A Tale of Two Programs..

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sfwood
Posts: 125
Joined: 10 Jan 2012 21:07

A Tale of Two Programs..

Post by sfwood »

This past week I downloaded a trial for the newest CorelDraw, four major versions later than what I own and am currently using. The interface is cleaned up in some ways, less efficient in others. A number of features that have always aggravated me have not changed at all. Not a single major improvement that is really interesting. Playing with customizing the toolbox (main toolbar for non-graphics types), I somehow removed the pointer/select (i.e. really important) tool . Using the feature to reset the toolbars crashes the software. Resetting the interface doesn't reset the toolbox as it is supposed to. Users of Photo-Paint, the included image editing software, have been begging for years for PP to stop stripping metadata out of image files. Four versions later, and metadata is still stripped. Corel wants a couple hundred $US for this "upgrade". I take that back--I don't qualify for the upgrade 'cause my version too old.

In this same week I have downloaded numerous betas of XYplorer and watched as several different features were improved (a couple quite significantly) and as the developer interacted with users about how those features should be implemented and how they would work best. The developer has demonstrated sensitivity to not shoving "enhancements" onto users but provide them as an option. As a holder of a lifetime license, I pay nothing to get use out of the latest and greatest that XY has to offer. I have also reflected on how clever XY is. For example, in CorelDraw, when you right-click on a toolbar button, you get a huge context menu of toolbars to turn on or off and a customize submenu with a mindboggling array of button & toolbar customization options. Compare this to XY, where right-clicking a TB button opens a practical list of truly context aware choices that relate to the purpose of that button. And, I'm pretty sure something that crashed the program would be fixed by the next day.

XY isn't perfect, but what it does it does well, and what it doesn't do it generally doesn't for a defensible reason. The quality of this software and the responsiveness of its' developer are remarkable.

RalphM
Posts: 1932
Joined: 27 Jan 2005 23:38
Location: Cairns, Australia

Re: A Tale of Two Programs..

Post by RalphM »

+1(00)
Ralph :)
(OS: W11 22H2 Home x64 - XY: Current beta - Office 2019 32-bit - Display: 1920x1080 @ 125%)

admin
Site Admin
Posts: 60357
Joined: 22 May 2004 16:48
Location: Win8.1 @100%, Win10 @100%
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Re: A Tale of Two Programs..

Post by admin »

Yep, thanks! Happy that I'm not the one making CorelDraw.

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