be right, but then it would be more of a challenge would it not

[mwenz]

I am sure there is no other graphics package than can natively handle something like this: ...

?

Huh?

[handrawn]

Have to say I don't know what it is supposed to do, I went no further as soon as I saw the document had mouse over / mouse off layers, assuming it is a web design thing

[Acorn]

? Huh?

My premise was only Xara has taken the effort to render vector objects in HTML as CSS and SVG objects. Other packages would generate PNG, JPEG or other bitmap format. I am stressing this as the Xara Desktop application (XDA) is striding ahead and leaving the Online Content Catalogue (OCC) components far behind (c.f., NavBars, anything that is simply grouped, lack of shared Filenames to name a few).

Have to say I don't know what it is supposed to do, I went no further as soon as I saw the document had mouse over / mouse off layers, assuming it is a web design thing

Yes it is a web sort of thing. I happen to choose a Web Design document for those who like to see things in bits rather than everything at once; I have an Instructions Layer and a Construction Layer too. I had intended to make it a Presentation but if all you do is open it to find what Layers to has, that would have been a wasted effort. Sorry, the last was a bit pointed but I hope i can let off some steam. I recall, in early TG days for me, everything I was was a fix in HTML as I kept overlooking PDF and pur graphical design; since then my blinkers have been removed and I have a better appreciate of others' positions.

I have tried to explain that if you produce a website with Xara Bullets or a Print document (glorified Vertical Supersite) with Xara Bullets then you end up with many, many images of exactly the same thing.
This drags the performance of the design down as it is rendering images and calling them up many times to download the same thing.

For a pure design document, you might think it doesn't matter. You change export at 600dpi and remove the jaggies that way.
No one wants to display low resolution images so when I zoom into one of my 32px bullets at 6400% magnification I take a bit of pleasure that it is rendering as crisply as I could make it.

I hope website designers see what I am aiming for.
I truly hope Xara gets it too - try using a Xara Bullet as a Bullet Point to see how wasteful it is. Xara, sadly, never engages in a meaningful debate.
At the same time, I am trying to extol the virtues of the XDA concept by driving it to the limit and find it is almost perfect already: XDA - good; OCC - bad; Update Service - ugly.

Acorn