Create a 96 x 96 pixel square in XaraX.

Change units temporarily and you can see xara says this is a 1" square. Measure it on your screen, I doubt it will measure 1".

Change back to pixels.

Select the square and export as a jpg at 600 dpi. Xara gives this a dimension in Pixels of 600 x 600.

Import it back into Xara. It will be 96 x 96 pixels or 1" square. If you go to print this it should print out as a 1" square. After all the size on export was set at 600 pixels. The dpi was set at 600 dpi, therefore 600/600 = 1". Obviously you wouldn't normally want such a high resolution for a plain square, but you may if you wanted to print a high end catalogue.
So we agree on something then! http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

Now, can we please get off the subject of Xara and what it does to images when you change the dpi. I accept that you create your images in XaraX and keep them at 96dpi so that the dimentions stay the same, however if Xara allowed you to change the dpi while keeping the dimentions the same, then it would be better to export them at 72dpi.

There is a difference where browsers and the web are concerned - the download speed of the images.

I'm not talking about an image created in Xara at 96dpi and then exported as 72dpi which is smaller height and width wise. I'm talking about two images of the same dimention, one being 72dpi (or ppi to be more accurate) and the other 96dpi. The 72 will load quicker, albeit only slightly.