SMICK.NET | Website of Mike Smick Graphics and Web Developer

Xara Xtreme Pro 5.1 graphics software

If you’re into the digital graphics for a hobby or work, you’ve been told that Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator are the industry standard. This is certainly true, but the “standard” doesn’t mean better in all aspects. Xara Xtreme is one of the few lesser-known alternatives that in some areas measurably outperforms Adobe’s offerings. I’ve been using it for several years. I fell in love when I saw the speed and clean interface of the program. Multiple updates over the past couple years have made it even more flexible. I always enjoy telling people about it because it’s simplicity and performance is surprising.

Some notable favorite features for me including some new ones out with the latest 5.1 version:

There are limits to Xara’s superiority. Looking at Illustrator, you can tell it has a great deal more features, just look at Illustrator’s Effect menu. But if I had Xara when I was learning vector graphics instead of Illustrator or Freehand, I think I would have enjoyed the process much more. I also believe if Adobe Flash had Xara’s tools for vector drawing it would also be a better program by far. I’ve often composed in Xara just to export to Flash in order to bypass some of Flash’s clumsiness. In short, I want Adobe to be more like Xara, just as much as I’d like a few things in Xara that Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and even the new and free Inkscape has. I have other “underdog” programs that I swear by, but this is the big one that I happily pay for.

Downsides of Xara, first it’s only on Windows. Linux users can use an older open source free version of Xtreme, but is hasn’t been feature-developed since 2007. This free version is fast and certainly good, but it’s missing some terrific features that Windows has. Mac has no Xara and I wish it did.  Also there are some file import issues I’ve found. Fore example, sharing SVG and EPS files has given me plenty of frowns. Sure it’s not a big deal when you control everything, but when you need to collaborate with others, or send files to print, you need reliability. Also despite the type features having massive improvements over the past few years, you will find InDesign a little better for you for composing most longer documents. I could think of a few more issues, but I could dig for more in any software.

Xara Xtreme has become over the years a must-have tool. Adobe users have become converts plenty of times, after being hypnotized by its beauty.  Even though I really love most of Adobe’s collection, Xara does certain tasks better and faster. You’ll use it for full graphic and page creation, enjoy it’s speed for mockups and maybe as a thinking tool before you’d open anything else. I love working with objects, breaking them apart, modifying shapes. The projects I’ve been able to do solely in Xara such as illustrations and diagrams, I’ve nearly always completed more efficiently than I could with other tools, and with a lot of enjoyment.

www.xara.com

June 11, 2009 at 4:23 am | 3D, design, graphics, publishing, tools, webdev | No comment

Great little bookstore

I’m giving a little promotional shout-out to a cute little store in Webster Groves, St. Louis.  If you are in the neighborhood, stop into Pudd’nhead Bookstore.  The reasons I appreciate this store and want to give the owner Nikki compliments is because they are doing a great job picking out a very enthralling collection for retail.  It makes browsing fun, and where many small book stores bore me, she seems to be able to sync with people’s characters. Also she’s very excited about the best books and hopes others will get the enjoyment too. That’s love.  These days you can get almost anything online, so it’s important that when a local store inventory is smaller that a store can still put a smile on your face. The books really need to grab you.  And you can’t just stock the popular books that are at the grocery store, you have to take risks.

Pudd'nhead books logo

Noteworthy items on the shelf, The Anarchist’s Cookbook, which probably frightens off some, but it reminds me that it takes strength to not censor yourself and face danger and reality head on. Books can be powerful and dangerous and still we shouldn’t hide knowledge from people even when it seems like a book has little redeeming value. A design book by Ellen Lupton was another gem. My favorite by far was the entire section called “Economic Meltdown.” That is class my friends.

Visit Pudd’nhead Books on the web and I hope you can appreciate them as much as I did. Sometimes places are best when you discover them yourself.  So forget I said anything and next time you’re in Webster, go where the wind takes you. Maybe get a coffee there while you’re at it.

December 11, 2008 at 3:45 am | books, interesting, publishing | 1 comment

What makes websites lame

So I was reading this page, 21 Factors that influence website first impressions

I started writing this long comment on that posting, and after about 80,000 words I thought, “screw improving this guys site with my genius comment, I’m writing my own posting.”

So here it is with a dark and negative flavor. Let me start with my fist annoyance. Some time in the past few years, some guru destroyed the internet by convincing thousands of web developers and bloggers and marketing scammers that the best way to drive traffic to their site was to create “Top Ten” lists. The top ten is the new sex. It sells. Unlike sex, Top Tens have gotten really old. And so have top 5, 20, 11, 99 or any other kind of list. You are not David Letterman and your list isn’t nearly as useful as you think it is. In fact, it’s the least enlightening thing I’ve read all decade. But surely it got you some visitor traffic. Which is my problem with it. The average butthead is reading your stupid post when they should be reading thought-provoking nine page articles on foreign policy that aren’t getting the attention they deserve. That highly educated journalist is starving while your dumb ass just made enough adsense money to buy an oversized shower head from Amazon.com.

Just to be clear here, I’m not making fun of the author(s) I linked to above from Vandelay web design. This is about lists in general. His wasn’t too bad, but I skimmed it, which is another problem with these lists. They are so easy to skim, they encourage you to stop reading paragraphs all together. Which encourages fake learning through unfocused consumption. That’s what TV is for. Here on the web, we should have higher aspirations.

Speaking of potatoes au gratin, heres my next problem with lame websites. Now that 27 inch monitors are like $18 bucks, everyone has them. Which means that 9pt font size that used to be great back on EVGA, now looks like hollywood hacker type. And Jesus, please stop using Verdana. It’s really gross. I have been told that at one point Verdana had a purpose, but since I just told you not to use small type, you know now that you musn’t use Verdana. It has sucked since 2001. Especially for headlines. Ugh. When I think of Verdana, all I can think of is if Madonna had a sister, she would be named Verdana and she would be disproportionate, ugly, unfunny, lonely and always eating sugary cereal.

The next problem, or if you want to be a corporate wimp, the next “challenge” is the site that looks to be legitimate news site but is swelling from bias and propaganda. One of these is foxnews.com, but it’s not the worst surprisingly. I’m way too tired to even look for them, but they are bound to pop up somewhere for you. They are ruining everything, mostly because they are written by conspiracy sheep or the wrong kind of republican. So if you ever think you want to make a community based news site, let me totally encourage you by saying go for it, as long as you can actually tell the truth.

Next we have sites with imagery dysfunction. In other words, you don’t know how to work with graphics whatsoever, and yet your site has more graphics than a Tijuana hooker? I guess, people long ago, back in 1995 had nothing to do but build very horrid gif animations and offer them as freebie downloads, while making popup advertising money. Those who bought or downloaded those spinning candy cane horizontal lines, or the 3D cats, or anything blinky decided that their website might get lonely without them. I mean hey, who needs white space when you can have that sweet hit counter?

Continuing on, there are still about 500,000 sites out there with background colors that will blow your ears off. There aren’t laws of the web, but let me just write the first and only one. If you are making your first website, you are allowed to use for your background, either #FFFFFF or #EEEEEE as your background colors.

More graphic fun, my personal favorite in fact, the stretched image. This particular problem shouts out that you A.) used MS FrontPage Express to make your site and B.) you don’t care about human proportion at all. What kills me is that it’s nearly always a womans portrait photo that is stretched the worst. The type of woman who spends womanly-time putting together her best look, the public speakers, influential lawyers, and yet being stretched and gaining or losing 100lbs in the photo somehow goes unnoticed for years.

Add to that, processor eating javascript effects, mostly which are totally useless. My latest one is the moveable sidebars. Who started this? I don’t want to drag around your sidebars and customize your blog. Besides, its not like it saves changes anyway. Just make them static. If I want to stylize websites, I’ll make my own browser stylesheet or use Aardvark firefox extension to remove or add things to your pages. If your site was any good, you wouldn’t have to bother with these javascript toys anyway.

I also hate bad forms. Forms that don’t indicate they were actually sent, or ones that request too much information for their purpose. Or my favorite, the ones that make you type in dashes for the phone number. But hey, your arbitrary database rules are much more important than my time aren’t they? It’s not like you could spend an extra 5 minutes implementing a few checks. How about Law #2, no more requesting phone numbers. What you want to call me? We can have an intimate conversation on the phone. You think I want you to call me? I’ll bet 98% of the shady looking shopping sites out there asking for YOUR phone number aren’t listing their own phone number for you to call. And you know what, here’s website law #3. Online Survey’s must NEVER have any required fields, except maybe a spam captcha. I’m doing YOU a favor by filling your survey. You gotta be pretty goddamn cocky to think that your radio button selections cover the gamut of my experience with your product. If I want to leave a question blank then you let me do it, or I will abandon you forever. Shit-for-brains.

I also despise signing up for things, so stop bugging me about your newsletter and how it can deliver your content to me often and more efficiently. I’ve seen every manner of newsletter popup, slide in, roll down. Screw off will ya?

Meh. I guess that’s about it. As all the top ten lists promise, if you follow these directions you will be successful. Now stop reading this crap and spend some time with your family.

November 28, 2007 at 7:08 pm | general, publishing, rants | No comment

Gutenberg rolls over in his grave

I just started a project for a coworker who got married last night. And before I tell you about it, there is a quote “we will always do more for others, than we will do for ourselves” which is so very, very true.

The project is: Me and Tracey Zoeller are combining the photos we took at a coworker Mike’s lovely little outdoor wedding and putting them into a printed hardcover book created through blurb.com. What a cool thing you can do and for under fifty bucks. Blurb gives you some decent software to put your book all together. We’re really excited to see what we can make. My friend Susan pointed me to an article on slate.com about some of the new online photo book creator services that were reviewed. I wanted to take a look at the review to make sure we were making the right choice.
My favorite quote from the article:

“All the Web sites promised that the books were easy to make. They lied. The simplest site required two hours of pointing and clicking. Some books took as long as four hours to create.”

Tragic isn’t it that the author had to endure such an ordeal? I mean really, how awful. You might compare it to the fate of Nelson Mandela, or Senator John McCain in Vietnam. Next you’ll be telling me that it’s going to take a full thirteen days to rebuild the World Trade center. She had to point AND even click for two hours to create her book. Reminds me of that really difficult day I had at my job recently. To complete a task, I literally had to get out of my own chair and walk down a flight of stairs. God I hope I don’t have to do anything like that ever again.

Being part of the publishing business, I know that books are rarely simple, but we must strive for efficiency and ease. There shouldn’t be any barriers to finishing your project quickly right? The other side is, I have no hope for future customers if people can no longer spend a few hours on a project, personal or not. Every video I’ve ever spent time with was a minimum of ten hours, personal or work. Even blogging this takes a couple minutes.

Perhaps the author would like to step back in time about fifteen years and see what it takes to put together a hardbacked, full color personalized photography book. About ten grand I’d say, with a minimum order of 500 copies. You have to draw it on layout paper, then take a cropper ruler and make the grease pen tick marks to every cropped image. And gasp, no world wide web. I’ve heard how the world is so advanced now that people from yesteryear couldn’t survive in this fast paced climate. I think it’s the other way around.

June 9, 2006 at 3:53 pm | computers, media, publishing, rants | No comment