Xara Designer Pro+ 24 Released.

[bwood]

Who else releases a major version change without advertising it all around?
Even the New Web Content (09 May 2024) is marginalised. Not even suggesting to having a look in the What's New section of Xara Elements.

The Embed feature is going to be a mess.

No sensible designer will want to 'embed' a thousand JPEGs or even 10 MPEGs into a Xara XAR file when it takes long enough for a modest file size to open in the application.
Now backups will taken an eternity and occupy a large amount of storage. A slow backup hits your capability to work on your designs.
Publishing may now stick at 'Preparing to export document'.
Slow, slow, slow & Big, big, big.

Acorn

Certainly agree on the embed feature. They’re still working on the ftp upload feature set at least for me. I can’t use it.
They’re really going all in with blocks. As mentioned on another thread regular and advanced folks are thinking in terms of blocks v3 or 4. Blocks have to be completely malleable for me, and make the phone variant Independant. Again, blocks for first time users are plug n’ play, set and forget. Understandably blocks are for a new audience.

[Egg Bramhill]

I've no idea what BLOCKS are about ......

I'm with Ian re blocks.

[Acorn]

Still no HEIC import
Has anyone ever encountered an AVIF file? We can now import those, but I've never seen one or heard of the format. I think it was added because it's royalty-free, rather than because it was useful - I don't believe that more people want to be able to import AVIF images than have asked for HEIC!

Daniel, the caniuse.com website states:

A modern image format based on the HEVC video format. HEIC generally has better compression than WebP, JPEG, PNG and GIF. It is hard for browsers to support HEIC because it is complex and expensive to license. AVIF and JPEG XL provide free licenses and are designed to supersede HEIC.

A complete flip to your take on the matter.

Currently https://caniuse.com/?search=heic shows only Safari is capable of HEIC.

It took Xara a long time to incorporate WebP so this development is to be lauded.

Acorn

P.S. I still want Export AVIF too and can see a strong case for it to totally replace WebP, JPEG and PNG in its HTML Filter.

[Daniel]

A complete flip to your take on the matter.

Currently https://caniuse.com/?search=heic shows only Safari is capable of HEIC.

Still a PITA that iPhones take photos in HEIC format, and Xara can't import them without either the iPhone or Affinity Photo processing them first. It feels like having to partially chew food for some immature offspring every time!

When I last requested it from Xara Support, they replied "I'm on it, lets see if we can get HEIC support into the product. Are you taking a lot images on iPhone for business?... to be fair, we have a lot of real estate customers and it's coming up with them too. For social media posts, etc; "

I thought that the fabled realestate users would finally have come good for us, but alas, not yet.

Does anyone fancy contacting Xara Support and saying that they use Web Blocks* and the only thing they think they're missing is an HEIC import filter?!

(* like the majority here... longtime Xara user, previously a pro webdev, no idea what a Web Block is.)

[Daniel]

I guessed as much...

I think it (AVIF) was added because it's royalty-free, rather than because it was useful

So we have our answer...

Daniel, the caniuse.com website states: HEIC ... is ... expensive to license

Affinity Photo can licence it in software that costs peanuts for a perpetual licence, but Xara has made the choice not to, even in the subscription products.

[Acorn]

I'm with Ian re blocks.

Egg, in a nutshell (not an acorn's I hope):

Think of a Web Block (WB) as a page-wide container:

Each WB immediately shares with a 480px Variant.
Each WB has Autofit to Page > Width

• Good
  
  • The WB always fits the page width.
  
  
• Bad
  
  • You cannot fit WBs side-by-side.
  • The autofit is not perfect so you are always chasing your tail from one view to another.

Each WB has Push set and hidden away as a menu option.

• Good
  
  • The WB (and contents) can be moved as a whole <-- Green container controls
  
  
• Bad
  
  • The Variant WB is forced into the same stack order, leaving no opportunity for designer variation.

You cannot knife and fork into a WB or create one.

• Bad
  
  • There are still Arrange menu options that are always visible but unavailable.

There are two types of WB.

• Bad
  
  • You don't know which until you you discover --> a FlexGroup <-- has a Purple edging.

Think of a FlexGroup (FG) like a text line for shapes instead of words; a column layout that doesn’t explicitly declare the number columns, just automatically creates them based on the shapes' widths - too wide and things wrap onto the next row.

The power of either WB is the means to drop something new into it or drag one out.

• Bad
  
  • Hard to control the merging of WBs and FGs. Their separation is not simple.

Xara is gaining a bit more functionality with each version delivery. The WB had a BlockBackground and has also now gained a VideoBackground. So WBs are becoming miniature stacks or layers.

The concept is simple and powerful.
The implementation is ropey. Object selection and alignment is chuggy and too much relies on yet more menu options.

Rescue the FG from a WB and copy into a normal website and you can decouple from variant sharing.
Add back Autofit and Push and you get a lot of the WB functionality back.
Put FGs into a Table and you get the means to have WGs side-by-side and gain row and column shifting.
The downside is things become dramatically nested and so getting to a shape is a chore.

Acorn

[Egg Bramhill]

Thanks for the detailed explanation Acorn. From this I think I'll keep to my current practice of avoiding blocks. Sounds like a good simple idea that transforms into a load of work instead. I'll wait until I stop seeing endless threads re block issues.