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Review of Xara X
Xara X
Xara Ltd. Software Requirements for PC
· Windows 95/98/NT4/2000/Me Price: $149, Upgrades $69 |
If any of you remember back to the early versions of CorelDRAW, you remember it came on a small number of floppy disks. Most of those disks contained clip-art and the runtime version of Windows necessary to run CorelDRAW. Nowadays the smallest install of CorelDRAW takes well over 100 MB. Sure it has more features. But the bloat is quite evident. So what if you could get a tool that does almost everything in CorelDRAW, ran much faster, never crashed and took up only 10 MB of hard drive space? If so, then Xara X is the tool for you!
When Xara shipped the original version, they took direct aim at CorelDRAW. One of the supplied clip-art images was a fighter jet that had two balloons on the side signifying kills as shown at left. Corel was worried enough that they bought the marketing rights. After a few years of unsuccessfully marketing the program and "borrowing" some of the best features, they let Xara have the marketing rights back. Xara X is the first new version and Xara certainly comes out swinging.
Let's first look at what you get. First, is the program itself. Rather than printed documentation, you get three 20-minute movies to introduce you to the product and then eighty 1-minute movies showing you specific features. This is in addition to the online help files. Bonus goodies include 250 fonts in PostScript and TrueType formats, 3000 clip-art images, 200 photos and 250 fills. You'll also find that the Clipart Gallery is linked to the Web so that you can download more images.
One of Xara's traditional strengths is creating graphics for the Web. This is partly because of the absolutely beautiful job it does in anti-aliasing the screen display. Did I mention that the display was lightning fast? New to Xara X is a button bar tool that automatically creates rollovers complete with graphics as shown at right, HTML and JavaScript. I was having some trouble understanding exactly how this works and one of the included movies solved that in only two minutes. For those of you using Dreamweaver, you'll find that Xara is now integrated so that you can edit graphics after they've been placed in Dreamweaver. Quite often you'll find that you have text on those buttons. When you adjust the button size, you'd like the text to adjust as well. Xara has linked stretching that automates this process for you.
When you are exporting to the Web, a number of options are available to you. If it is just a bitmap, the export shows you previews of two variations so that you can decide which settings to use as shown at left. Other export options include full alpha-channel support in PNG files and the ability to export static SWF (Flash) files. If the files need to be sliced into a table for the Web, Xara handles that as well. For those of you not comfortable with creating a set of graphics for a Web site, start with one of the included templates and customize it for your needs.
Now that we've established that Xara has some great capabilities for creating Web graphics, let's talk about its illustration tools. You'll find all the standard drawing tools and most of the popular effects such as Blends, Contours, Moulds (Envelopes) and a killer implementation of transparency. New to this version is an interactive shadow tool that creates realistic soft shadows. You'll also find brushes better than anything you've ever seen in a vector illustration tool. And if you mess up, the brush strokes are fully editable. For those of you with tablets, all of the brush strokes will respond to the pressure sensitivity to mimic a real-life brush. At right is an example of a brush stroke.
Now anyone who is thinking that Xara just copies and perfects the features in other packages should know that it has had transparency since 1995, before any of the other major players. And this version expands the number of type of transparencies even further. Who else offers Stained Glass Fractal Plasma transparency? OK, so that is a weird combination that probably won't be used. I just want you to know that the possibilities are nearly endless with the transparency options provided.
One new feature that is sure to be copied is the Bevel tool. Any object can have a wide variety of bevels applied to it. Changing the size of the bevel and the angle of the light can be changed interactively. All of the other controls can be found on the Infobar. CorelDRAW users will know this as the Property Bar and should know that Corel got the idea from Xara. The graphic at left is the combination of a simple bitmap fill and a preset bevel. It took all of a minute to create.
So far I've described a tool that is great at illustration tasks and for putting objects on the Web. Therefore its deficiency has to be professional printing, right? No, you'll find full color management and separations support as shown at right. Best of all, you can turn the color management on and off with a single selection. If only all programs were so easy! The downside is that you can't really edit the color profile. So for the one percent of users who want that then maybe you'll be frustrated.
Some of you are probably thinking that there has to be a downside to a small, incredibly fast program that seems to do everything great. It is a Windows-only program in a category where many high-end users have a Mac. Xara is also a fairly small company based in rural England so they don't have the marketing resources of other software companies. What they do have is a dedicated user base (see the XaraXone at left) that I haven't seen since the early days of CorelDRAW. And believe me that I'll probably hear from a bunch of them who critique every word of this review.
All in all, Xara X is a fantastic application that I truly believe you should all try out (for free). For those that have to share a large amount of artwork with others, you might find this difficult. One common file format could be the CMX format for sharing with CorelDRAW users. And there is always EPS and various bitmap formats. But if people truly want to edit your artwork, they too would need a copy of Xara. Heck, I think you'll like it enough that you might try convincing them to become a convert as well!
Do you have a product you would like to have reviewed? Send press releases to reviews@unleash.com.
Foster D. Coburn III has written six best-selling books on graphics software and is currently the Webmaster of the Graphics Unleashed Web site.
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CorelDRAW X6 Font List · CorelDRAW X5 Font List · CorelDRAW X4 Font List · The Terms of Adobe Photoshop and Corel PHOTO-PAINT · CorelDRAW X3 Font List · Cropping and Rotating Files in Corel PHOTO-PAINT · The Magic of Color Styles · CorelDRAW's Find and Replace Wizard · Shorten Your Design Time with Templates · CorelDRAW's Multi-Faceted Eyedropper Tool · CorelDRAW and Special Characters · The Easy Way to Create Calendars in CorelDRAW · The Wide World of Labels in CorelDRAW · Including Variable Data with Print Merge · Resaving, Resizing & Resampling Files in Corel PHOTO-PAINT · Creating Your Own Fonts in CorelDRAW · The Evils of Using JPEG Files · Speeding Up CorelDRAW 11 and Windows XP · Symbols and Imposition · The Easiest Way to Recreate Logos · A Few Guidelines to Follow · Square Corners Can Be Sticky -- Rounding Corners in CorelDRAW · Creating Complex Shapes Easily with CorelDRAW · Identifying the Mystery Font · Two Ways to Create a Split Front Design · Last Word in Font Management · Calibrating Your Printed Colors with a Color Chart · Graphics Computing in 2001 · Hottest R.A.V.E. In Town · Get the Red Out of Eyes · Secrets of Color Management · Dressing Up Your PDF Files · How Adobe Acrobat Can Make Life Simpler · Why You Want PDF in Your Workflow · Converting a Scanned Logo to Vector in CorelDRAW · Designing 360 Degrees · Customizing Your Interface in CorelDRAW 8.0 · Fitting Text to a Path · Creating Cool Graphs Without a Spreadsheet · From CorelDRAW to Macromedia Flash, A Simple Example · Getting Rid of That Darned White Box · Converting a Bitmap Logo to Vector in CorelDRAW · Finding Clipart with ROMCAT
Xara Xtreme Pro 5.0
Serif WebPlus X2
Xara Web Designer 5.0
Xara Xtreme Pro 4.1
Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Professional
Fuji FinePix 2800 Zoom Digital Camera
Procreate KnockOut 2
Hemera Photo Objects Volume I and II
Wildform SWfx
Macromedia Fontographer 4.1 and FontLab 4
Caligari iSpace v1.5
Xara X
Macromedia Fireworks 4
Web Site Design Made Easy
Alien Skin Eye Candy 4000
Swish 1.51
Macromedia Flash 5
Corel KPT 6
Dreamweaver Ultradev
1st Page 2000
Adobe Illustrator 9
Corel KnockOut v1.5
Xara 3D 4
Cool 3D 3
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