Just Launched - Xara Web Designer 11

[Egg Bramhill]

@ David: This thread is becoming fairly scattered in it's content. Anyway, glad to hear you've sorted out your issues with iPage, though a web host that boasts "GREEN! Powered by 100% wind energy" would have me worried on windless days

[xtom]

Certainly for most people Xara is much quicker, both hobbyists and professionals. You can design from scratch, preview as you work and have a finished webpage in xara much faster than handcoding. It's also a lot more enjoyable than hand coding all the html/css.

[KarenC]

Well I think this version is SWEEEET! Great jobs guys! I'll definitely be upgrading to this version!

(Sorry I didn't read thru this entire thread) -

Questions:

1. since you've incorporated the stretchy background, do you still have to create individual "templates" for each size mobile device or just one design and it will fit to that mobile device?


2. if I purchase the WD11 upgrade from my current WD10 premium, will that deactivate my WD10 (I'm in the middle of building a huge site right now in WD10)? Can I install WD11 on another computer to make migration from WD10 goes smoothly first (and also learn)? I can not afford to break anything on my project.

Karen

[gwpriester]

I did not intend this topic for a lot of bickering. OK? I wanted to hear what people like and don't like about Web Designer 11.

If anyone wants to argue the merits of hand coding vs WYSIWYG web design then please start a new thread in the Off Topic Chat. Thanks.

[gwpriester]

KarenC - Yes you still should create a mobile variant for your site. Mobile sites but nature of the devices used, specifically smart phones and smaller tablets, should be simpler with larger type and less images. I can view complex websites on my smart phone if I am using WiFi or getting a very strong signal, but if I am not getting a strong signal, then if a site is taking too long to load I am off to the next site.

You can have as many older versions on your computer as you like. And I may be wrong about some older versions but I believe you can have two versions opened at the same time to copy and paste from one to the other if you like.

[karmacomposer]

Looks great - as a owner of both Xara Web Design Premium and Designer Pro X10, I don't want to waste $45 on upgrading Web Design Premium when I JUST bought Designer Pro X10 a few weeks ago.

When do you think Designer Pro X11 will come out? I need the sticky objects, stretch objects/pictures and the new animation capabilities of Web Design Premium 11 and hope they come out very, very soon for Designer Pro X11 - anyone know an ETA?

Mike

[dutchim]

I believe Designer Pro 10 came out in the beginning of July of last year.

That might be an indication as to when to expect 11.

[karmacomposer]

BTW, I am a pro designer and programmer of websites for commercial clients and I use a wide variety of software depending on the job at hand.

However, now with the new responsive requirements from various search engines, Xara Design Pro X10 (and hopefully soon X11) has the most robust feature set for responsive design than any other software I own, Mac or PC. I also love the way X10 deals with breakpoints - much easier than many of my other software for doing this. Lastly, from a designer perspective, none of my other software can really do this with any sense of predictability. Designer Pro X10 is like using photoshop and coreldraw to create really good looking responsive websites.

Where it falls down is in forms (I refuse to use a form service/software when a simple form or a form with database connectivity is needed) - whatever is easier for the client - and believe me, they need easy.

I tend to use my other software to create the forms and then bring them into Xara as a HTML placeholder object. Not sure it's responsive, but so far, so good. I just make sure not to define any definite cell or table widths - I just set them as percentages and all is good, responsively.

I wish Xara Design Pro 10 had a few other features my other software has, such as newsletter capability (with subscriber user/group back end), closed-source blogs, podcasts, better social media integration and share links, better calendar with back end event handling, complete MySQL database handling and true form creation capability, but it contains 95% of what I need and the responsive features make it a must-have piece of software right now.

Right now i'll use the three main software packages I use either separately as needed or in tandem to make Xara-created sites more full-featured, but I truly hope in the future, some or all of what I need is included in Xara so I can use one software for all. From a design and responsiveness perspective, Xara Designer Pro X10 is a must-have.

Mike

[stevegill]

I did not intend this topic for a lot of bickering. OK? I wanted to hear what people like and don't like about Web Designer 11.

If anyone wants to argue the merits of hand coding vs WYSIWYG web design then please start a new thread in the Off Topic Chat. Thanks.

These arguments about hand coding is more professional reminds me of people arguing that you're not a professional programmer unless you code in Assembler. My first language was Assembler and I coded for years in it, but I can tell you I much prefer higher level languages now. Likewise I hand coded HTML and CSS long before I came across XWD. I know which I prefer now. To me, it's all about efficiency. And I have been a professional programmer for 30 years.

= Steve

[Egg Bramhill]

I've found that PDF import is much improved in WD11. I firstly imported the same pdf into a XD10 web page, and whilst it looked good within Xara it looked like a dogs dinner in web preview, with all the text misaligned. The same file imported into WD11 rendered correctly on web preview.

A good improvement. Well done!