XARA WEB DESIGNER PREVIEW

Xara Web Designer is not really new. If you think about it, the technology has been around for years. Only just not in

one program. Designers used Xara Xtreme to create their website graphics and to edit photos. And with Xara Xtreme

4.0, and a little bit of effort, it is possible to create a pretty awesome website including rollovers, pop-ups, and

Flash animations. Xara Webstyle provides the ability to create banners and buttons and other web graphics. The

problem is that Webstyle graphics can’t be used in Xtreme, and have to be added to Microsoft Front Page or Adobe

Dreamweaver. And to get your Xtreme website from the page to the web requires an additional FTP application. But

all in all, with a little work, Xara users have been able create a well designed, functioning website.

Now Xara Web Designer puts all this technology together in one easy to use application that most of Xara Xtreme

users will be familiar with and one that new users will be able to get up to speed quickly. Design-challenged users

will find a wealth of pre-designed templates that can easily be customized, just like in Webstyle. But now you can

add content and publish your website all in one place. It’s really quite amazing.

At first glance the Xara Web Designer window looks just like Xara Xtreme. But on closer inspection, there are a lot of

new features. And there are also some old features missing. Xara Web Designer has been streamlined to include only

the features you really need. And now, designers can create and publish a complete and complex website, all within

one program. Including all site graphics and photos. Best of all, you just put your graphics where you want them and

Xara Web Designer does all the coding. With one or two exceptions, adding an e-mail address for example, you don’t

need to know anything about HTML scripting. Xtreme does it all for you and with a speed and precision of no other

program.

Old Xtreme users (ones who have used Xara for some time and not just the elderly users), will have to get used to

some options that are no longer available. Left and right clicking on a screen palette color to change the outline and

fill color without a pop up menu selection for one. On the other hand you can still drag and drop screen palette

colors onto an object or its outline, even onto gradient fills. Hence, where there’s a will, there’s a way. This

simplification makes it easier for new users who are not familiar with Xara Xtreme to learn the program easily.

But there are many new features that will please old users. If you double click on any text with

the Selector Tool, it automatically switches to the Text Tool. And here’s a new feature that should

please a lot of users, the little red ABC icon is the new spell check feature. But wait, there’s

more! You can spell check in Dutch, English (US and UK), German (Swiss, Austrian and German),

Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.

In the Font drop down menu, the web safe fonts are at the top of the list so you can easily select Arial, Verdana,

Georgia, Tahoma or any other web safe font quickly. If you use a non web safe font in your design, a warning appears

when you preview your site that informs you that certain fonts may not appear on many visitors computers and may

be displayed as Arial or Times Roman instead. (You can always group this text with another object in this case).

Double click on any bitmap and the Photo Tool Infobar is enabled. You can edit your photos, even remove red eye,

without Visine, all in Xara Web Designer. Double click on any editable shape or path, and you get the Shape Editor

Tool. Double click on an ellipse and get the Ellipse Tool. Forget about keyboard shortcuts. Just double click!

There are other time saving features which I shall attempt to cover on the following pages. But there is one

that I find really cool, and that is this. When you reach the bottom of the page and you need more space,

just switch to the Selector Tool and position it at the bottom of the page border. The cursor changes to the

line and double arrow. Just drag the bottom of the page. The page automatically extends as much or as