Xara has put a lot of work into enabling its users to create simple Flash files, Nav Bars and now entire web sites. If however you want to incorporate Flash elements into your newly created site, it’s necessary to write some code or use a separate html editor in order to do so.
In order to get the correct spacing on the page, I used a rectangle in Xara to represent where I wanted a flash banner to be and then I asked a web designer colleague to show me how to replace that .png with a Flash animation. Whilst it is do-able, for a non-coder like me replacing a .png with a .swf is really not that straightforward. Applying its intuitively flexible workflow to Flash enabled Xara users quickly to get good results without the career changing decision to learn vastly more complex programmes.
I wonder if Xara couldn’t partially automate the processes of combining and exporting Flash and HTML? Could Xara not somehow ‘tag’ some elements on the page as Flash elements? Then when exporting the page as html, it could write the necessary code to embed and correctly position them. It would then just be a case of exporting the Flash files of the same dimensions from a separate animation into the correct folder.
This is probably vastly more complex to implement that could ever know. I’d probably get a better insight if I just went off and learned a bit more html. But then if that was my bag I wouldn’t love Xara for all the reasons I do.
It’s good to see Xara steadily making improvements. Lots of easy to use useful things for the hobbyist. Improving things under the bonnet for the more demanding users. The easy workflow and flexible functionality in Xara suits me down to the ground. The improvements in .pdf import and the much anticipated repel-text function in my opinion make this upgrade a must.
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