Xara Web Designer

What Is Xara Web Designer Used For?

Xara Web Designer is a one-tool solution that guarantees high-quality graphic-rich results. It’s easy to use and navigate and does not require HTML skills since you won’t really see codes anywhere. Instead, it comes with drag-and-drop capabilities, an array of templates, and other web page customization tools. It lets you add widgets, videos, music, PDFs, and more.

This template-based solution comes in 2 versions, the Web Designer and the Web Designer Premium. Both versions allow total page design freedom and offer the following key features:

  • Ease of Navigation and Use
  • Design Freedom
  • High-Quality Outputs
  • Xara in the Cloud
  • Various site additions
  • Self-Service Support

 

The Xara Web Designer Premium comes with these extra bits of web design goodies:

  • Animation Effects
  • Stretching Backgrounds
  • Extra Widgets
  • Sticky Objects
  • Website Presentations
  • Flash and GIF Animation
  • Other Advanced Graphic Features and more

 

What Does Xara Web Designer Do? 

Xara Web Designer has amazing design tools rolled into one template-based design solution. It can effectively accommodate an amazing blend of creativity and functionality. This one tool solution allows you a free hand at creating websites.

  • Page Design

You can choose a page design from the available templates in the Online Content Catalog which is part of the Update Service. The templates are created by professional designers and are pre-built and ready to link with multi-page sites. Of course, you can also opt to build from scratch using any of the page layouts that come in coordinated theme sets.

Templates also support individual graphics that can be exported in the standard web formats (GIF, JPEG, PNG) then used on existing websites or added to pages created in Web Designer. Web Designer supports transparency (including grad transparency), full, automatic alpha channel support (like soft shadows, anti-aliasing, semi-transparent objects), and automatic conversion to optimized web graphics (like rotated text or elements not supported by HTML).

Moreover, Xara Web Designer supports responsive web design where users can create multiple variants of a site which are exported as a single HTML file. This means that your site will dynamically change layout depending on the viewers’ screen size. If you get Web Designer Premium, you can even scale the site to fit the browser width within variants.

  • Page Customization

You can customize all you want with Xara Web Designer without compromising the quality of your output. Conveniently customize your web pages utilizing the drag and drop capabilities. You can add any elements from the templates in the Online Content Catalog, import your own, or even create new images with the drawing tools. Easily enter text (spell checker included) and customize color with the simple one-click theme color editing. You can even easily add mouseover effects, thumbnails, and more.

Xara Web Designer also allows you to drag and drop MP4 or FLV movie files, MP3 audio files, or PDFs onto your web page. In addition, it will do all the work to display and play your files. The integrated audio and video players will use HTML 5 capabilities of the web browser if supported, otherwise, it falls back to Flash.

Add widgets like Google Maps, Facebook Like and Twitter buttons, Flickr slideshows, YouTube Movies, forms, and more. You can even directly choose the widget from the Online Content Catalog.

  • Publish

Once satisfied with your design, you can check it out in the browser preview. If all is well, simply click Publish. You’ll need to enter your regular FTP upload details or take advantage of the one-year free ‘M Hosting” from Xara Online with 22 Gb of webspace (for Web Designer Premium).

This extensive tool also provides Search Engine Optimization assistance by supporting the easy addition of essential descriptions and keywords by site or by page. For the Premium version, you can add HTML to the head field, automatically create XML sitemaps, and even embed the Google Analytics web analysis tool.

 

Xara Web Designer Pricing

Xara Web Designer can be taken for a test drive for seven days. Although you’ll only be able to access a limited selection of templates, it’s still a great way to have a clearer idea of how this design tool works. This could also help you decide whether it’s the right tool for you.

Go to the Xara official website to purchase their full-packed design solution.

  • $49.99 – Web Designer 365 (Single License)
  • $99.99 – Web Designer 365 Premium

 

Our Findings

Xara Web Designer is indeed a full-packed web design tool. It allows web designers to create responsive web pages that reflect a brand’s or company’s identity. While it does have some snags, this web design tool review has found Xara Web Designer to be an overall amazing addition to your web design arsenal. Here are some key points that will help you make a well-informed decision about Xara Web Designer.

  • Created sites are W3C compliant with multi-browser compatibility.
  • Only works on Windows computers.
  • It does not allow directly working with HTML ( a good or bad point depending on the web designer’s preference).
  • Offers a wide array of professionally designed templates.
  • Supports easy and extensive page customization allowing complete design freedom.
  • Easy navigation and use.
  • Provides helpful articles, documentations and, materials on their website.

 

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