Magix has released Xara Web Designer 10 Premium, a Web design tool designed for people wanting to launch a high-quality website without the need to know HTML coding - including photographers. "For the first time we have created a simple no-programming system where you can create alternative page arrangements for the same content", says Charles Moir, Xara's founder and Managing Director. "Web Designer 10 Premium does all the clever work to automatically show, and instantly switch (respond) to the changing browser size.” Xara Web Designer 10 Premium retails for £89.99.

Magix Press Release

New Release Xara Web Designer 10 Premium for Creating new ‘Supersites’

Xara announces a new release of Xara Web Designer 10 Premium, a programming-free web design tool. This new release features an innovative new publishing technique called Xara Supersites and also supports Responsive Web Design, a technique to create multiple layout variations of the same website optimised for different devices such as mobile, tablets and desktop computers.

 Supersites

Xara’s single page ‘Supersites’ are an alternative way of publishing a website; instead of just being a separate set of web pages, with the typical  ‘click-wait-load’ way to navigate a website, a ‘supersite’ provides instant navigation between pages, along with slick animated page transitions - all designed to make a website stand-out from the crowd. In addition, users can choose to have all web pages, presented as a single scrolling list of pages, one below the other (ideal for pages to be viewed in a pdf style format), or arranged horizontally, one beside the other, with swipe actions (on touch devices) to navigate from page to page.  The website can be set to ‘fit to screen’ so that it smoothly and automatically resizes to fit any browser window.  

 Responsive Web Design

With the surge in popularity of browsing on mobiles and tablets it is becoming essential to create websites that are tailored to the needs of these visitors. Xara has created a responsive web design solution that allows users to create a single HTML file containing multiple variants of their website at different widths. The website responds dynamically to the screen size of the viewer (using CSS media queries), presenting the design most appropriate to their device. Users have the ability to freely customize the layout of the variants to suit the target device size, eg. desktop, tablet and phone. In line with the Web Designer philosophy, it’s a genuinely WYSIWYG solution, no coding required. 

SmartShapes

Drawing something simple such as an arrow or a speech bubble on a website can be an extremely complex process for even the most skilled of designers. Xara SmartShapes are a new and innovative way to drawing aesthetically attractive shapes on your document, that require no knowledge of any drawing tools, and furthermore, they remain fully customizable. The library of SmartShapes will grow over time, but starts with text panels, speech bubbles, arrows and more.

This release also includes a new online content catalog, new templates and widgets, free 2GB of web hosting for Premium users, presentation creation usability improvements and various other improvements.

Charles Moir, founder and Managing Director of Xara said “We realised that, with the use of the latest HTML5 and CSS3, we could create a new type of website using hardware accelerated animated transitions. Supersites are a great attention-grabbing way of creating a website, while still being compatible with all modern web browsers. 

Creating Responsive Websites is normally a complex time consuming technical process. For the first time we have created a simple no-programming system where you can create alternative page arrangements for the same content. For example one layout can be for phones and another for tablets; even one for portrait and another for landscape arrangements. Web Designer 10 Premium does all the clever work to automatically show, and instantly switch (respond) to the changing browser size.” 

Xara Web Designer is an ideal choice for novices as well as professional designers, in fact anyone wanting a high quality website, without the need to know HTML coding, scripting or the usual technical jargon. The websites produced are compatible with all mobile and desktop browsers. The usual limitations of HTML web authoring simply do not exist in Xara Web Designer. Users have the freedom to use any font, to place anything anywhere on the page with pixel precision, the freedom to automatically repel text around irregular shapes or alpha-channel images and the freedom to draw vector graphics on the page, with transparency.  

 Example Websites:

xaragroup.magix.net/vue2/ - A responsive website (the new Vue theme) with desktop, tablet and mobile variants

xaragroup.magix.net/menu2/ - A print style Supersite, designed for tablets & desktop browsers including landscape and portrait variants

xaragroup.magix.net/menu3/ - A scrolling version of the same Supersite

xaragroup.magix.net/menu1/ - A version of this Supersite with transitions, responsive to browser width (includes a mobile version) and tablet orientation

xaragroup.magix.net/islands1/ - A responsive Supersite with transitions and Scale to Fit

xaragroup.magix.net/WD10releasenotes1/ - The V10 Release Notes as a scrolling Supersite

xaragroup.magix.net/WD10releasenotes2/ - The V10 Release Notes as a Supersite with transitions 

 Xara Web Designer 10 Premium retails for £89.99.

An entry level (reduced feature) version, called simply Web Designer 10, is available for £39.99 which is ideal for customers who are completely new to web design.

Existing Xara Web Designer users can upgrade for as little as £19.99 (Web Designer 10) and £39.99 (Premium version)

 Xara Web Designer10 operates on Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8 and 8.1 and requires a minimum 500MB of RAM and a minimum of 300MB hard-disk space.

Your Comments