Edited (in the loosest sense on the word) by Gary W. Priester
VOLUME 3 ISSUE 1 •  MAY 1, 1999

Welcome Back!

Well it seems like we never missed a beat. Here it is one month later, give or take a week or two, since the last Xealot, issue 24. And as promised, the new and improved WebXealot! Im not sure about you, but your editor (that's still me) has been one busy beaver. Not only was I tasked with redesigning the Xealot!, I managed to take on the redesign of the entire XaraXone tossed into the deal. After all, a spiffy new Xealot! deserves a spiffy new XaraXone.

For those of you who went directly to the Insider Area and missed the new Xone, here's what's new and/or improved: (or if you'd rather see than read, click the Xara Xone icon in the top left portion of the screen)

  • The Trompe L'Oeil Room, New design, same great tutorials
  • The Xara Store, One stop shopping for all Xara products including fonts, Xara 3D 3, Xara Cube, a cool screen saver featuring your images, and more
  • About Xara, Information about Xara Ltd., plus contact and tech support info
  • Xara Shareware, Shareware and freeware designed by Xaran's for Xarans. More about this in this issue
  • The Insider Area, You are here
  • Featured Xara Artist, A new artist every month kicking off with the extraordinary images of Klaus Nordby
  • The Galleries, The bitmap gallery has been brightened up and Catharina Hogarth's XaraFiles gallery has been given a design makeover as well
  • Xara Linx, A permanent place to link to your Xara-designed web site or web images

Insider Information!

Since the last issue there have been several significant developments, Xara-wise. The first promising development is the arrival of the new Xara 3 product manager at Corel Corporation. I have been in contact with the new chap, as have several other vocal members of the Xara community to provide feedback on how we, the Xealots, feel about our nifty little product. And he seems to get the picture. How far he will be able to get in the Corel corporate culture remains to be seen, but at least, the opportunity to be heard was there. And he has copies of your feedback to boot.

The second piece of Top Secret information is Xara Ltd., is about to offer an upgrade to Xara 3D 3 (3.04) which will accompany a free downloadable updated Flare filter, the Browser plugin that permits visitors (who have the filter installed) to view Xara WEB files on screen in vector (scalable) fashion. This in and of itself is not earth shattering, however upon installing the new Flare filter, Xara 3D 3 will be able to open Xara 2 files! Your editor, has had the opportunity to play with, er, test this new filter and the ability to bring a Xara XAR file into Xara 3D 3 is a giant leap forward. The file still comes in as a one color image, but this is so much more convenient than the obscure TrueType or Windows Metafile formats. Plus, if one is clever, one can create and apply a decal, thus making the creation of a colored, animated, 3D logo, easy and possible.

For more information on Xara 3D 3, visit the Xara Store. To learn more about the decal process for applying color to your 3D creation, check out the April Trompe L'Oeil Room Xara 2 and Xara 3D tutorial.