Web Designer 10 Released

[katemoir]

We have just released v10 of Web Designer and Web Designer Premium. You can find details on our site @ http://www.xara.com/web-designer/whats-new/ but here’s a brief overview of the main enhancements:

• A responsive web design feature. Create variants for different devices, exported as a single HTML file, the best variant for each device is automatically displayed (for those of you interested in the technology, it uses CSS media queries to determine which variant to display). It’s a genuinely WYSIWYG solution that gives you control over how your site will appear on any device – and of course there’s no coding required. You can see an example @ http://xaragroup.magix.net/vue2/
• Supersites. A new way to create eye-catching mini-sites, either single page scrolling sites or with transition effects. The best way to explain this is to point you to a few examples: here's a Supersite with transitions http://xaragroup.magix.net/menu1/ (also responsive), here's the same design as a scrolling Supersite http://xaragroup.magix.net/menu3, here's another with transitions http://xaragroup.magix.net/islands1/ (big photo warning on this one)
• New & fast flicker free page transition effects for presentations and Supersites
• 10 new web themes, plus new photo slider and social media widgets
• Smart Shapes, a new & easy way to create some of the most commonly required drawn shapes
• An Online Content Catalog for better browsing of themes, widgets, Smart Shapes, graphic templates etc
• A Scale to Fit option, very handy for presentations (there are some other presentation enhancements too) and in some cases Supersites

In addition to the information on our website, you can find detailed info in our release notes @ http://www.xara.com/webdesigner/notes (a scrolling Supersite) and of course don’t miss Gary Priester’s First Look on the Xara Xone @ http://xaraxone.magix.net/xwd10/ (responsive SuperSite). Have fun!

[mwenz]

Kate, just had a look at the samples on my Android phone. Way cool on the responsive part and on the transitions.

Well done. Mike

[Merlin_AZ]

Quick question.
If you import a WD9 website into V. 10, can you create different sized variants without having to rebuild it from scratch in V. 10?

[zaphodeist]

Yes, I did a quick & dirty test. There is obviously a bit of shifting about of objects to do but it's so much easier and quicker than doing a redirect and creating the variants from scratch on different urls

[TXAlba]

first thought......... not quite good enough, almost but not.
Does not rival Adobe Muse or WordPress, not even close, but for the upgrade price who can afford not to.

And so I will upgrade and in doing so continue to be a Xara product user, simply because.... i have a few designs now, working on two more at the moment and find XWD9P very good at what it does, particlularly as i come from a CorelDraw background and am not a code geek (yet). X for me does not have the WOW factor that makes me jump up and down going, yeah Yeah YEAH, gimme, Gimme, GIMME..... unfortunatley. Its more a - may as well upgrade type of Microsoft Office type of thing, feeling more like a chore than something to look forward to. Already, even before upgrading I am hoping that in the Next upgrade Xara brings us includes an integrated CMS option.

I would have also hoped for a lot more (R) templates included, a Lot LOT MORE, im sure there will be an add on option later. Responsive Design - should it be that hard, take that much more time to create sites? I'm not so sure the client wants it that much that it will cost them 2 or 3 times more! They do though want to update their own sites, theres that CMS sad face again.

Already worried about the resource of memory and site uploading errors......... so i do hope this has been thoroughly tested to prevent recent issues experienced by many in XWD9P

Supersites are interesting, a nice new feature.

Get the feeling this upgrade is more to meet upgrade deadline dates than to meet the demands of the website designer.

Let's Sum Up! There is a lot to like in Web Designer 10.............. Part 2 will be even better.

I hope it grows on me as well as with me.

[gwpriester]

Since it was listed last in Kate post, I'll post a link to my First Look here http://xaraxone.magix.net/xwd10/

Basically it boils down to this. As nice as it might be to to have one site work in all sizes, they don't. And then there's the question of bandwidth. All of those photos and slide shows and YouTube videos and other stuff can be really slow to load, even on a fast mobile network. Buttons that look great on a full size browser are impossible to see on a smart phone.

So the approach Xara has taken makes a lot of sense!

Xara does not build the variant site for you. It resizes the page to a good mobile site size, or you can create your own, it puts all the content from your full size site onto the page and then you resize and edit the material to make it work best on a small screen.

Does this take a lot of extra work? Yes. Is it worth it? Absolutely, if you are really serious about creating the best site for each device.

If you look at my review on a tablet, you get the best of both. In portrait, you see the mobile variant, if you rotate the site to landscape, you get the full size browser version.

I'm really excited about WD10 Premium.

[Boy]

Does not rival Adobe Muse

To me the upgrade seems quite impressive and makes Web Designer an even more powerful program. I don't really know Muse and I would like to know in what areas Web Designer does not rival it, so could you expand on that?

[Big Frank]

don’t miss Gary Priester’s First Look on the Xara Xone @ http://xaraxone.magix.net/xwd10/ (responsive SuperSite)

excellent review gary
enjoyed reading it
yes, i know, better later than never

ps, the attached image capture intentional? thats how it displays for me in ff29
pps, not that it matters, whats the difference between www.xaraxone.com and xaraxone.magix.net

[letsgofishing]

It would have been really great if Xara could have integrated a blog into WD10 - IMO, this is something that has long been missing...

[Big Frank]

step one : double-click the installation file

step two : abandon the installation