Quote Originally Posted by Aciden View Post
I have been using Xara products from 1998 and since then I have watched them develop.
For several years now I have been upset that the development of the program has gone, in my opinion, in the wrong direction.
I could not agree more with you. Xara was once the best vector software around. And then they stopped being good and decided to branch into creation of inferior websites and subpar bitmap-manipulation. Also Xara was completely useless in the marketing department from day 1.

I bought my first version around 1996 I think and I still use Xara (a newer version of course) almost daily for certain tasks.
Looking at it's competitors, it surely lacks a lot these days though.

Sadly I see no light at the end of the tunnel. Splitting up the line into "old" Designer and "new" Designer+ is in my opinion just as totally wrong as the deal with Magix or formerly the one with Corel. We old users still may love Xara, but for a beginner it's one of the worst choices they could make these days.

I have given up hoping that somebody at Xara will finally "get it" and change course. CEOs and Product Managers have come and gone, but in the end its only gotten worse.
Every new announcement turns out to be extremely underwhelming and mostly superfluous.

Things our community has been asking for a decade have been ignored just as long. Sorry to say that, but Xara has long slipped into obscurity and only we "old folk" even know it exists anymore.