Saying that Designer Pro X 11 does everything might be a bit of an overstatement. For example, I haven't figured out yet how to get it to take out the trash, feed the cats, or wash the car. There's very little you can't accomplish with this latest version if what you're trying to do involves working with photographs, graphic design, typesetting, or websites.
Xara offers 4 products in the Designer series, Web Designer, Page & Layout Designer, Photo & Graphic Designer, and Designer Pro. All are built on the same underlying technology and Designer Pro includes all features from the 3 other products. Web Designer and Photo & Graphic Designer, for example, omit support for CMYK colors used in professional printing while Page & Layout Designer and Designer Pro include it. The 3 individual programs don't support multi-core processing, but Designer Pro does.
If you're interested in which features are in each of the applications, you'll find a comparison chart on Xara's website. Many of the most interesting new features deal with website design and I discussed those in a July program called Astonishment for Sale. In August, I described some of the new design tools such as the vector-based Art Brushes that offer real-time painting of complex vector or bitmap brush designs along an editable freehand vector path. That program was called Have You Ever Seen A Purple Camel?
So now I've been looking at Designer, which does everything the other programs do and more. But describing a lot of the features would simply revisit what I've already described, so my goal here is to talk about new features that are unique to Designer Pro or ones that I didn't touch on in the earlier reviews.
Although each of the individual applications costs $90 or $100, Designer Pro at $300 is the better value because it includes everything in a single package and adds a few extra features that aren't available in any of the individual programs.
Xara takes advantage of HTML5 animation capabilities and makes it possible to create objects that do something when the user hovers a mouse over them or clicks on them, or simply when the scroll into view. A Transparency tool brings several new blend modes and they all comply with W3C standards. The W3C is the World Wide Web Consortium, a group that attempts to bring order to development standards used on the Web.
Print designers will be happy with improved text features that include better hyphenation controls and auto-correct functions. Standard warnings apply for auto-correct: Yes, the feature is handy, but blindly accepting the recommendations may lead to a the creation of a page on which everything is properly spelled but with words that make no sense in context.
Auto-correct goes well beyond what you might expect, though, by making it possible to replace a character string with a graphic from the Font Awesome collection. Let's say that you occasionally need to insert a Visa logo into your text. To accomplish this, you could create an auto-correct function that inserts the Visa graphic whenever you type "visa". That probably would be a bad choice, though, because you wouldn't always want to replace the word with the symbol. Instead set "xvisa" to be replaced by the symbol.
Then, whenever you type "xvisa" and press the space bar (or tab or enter or any punctuation) the characters will be replaced by the symbol.
Designer Pro offers impressive hyphenation controls. This isn't one of the features that gets a lot of notice, but it's one that's important for designers and publishers. Most of the controls are what you might expect. By default, the smallest word that will be hyphenated must have 6 characters. I recommend 8. By default, at least 3 letters must occur before the hyphen and 3 letters must remain after the hyphen. I recommend changing this to 4. The hyphenation zone allows less hyphenation as the percentage is increased. By default, this is set to 5%. If you want to avoid excessive hyphenation, set Consecutive Hyphens to a low number. The default value is 3 and I would set this to 2 or even 1, but Designer Pro also offers an Attenuation setting that modifies the limit. Xara recommends setting a value between 5% and 10%: "Values higher than 20% often inhibit consecutive hyphens so much that they no longer occur at all." You can also specify whether all-caps and capitalized words will be hyphenated and whether the last word in a paragraph can be hyphenated.
A hyphenation list allows the user to specify explicit hyphenation rules for specific words. You might not want the name of your product or service to be hyphenated and entering the word without a hyphenation marker in this list will keep that from happening.
Designer Pro provides text wrap in print and graphic design documents as well as on websites. In fact, this seems to illustrate a core value at Xara: The belief that a single application that does everything is better than a lot of applications that each do just one thing. So Designer Pro can create files needed for a printed brochure, edit a photograph, generate a PDF document, design a logo, or create a complex responsive website. As one who remembers when Corel entered into a marketing agreement with Xara, I recall being introduced to a small, lightweight program that was incredibly fast.
New in this version, Warp Liquify makes it possible to modify the edges of shapes by drawing over them with various patterns. Xara is working on an open application program interface (API) that will allow developers or users to create brushes that work with Warp Liquify and also to create new Smart Shapes, which are customizable symbols.
New plug-ins include a Spiral Smart Shape tool. For Web design, there’s a new one-click placement to stick objects to any given place in the browser window while the content scrolls under. This is very useful for ‘sticky’ social icons or a permanent navigation bar across the top of the screen.
Useful resource: "Xara Xhris" has created an extensive series of videos on YouTube to show how Designer works. The videos primarily deal with the previous version (10), but many features and the overall functionality have been the same for many versions. You'll spend several hours with these videos, but if you're interested in learning how Designer Pro works, you should invest the time.
Xara brings a standard interface to design, page layout, and website design.Because I've reviewed the individual components that comprise Xara Designer Pro 11, there's not a lot that's new to talk about. The gold standard of graphics applications used to be a program that could work with both vector and bitmap images. Today, Xara Designer Pro does that and a lot more. It's a capable program for graphic designers, website developers, photographers, and even print designers. Take a look and prepare to be impressed.
Additional details are available on the Xara website.
If you scroll down to the bottom of any recent page on TechByter Worldwide (and by "recent" I mean pages created in 2011 or later), you'll see an icon from SiteLock. Even though you won't see the logo on pages created in 2010 or before, the protection is in place. SiteLock monitors the site and alerts me when something is amiss so that I can fix it.
The only incident I've seen was one in which a link from a program in the distant past referred to a site that no longer existed. Another person had acquired the domain name and the main page was filled with malware. SiteLock notified me and I removed the link to the domain.
Why do I pay for this service? It's because popular website are more likely to be hacked than less popular sites. That's according to research that's just been released during National Cyber Security Awareness Month.
SiteLock partnered with faculty from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business to analyze one million SiteLock-scanned sites from February through April 2015. The analysis was used to develop an artificial-intelligence-based statistical model that can predict the risk of website compromise.
The report says that the key feature of a website that predicted its likelihood of compromise was its overall complexity, rather than its specific functionality. As a site offers more features to engage and retain its users, the importance of preventative website security increases. This makes sense and thinking about real-world equivalences can help: Every feature added to an appliance, an automobile, or any other device presents another option for something to fail.
SiteLock President Neill Feather says that websites and Web applications are a visible and vulnerable part of any company's infrastructure. Because this is so, businesses can no longer assume they're immune from cyber attacks. Feather says the report's findings should remind organizations of the importance of protecting themselves by frequently checking vulnerabilities.
The research also found that website visibility, as measured through its social media presence, was associated with the likelihood of compromise. A possible explanation is that a website's social media profile is positively associated with its popularity. The more popular the site, the more attractive it is to an attacker. That's one of the reasons that I use SiteLock.
SiteLock monitors sites to detect malware that has been planted on the site or when existing links are compromised, which was the issue I encountered several years ago. After identifying malicious content, SiteLock can automatically remove the threat. The service also providers users with reports on scans, threats detected, and items removed.
I know that the FBI has a file on me because I requested access to it in the 1980s under the Freedom of Information Act. Most of the information on the pages I received from the FBI was blacked out ("redacted") but the conclusion was that I wasn't a threat to national security. After all these years, I still haven't decided whether that makes me feel good or bad.
Maybe you're wondering if the FBI (or the NSA or some other TLA -- three-letter agency) has a file on you. How do you find out?
Although it's been around for several years, I just found GetMyFBIFile, which actually goes well beyond the FBI. The site offers to create documents that you can send to the FBI or the NSA (or the Defense Security Service, Central Intelligence Agency, U.S. Marshals Service, Defense Intelligence Agency, Secret Service, and Army Criminal Investigation Command) to find out what they have on file for you.
Visit the site and fill out the form (or don't fill out the form). You can leave everything blank if you don't want to provide it and GetMyFBIFile will provide documents that you can fill out and mail to the various agencies. The FBI asks that you specify how much you're willing to pay. The first 100 pages of your file will be free, but there's a charge if the file is larger. My file ran to about 10 or 15 pages.
If you're nervous about using the site, both the FBI and the NSA have their own Web pages where you can request information: Request FOIA information from the FBI here or the CIA here. The text created by GetMyFBIFile can be copied and pasted into a word processor. You'll need to fill in some specific information that the site doesn't ask for (your Social Security number, for example) before printing the document and sending it to the appropriate agency.
I was asked why someone who had no reason to think that his or her information had been collected by a federal agency would want to "poke" one of these agencies. Here's my reason: I don't suspect that there's a problem with my credit rating, but I still obtain annual reports from the 3 big rating agencies. I consider FOIA requests to TLAs to be in this same category. And besides, I like poking federal agencies.
Backup application provider Acronis and security applications developer Comodo are teaming up so that Acronis Backup Cloud will be incorporated into the Comodo ONE managed services platform.
Comodo One is an integrated platform that offers patch management, remote monitoring and management, and service desk, for free of charge to small businesses, large enterprises, and managed service providers. The platform recently added device management and an application store.
Free? "When we launched Comodo ONE earlier this year, the vision was to help managed service providers replace complex multi-systems and eliminate manual tasks with standardized automated processes that are repeatable, secure, compliant, scalable and efficient," according to Ilker Simsir, product and platform manager for Comodo One. "We selected Acronis for its ability to support any data source, destination, and delivery model, as well as its proven security capabilities and support for service provider workloads," says Simsir.
Comodo offers digital certificates and other security components intended to protect and secure businesses. Acronis provides local and cloud-based backup solutions that include disaster recovery, file synchronization, and file sharing.
Acronis Backup Cloud is a hybrid cloud backup and recovery service that enables protection of data from any location. For the Comodo One managed services platform integration, Acronis will host and provide storage for global services provided through the Comodo platform.
Acronis Backup Cloud works with virtually all operating systems and applications, including Windows, Mac, Linux, Hyper-V, VMware, RHEV, XEN, KVM, Oracle VM, Microsoft Exchange and SQL, as well as XEN, KVM, Linux, Virtuozzo, Docker, Open-Xchange, and MySQL.
Acronis Chief Marketing Officer John Zanni says that the company's backup system is designed to ensure data safety, security, and privacy, while still being easy to use. "Our aim is to be the best when it comes to security for cloud data protection and partnering with security leaders such as Comodo supports this goal," says Zanni.
The Acronis Backup Cloud module is available now in the Comodo One AppStore, which can be accessed after you register for Comodo One. I have signed up for Comodo One and I'll let you know what I think of it when I've had an opportunity to work with it for a while.
Gender is a social construct. Sex is a physical attribute. I suspect that what GoDaddy released was actually salary data distributed by sex. Of course, nobody seems to want to say "sex" and if you state that the salary data has been "broken down by sex", people snicker. So maybe "gender" is the better word (at least if your audience is high school sophomores).
GoDaddy says that the company is attempting to "address gender diversity in the technology industry" and its new report delivers on a commitment made at this past summer's White House Demo Day.
Over the summer, GoDaddy conducted an audit of internal salary data, which analyzed like-for-like roles and compared how men and women were placed in the salary band for comparable roles. GoDaddy sets its salary bands by role and level based on industry-standard data, and says that it generally takes a "market-leading position, which puts GoDaddy's median salary generally higher than those in the industry."
GoDaddy says that for every dollar a man makes throughout the company, a woman is paid roughly one cent more. That seems to be a mis-statement, though, because the report then shows that women at GoDaddy make approximately 1% less than their male counterparts. Still, that's impressive given the much larger disparity at many companies in many industries.
Additional analysis revealed an absence of women in more senior individual contributor technical roles. The company specifically analyzed software development engineers and software development test engineers, finding that in both categories the population of women decreases as the seniority level increases.
GoDaddy is also releasing its overall diversity statistics, and now reports women represent 20% of its technical workforce and 25% of the company overall. It has increased its women in management roles to 25%. And a number reported over this past summer shows GoDaddy has increased its female interns and new college graduate hires from 14% to 39%, year-over-year, in both categories.
