Xara X1

Tim Carden

December 2004

Xara X is an interactive vector illustration and drawing tool, positioning itself in the same genre as the likes of CorelDRAW, Illustrator, Freehand and others. However, rather than compete with these better known products on a feature-for-feature basis, Xara X has always touted uniqueness and innovation as its advantages. With version X¹, Xara has consolidated these advantages into three areas - speed, graphics quality and value - and in these areas, at least, Xara more than delivers.

The original Xara product that is now X, has had an interesting history. At one stage it was even distributed by the Canadian graphics giant Corel under the name "CorelXARA". Xara X is the pioneer of many features that users of most vector apps take for granted these days - live smoothing (antialiasing) of vector images, vector transparency (including solid and graduated) and vector feathering. But it has been years since the previous release of Xara X and version X¹ is an important indication that Xara is still committed to X as their flagship product.

What can it do?

Xara provides the typical creation and formatting tools you would expect in a vector application. You can create standard shapes, bezier curves, and text objects, and apply various fills and outlines to those objects. There are also interactive on-screen tools including envelope distortions (to press and twist a selection into a custom or preset outline), bevels, drop shadows, transparency, blends and contours. Xara does attempt to make and apply most changes on screen in realtime which is refreshing and impressive. There is also a strong focus on drag and drop, particularly from the many resource galleries provided within Xara. Click and drag handles on an object in the main work area to apply or expand a bevel. Drag and drop a color from the palette directly onto the bevel to set the color for that bevel. Click and drag to reposition a soft drop shadow and view updates live as you drag - complete with feathering and transparency.

Xara relies on these on-screen tools wherever possible, and this is one of its killer advantages. Users can feel encouraged to play around in the drawing area without the dread of slow preview and update cycles, or refresh delays. Even text is rendered in the page as you type, complete with antialiasing.

Xara offers a few additional tools you wouldn't expect to find in all vector-based tool. There is a slider on the main toolbar that feathers any object as you drag it. This can be applied to complex objects such as text and beveled/shadowed objects and the original object will remain editable. There is also a "Button and NavBar tool". This allows you to create menu bar or buttons and manage states (up, down, over). NavBars are created by taking an existing shape (with bevels, shadows etc.) and a text label, and duplicating it the desired number of times with the desired spacing between copies. When you change the text on a button in a NavBar the button cleverly resizes to accommodate the text. You can change the number and spacing of buttons, and also drag existing NavBar buttons to change the order of the buttons.

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Buttons and NavBars can then be sliced automatically which can be useful when converting a layout to an HTML page. Xara X will also generate Javascript for the various states (up, down, over). This generally works well if you create NavBars step by step without going but, but I experienced quirks using undo or making too many modifications to an existing NavBar. The button bar on the right was created entirely in Xara using shape, shadow and feather tools, and the NavBar tool to manage duplication, resizing and export (including the home button sample MouseOver state).

Xara X manages a lot of resources and formatting through "galleries". These are basic floating boxes like the panels in other graphics packages except they can't be docked together. There is a font gallery for managing the various fonts on your computer including installed and uninstalled ones. A font can be dragged onto a text object to apply that font to the text object. The color gallery provides access to color palettes such as web safe colors, PANTONE print colours and a list from the current document (including any custom colors you may have created). The cool thing about colors in Xara X is that changes to a named color automatically updates all instances of the color in the current document.

Layers can be a great way to manage objects and Xara X provides management of these through the layer gallery. This provides basic options such as turning visibility on and off, and locking a layer's objects so they can't be modified accidentally. Other galleries include the clipart gallery, line gallery, fills gallery and bitmaps gallery. The latter shows a list of all imported bitmaps including their size and dimensions, filename etc. Only one copy of a bitmap is stored in the file no matter how many times it is used in the document. Finally there is the name gallery that allows you to give objects or groups specific names. It also allows you to select object by media usage, so you could for example select all text objects that use the Arial font, or all instances of an imported bitmap. In addition, every named object can be used to "slice" a document. The image format (GIF, BMP, PNG or JPG) can be set for each named object, which makes it easy to get portions of your Xara X document in a bitmap format for use in web or multimedia.

What's New?

Xara has been working on this new version for sometime so loyal users may be disappointed to find that most changes are subtle or under the belt. Xara promises this new version can be 20% faster for many drawings and up to 100% faster for some operations. Given that XaraX's code has always been hand optimized and super quick, this is no small feat!

This new version boasts enhancements to PNG support allowing multi-layer, multi-file PNG exports and better alpha channel support. It has handy new CYMK features: XaraX¹ now previews CYMK separations on screen so you can see the portions of Cyan, Yellow, Magenta and Black that make up your drawing when printed. XaraX¹ lets you open new windows (or views) of the same document and so you could potentially have one window open all the time showing your drawing with printer-simulated colors, or even just showing the Magenta separation (for example), and work in a different window with normal onscreen colors displayed.

But the big change is the Xara Picture Editor. This can run as a built-in extension to Xara X and as an external replacement for your existing picture viewer. With Xara Picture Editor you can easily make live changes to the brightness, constrast, saturation or sharpness of an image, and perform crop or rotation operations. The changes are saved along with the image you applied them to in its original form. When you load the image, the changes are actually quickly reapplied so although Xara X works with the original at all times, it appears that your enhancements are permanent. This means changes can be reversed or undone without loosing image quality. Xara X cleverly stores imported JPEGs in their original JPEG format meaning far quickly load and save time, and greatly reduced Xara X file sizes. Given that many photos are sourced in JPEG format to begin with, this method of image handling is a fantastic efficiency boost, particularly for photo-intensive projects such as montages.

The Xara Picture Editor is built in typical Xara style — real time previewing of enhancements and an easy interface. In the screen shot above I have turned on the image size (zoom) window, enhancement options and crop window, but these default to being closed and can be toggled on or off using the toolbar buttons below the picture preview.

Aside from the speed boost and these more major features, there are dozens of fixes and tweaks including a better color picker and new file format support for XAR files in Windows that shows you a mini preview of your file in Windows Explorer so you can quickly view a file prior to opening it.

What's Missing?

Xara X¹ does what it says very well — it manages to be fast and low priced, with smoothed real time rendered graphics on screen. However, power users, or those coming from competing vector applications may have a few disappointments. Many of the features some users take for granted are different in Xara X, or simply not there. For example, there are no symbols or cloning support. Xara's clone command simply creates a duplicate in place and modifications to the parent are not updated to the child. Some common "de facto standard" keyboard shortcuts are not in Xara X, such as "Z" for zoom and "H" for hand/pan tool. I found no way to customize the interface or shortcut keys. Shape or node editing is also a bit different to other apps — e.g. shape changes to an ellipse must be made with the ellipse tool, not the shape editor tool. Also, the various galleries offer powerful functionality but can't be docked or tabbed together making it easy to clutter your working environment. Xara also lacks some professional import/export features such as built-in PDF or layered Photoshop PSD output. More concerning, Xara had some problems copying some graphics (e.g. beveled or transparent) into some other applications I tested.

Conclusion

Xara X has a surprisingly large assortment of tools and features. It is elegant, fast and easy to learn. The strong integration of web features (e.g. slicing, web palette and default units being pixels) make it best suited to web and multimedia projects, however the new CMYK features will be a boost for users who want Xara X for print work too. If you are looking for a speedy illustration tool and are happy to have some limited output and interoperability features, Xara X may be your ideal tool. A trial version and extensive product information is available at the Xara website.

Pricing: Full Version: $189 (boxed), $179 (CD only), Upgrade: from $29

Company Website: www.xara.com

Requirements:
Windows

• Microsoft Windows 98/Me/2000/XP
• Pentium processor or better
• 64Mb RAM
• 20Mb available hard disk space
• Minimum screen resolution of 640x480   

Macintosh

• Not available at this time

Copyright (c) 2004, Tim Carden, All Rights Reserved