In this month's edition of the Outsider:
  • It's the time of year for giving, and as always we have a great Xmas Offer. There's no less than 25% off our products over the holiday period, starting today. But get your orders in before January 2nd, otherwise there's another 12 months to wait!
  • Congratulations to the winner of our latest quarterly contest, Srdjan Markovic. Thanks to everyone who entered and everyone who voted - we hope you're lining up to do the same again. You can find details of our latest Christmas themed contest below. Maybe this months' seasonal Flash tutorial will inspire some entries - animations are welcome.
  • And finally a very happy Christmas and New Year from everyone at Xara to all of our customers.

Some inspirational seasonal illustrations from some of the best Xara artists - Bob Hahn, Paul Söderholm and Gary Priester.

Find out more


The quarterly contest continues on the theme of 'Christmas'. You have until 15th February 09 to submit your entries. The prize remains Outsider Glory, $100 of Xara or Magix software of your choice or a $100 credit to your Xara account.

Follow this link to a selection of great iStockphoto drawings like the ones above to maybe start your own creative path. iStockphoto Ideas.

Find out more and enter competition
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Visit the Xara graphics forums to discuss or find answers to your graphics needs. Our pick of Top Talk this month:
Parahandy
Sadly we have to report the recent death of Norman Spencer aka Parahandy, the most popular and prolific of TalkGraphics contributors. Next month we will feature a selection of his works as our Inspirational Artist, which gives us just one more month to check through more than 3000 posts, every image a favorite of someone! We can't show them all, but we hope to do justice to a versatile, talented and humorous artist who will be sorely missed by all TalkGraphics regulars.


Food Competition Winner
The popular vote was quite close this time but top honors go to the Hot Chillies. Congratulations to Srdjan Markovic and to the other worthy shortlisted finalists, and a big thank you to everyone who entered the contest.


Localised Xara software
Both Xara and MAGIX have recently released Xara software (Xtreme, Xtreme Pro and Xara3D) in a range of European languages. We've created a new page to list them all - German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch.

Find our more.

Don't forget we also now have German, French and Spanish sites:
xara.com/de
xara.com/fr
xara.com/es


MicroMart
Reviewing Xtreme and Xtreme Pro 4:

"It's much faster than the familiar heavyweights in this category, and has some really impressive new features."

Designer Today
"I highly suggest you give it a shot and see for yourself why Xara Xtreme Pro 4 is very impressive software."



Breaking Lines
You can break a line at any point by clicking on it using the shape editor tool to insert a new point, then using the 'break at point' button on the InfoBar..

Control Bar Buttons
You can move, copy or delete any button on the top bars, or the main tool bar. Press Alt+drag the button to move. Ctrl+Alt+drag to copy a button from one bar into a another. Alt+Drag off the bar to remove a button. You can find a palette of all available buttons to copy in Window -> Control Bars and select the Button Palette.



Given the choice, would it be iPhone or BlackBerry?


Creating an icon
A classic 4 minute movie from Anders Holm.