Xara web space and slider widget

[Rob-Xar]

The slider originally came from Task Pilot before the whole service was renamed to Xara Online. Basically from Magix. It's essentially re-using assets than investing development time to make a native slider.

[Acorn]

Because that content directly costs money to maintain, but Magix haven't gone as far as completely removing access to existing widgets if your update service or hosting expires. I wouldn't give them any ideas.

I host content in Amazon's S9 for pennies. My service provider offers unlimited content storage (and websites) for yearly pounds. Storage is a commodity.
Perhaps we're funding the electricity bill for Magix's Bitcoin mining?

Acorn

[Rob-Xar]

I host content in Amazon's S9 for pennies. My service provider offers unlimited content storage (and websites) for yearly pounds. Storage is a commodity.
Perhaps we're funding the electricity bill for Magix's Bitcoin mining?

Acorn

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ maybe you could offer Magix to host their databases on your unlimited storage

[Acorn]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ maybe you could offer Magix to host their databases on your unlimited storage

More than happy to consider discussing how Magix could provide proper web hosting anytime. I do have prior business acumen.

Acorn

[Rob-Xar]

More than happy to consider discussing how Magix could provide proper web hosting anytime. I do have prior business acumen.

Acorn

Go for it! You should be able to reach the Xara Online team at (removed by gwpriester)

[Acorn]

Go for it! You should be able to reach the Xara Online team at (removed by gwpriester)

Rob, I have just done so. Thank you for the email address. I also included Magix's UK Head Office and yourself.

Email content:

My TalkGraphics (your Xara Online Forum) handle is Acorn and I believe Robert's is Rob-Xar.

I have been having a long harangue on TalkGraphics with Matt Bolton, Kate Moir (and Robert) about my concerns in the decision to hide away the Xara Online Content Catalogue material behind a paywall.

Such a decision seems to fall upon Magix as a marketing approach but it is clear over a number of version releases that unsuspecting customers do not realise this material is time-limited and is a case of a poorly advised 'use it or lose it' policy before the Update Service expires. As a long-term use of Xara's excellent products, this is a major disservice where access to content that has application functionality built-in is blocked. If you have the time to examine http://downloadsv16.xara.com/web/catalog/index.html, those items listed as Buy are no longer accessible unless they have been previously downloaded to the Local Designs gallery.

If you then examine those remaining, under First Look > Free Example Components, and ignore all the Website, Social Media and Presentation templates, then, even if you are not a user of the Xara Desktop application, you will get an understanding of the almost total cull of the functionality of the application.

Robert suggested that Magix handling the "content directly costs money to maintain". In my reply, I posited that the cost was trivial and could be very cheap using Amazon Web Services (e.g., its Simple Storage Service (S3)); I had also suggested my web service provider offered me unlimited storage.

I would be more than happy for the Website, Social Media and Presentation templates to continue to be behind a paywall as I find we have better, richer, persistent and cheaper access elsewhere. Do note that these templates storage is only 3GB.

I propose that the trivial 95MB storage for Components should be fully accessible after the Update Service expires. This can be either through the current Online Content Catalogue or hosted elsewhere. My preference is that the Components are downloaded into the local Cache as a specific function of the Xara Desktop application as this ensures the content reaches those people who purchased its access in the first place.

Respectfully

Acorn

[gwpriester]

Acorn - Since you now have this email address I am going to delete it from this thread.

It will be interesting to hear the response.

[Acorn]

Acorn - Since you now have this email address I am going to delete it from this thread.
It will be interesting to hear the response.

Yes t will.

The email is "available" through Magix if you know where to look. Even with it, I took scouring many pages to find it to understand to whom or what I was pinging.

Acorn

[Boy]

I took scouring many pages to find it to understand to whom or what I was pinging.

Can you share your findings?

[Acorn]

Can you share your findings?

The email can be found if you can get to About Magix.

The trick is form Home of https://www.magix.com/gb/ scroll to page bottom. Under ABOUT MAGIX (no link) click Company Info and finally Locations. Magix navigation is a genuine nightmare.
I tried both Germany and UK and got a nice reply about passed on internally from Germany.

Acorn