Tumbleweed Town

[Acorn]

Exactly 24 hours ( and 4 minutes) ago Xara announced the Plus v 23.7 release.
All of 81 views.

Where are the users, the interest, the verve, ...?
Is TG now a backwater?

Acorn

[mwenz]

You have access to how many people are active users, right? I would/should be counted as an inactive member...

I feel Xara has backwatered themselves. Even though they took back control from Magix distribution, the perpetual version (all I am interested in) seemingly lags far behind the subscription version. I won't upgrade until they are kept in-sync. Until Xara does that--and continues that--I feel they can drop the perpetual at any time.

[gwpriester]

There is an old Xara, the one that most of us grew up with, and the new Xara which is focusing on a totally different market. Most changes to the product favor the new Xara, e.g. Blocks. But for those of us who use Xara as a creative tool, not much to write home about. And I really don't think a lot of users of the new product are participating on TG. That's how I see it.

[handrawn]

I would venture to suggest... that the good old days were mostly driven by graphic artists......

the old crowd were interested in creativity, a lot of the time 'for it's own sake' as a learning experience; I am not sure you can do that with a website as it has to fullfil a practical need or it's pointless

and it seems to me that webmasters and branding bunnies mostly hang out on social media - the optics and exposure level of the likes of TG are not in it's favour

and I see gary has now posted along similar lines...

[Acorn]

You have access to how many people are active users, right? I would/should be counted as an inactive member...

I feel Xara has backwatered themselves. Even though they took back control from Magix distribution, the perpetual version (all I am interested in) seemingly lags far behind the subscription version. I won't upgrade until they are kept in-sync. Until Xara does that--and continues that--I feel they can drop the perpetual at any time.

Mike, as a Mod I can only guess at the active users.
I would like to run a script for a count of those who have logged in in the last year. Anyone can check what and when any other has Posted; you, 15 in the last year. I do not know when you last logged in unless I hovered over the Who's Online for current active users. For instance we have one Banished Russian Spammer or Bot on-line now but Xara does not wish to hear or understand the implications of such.

Perpetual, according to Matt (@MB365) is only about 3 versions behind, less Web Blocks and the Online Content Catalogue (now Elements).
I have considered it but shied off as there do not appear to be any Bug Releases, almost back to pre-Magix days.

On a side note, I've a Xara email offering 40% of XPro+ where the discount code it still using "MAGIX" in its naming.
Check where Magix and Xara's offices are in Germany on Google Maps; it is quite explanatory.

On another, Xara has kindly offered up an off-line version of its knowledge base for Plus & Perpetual products but anyone who has legacy Magix products will gain from using it as well.
It is one way to find out what improvements are now around. Sadly, it has not yet been updated for v23.5, 23.6 & 23.7.

Acorn

[ss-kalm]

I keep looking for V20 perpetual on Xara's website. Unless you know where to find it (and I don't) it's VERY well hidden. Not only that, but the price to "upgrade" without any bonuses for owning a previous version is not worth the cost for what the changes are. Especially for someone like me who only uses the product for fun.

[Chris M]

Exactly 24 hours ( and 4 minutes) ago Xara announced the Plus v 23.7 release.
All of 81 views.

Where are the users, the interest, the verve, ...?
Is TG now a backwater?

Acorn

These type of questions always seem to end up as rent vs buy gripes, but I think handrawn has hit the bullseye with his reference to social media. There's tumbleweed in TGsville because the railroad moved its tracks to Tictoc-by-the-sea.

Personally, there has been nothing much in the updates to actually write about, other than adding to the long list of things that don't work properly. Most of the fixes are things I didn't know existed, yet, rarely, do I see a fix for something mentioned here. Matt365 often states something along the lines of 'asked for by our customers'. I would lay decent amounts of money down that those asks didn't originate from a forum. How many times have you read a member state something was asked for/reported not working years ago?

I think I joined in 2018, and here have been some major changes (yes, mostly web) Tables and now blocks, but the usual fluff is just even more templates and 100 different colours of the same thing.

So, Acorn, my answer to where is the verve? I don't see much to get vervey about, and 23.7 had some significant improvements to blocks...but they shouldn't have been released in the first place with such obvious faults. Realistically, I think handrawn has the actual answer.

[bwood]

Thanks to many on TG this winter I took a deep dive into understanding Xara pro, and the use of coding. As I use Pro for everything I can do posters, newsletters, cards, graphics and web. I think it’s the best all round package around.

But … Having come from a broadcasting and marketing career, I think some of the branding has been very confusing. That confusion well documented on TG. Just go back and check all the packages available; many of which do the same thing.

Younger people want something fast and easy. Hence blocks. Plug and play. “I want my website now”, and having brought up two daughters they do not tend to update programs, unless it’s auto updated with apps on phones etc. Having a visit over the weekend I proclaimed what I learned to do on pro+. Crickets. They’re interested in the end product only.

The Xara group on Facebook was left in the dust. Social is a knife edge. You must leverage what you’ve done on one platform, to the next big thing. You have to be nimble.

[Jonopen]

I keep looking for V20 perpetual on Xara's website. Unless you know where to find it (and I don't) it's VERY well hidden. Not only that, but the price to "upgrade" without any bonuses for owning a previous version is not worth the cost for what the changes are. Especially for someone like me who only uses the product for fun.

I also keeping looking for some official news about the (legendary/mythological?) perpetual license.

Re Tumbleweed:

According to the Xara website last year 52,469 businesses transformed their brand experience (whatever that means!) with Xara. I would have thought with those sort of numbers TalkGraphics would be buzzing with new (or confused!) users. Even if 0.5% of those people signed into TG it could potentially mean around 262 new members.

To my mind the TG forum just doesn’t fit with the marketing and outlook of the main Xara website.

Maybe it's time for Xara GmbH to archive off the whole TalkGraphics forum and start a completely fresh/more focussed one and call it something that specifically connects their company name to their products, for example, ‘Xara forum'.

[Acorn]

I also keeping looking for some official news about the (legendary/mythological?) perpetual license.
Re Tumbleweed:
According to the Xara website last year 52,469 businesses transformed their brand experience (whatever that means!) with Xara. I would have thought with those sort of numbers TalkGraphics would be buzzing with new (or confused!) users. Even if 0.5% of those people signed into TG it could potentially mean around 262 new members.

To my mind the TG forum just doesn’t fit with the marketing and outlook of the main Xara website.

Maybe it's time for Xara GmbH to archive off the whole TalkGraphics forum and start a completely fresh/more focussed one and call it something that specifically connects their company name to their products, for example, ‘Xara forum'.

Jon, thank you. Totally agreed. Where are the 2,000,000+ licence holders for all Xara products?

Acorn