Flare v4.2 Review

[Richard Ferrell]

Doc_guy has updated his Blog with a review of Flare 4.2

http://blog.paulpehrson.com/2009/02/02/ ... me-update/



Check it out!

[doc_guy]

Thanks, Rick.

I'd love to see somebody's review who uses Feedback Server.... Get posting propeller heads!

[Robotman]

I noticed that the creation of PDFs was slightly slower (over our network) than 4.1 and the file size is slightly larger too (one project was 2.5 MB in 4.1, went to 2.9MB, the other was 500kb and went to 650kb).

[RamonS]

So you are saying it got worse using 4.2? Maybe it is because Australia is upside down at the bottom of the world?

[doc_guy]

That is interesting.

I have no idea why my times and sizes were so dramatically changed. I am building on a local XP machine with a slower hard drive. I wonder if you have a faster hard drive if the build time is negligible between the versions.

I also think that the reason Flare was able to reduce my file sizes so dramatically is due to the way Flare is now handling images. My page layouts are image-heavy. I have a gradient in my header on all pages. When I tried to use Acrobat to reduce the file size, Acrobat removed the gradient as it was processing the images. It was in the image processing that Acrobat was able to drastically reduce my file sizes (but I was never pleased with how Acrobat handled it.) So that makes me think that Flare is doing something with images differently, and I think that is why I'm getting such a difference in my PDF outputs.

Of course, your mileage may (and apparently does) vary.

[Robotman]

So you are saying it got worse using 4.2?

When you saw worse it sounds like it's horrendously bad - which it isn't. It's just slightly increased times. That said, I've built a couple of others since this morning's post and it seems the build time is comparable (my release notes seem faster), but file size remains hit and miss. Again, nothing dramatic.

I also think that the reason Flare was able to reduce my file sizes so dramatically is due to the way Flare is now handling images.

I think you're correct on this.

As we're moving to PDF, most of my original 'Word with PDF' builds haven't been re-built yet. So a lot of these smaller projects are less graphic intensive.

Maybe it is because Australia is upside down at the bottom of the world?

Doesn't that make us the right way up?

[DocuWil]

I Checked with one of my projects, that roughly needed 1 min 30 secs to create the PDF output with a size of 3.8Mb.
With Flare 4.2 it needed 1 min 10 secs and the created size 2.7Mb.
So this is a rather big progress. It pleases me.

On the other hand there are still bookmarks created below the Index.

Also the layout mode does not reflect the correct page in XML Editor.
See http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/viewto ... =13&t=8147

[Valiant]

I'd love to see somebody's review who uses Feedback Server.... Get posting propeller heads!

We've used Feedback server and it's had an issue with Flare 3.1 that's finally been addressed in Flare 4.2 according to customer support.

Since our company won't upgrade software while the current project is in process, we are stumbling through with Flare 3.1 and Feedback 1.0. I'd love to hear some Flare 2.4/Feedback 2.0 interaction reviews as well.