by w00dy » Fri Dec 26, 2008 5:39 pm
Hi everyone, I new to the forum. I live in the UK and teach ICT. I'm a long time Xara user, mainly Xtreme Pro, and swear by it for vector graphics. OK, it's interface is a little different but it's not half as cluttered as Photoshop or Illy and neither of them can even begin to approach Xtreme in terms of speed. Xtreme's non-destructive photo-handling is more than enough for most web work.
Webstyle hasn't been updated since 2004 and in it's day, it was an easy option for beginners but now there are many simpler options. Some of Webstyle's templates produce decent CSS but you wouldn't go out and buy it at it's current price. I used to use it for menus but Blumental's Easy Button & Menu Generator looks a good option that will continue to be developed, so I'm about to buy it. I had a look at WeBuilder and could really take to that but it'd break my heart to change my brand of Coffee.
I teach ICT using the whole Serif range. I like PagePlus a lot, Photoplus is nearly Photoshop at a fraction of the price, WebPlus is wed design meets DTP and DrawPlus, whilst it does produce good results, it can't get near Xara Xtreme when you start throwing several large images at it.
I've flirted with Inkscape for 18 months and it's good, excellent price (Ā£0.00) but for me Xtreme will always be my first choice.
At the end of the day, I suppose it's what you get used to and what your pocket can afford. I'm sure that we've all come across those PS and DW experts, who would use "nothing else", I'm always amazed that they can afford these "industry standard" packages, where an upgrade costs many times more than any of the packages mentioned above.