web 2.0 standards

**behzad** · 29 April 2009, 08:10 PM

Hi,

I am very excited about this program, however after showing the source code, (view-page source) from the example site done by xara, to a few of my web designer friends, they said that the code is not 2.0 standard and for anyone to work with this code to extend features and add new stuff with dreamweaver or similar web authoring programs they are better off to restart the whole site from scratch.

Is this true, I was not very happy with their input.

**Soquili** · 29 April 2009, 08:23 PM

Hi Behzad,

It would be a mistake to use Dreamweaver or other program to edit a Web Designer created web site. It is best to use Web Designer to edit it.

It may help you to know that some people have had to recreate websites created with Dreamweaver and other web development applications by using Notepad.

**akubbeng** · 29 April 2009, 09:42 PM

Hi Behzad,

you (and others) may find this thread regarding Web Designer's code of interest.

**behzad** · 29 April 2009, 10:25 PM

Thank you so much. I was just wanting to know since I can do all the design work and later outsource it to a web programmer to install additional features. That was the main reason why I posted this thread.
I know that anything that xara engineers produce is top quality.

**Ross Macintosh** · 29 April 2009, 10:44 PM

Albert that thread was interesting and made some good points but it could mislead a new user just checking out Xara-WD.

I say that because subsequent to that thread John (Covoxer) has shown how Xara-WD designs can have dynamic characteristics using 'tweaks' he has provided. They are powerful examples of the extendability built into the program. At the time that thread was written few if any of us recognized how powerful the 'placeholder' feature could be. If they stuck around long enough to discover it, that capability might addresses the concerns of many who rejected Xara-WD because they felt adding javascript functionality would be too difficult given their perception of 'messy code'. The reality that John's tweaks highlight is -- the program is incredibly powerful in the hands of someone who knows javascripting, and all without going into the HTML and trying to edit it.

The even better reality is the placeholder approach, combined with the object-oriented approach, allows those of us with no javascripting skills to benefit from 'tweaks' created by others that do -- allowing us to simply drag in new functionalities.

Regards, Ross

**akubbeng** · 30 April 2009, 12:32 AM

Thanks for adding that, Ross.

By the way, the April edition of Xara's newsletter (The Outsider) contains a great tutorial about the placeholder functionality: "Inserting widgets in Xara Web Designer".

I'm still amazed about how the program allows you to combine total design freedom with powerful functionality without having to write a single line of code. I'm really interested in what future versions will bring us.

**netsi** · 30 April 2009, 04:50 AM

"Nothing is perfect", not even Xara Web Designer

The placeholder build into XWD allows you to tweak the webpages which are generated from the application. The things which I would like to see is a soloution which will combine the "name" of an object with the HTML attribute "id" or "className". Then the person who will be responsible of the HTML/javascript in the placeholder will be able to know how to locate the autogenerated objects in the DOM tree.

As far as I can see it should be possibel to make some formular which would do the task of converting XWD object names into IDs or classNames.

Grouped objects would also be possibel to handle in this way. HTML allows for multiple classnames on a objects, so if you have a group named "textAndCircle" the text lines inside of the group could look like this:
<div id="xr_xo0" class="xr_ap group_textAndCircle text1" style="left: 0; top: 0; width: 839px; height: 100px; visibility: hidden;">

The example is a combination of actual XWD generated HTML code and my suggestions. In the class tag (the className) I have added "group_textAndCircle" which informs that this line (div) is part of a group "textAndCircle".

The "text1" in the class attribute informs that this is a text object, and that it is the 1st line.

Such information would allow a frontend developer writing HTML/javascript to locate the objects in the HTML DOM tree. You could then for instance add DHTML features like fade in or animation...

**zaphodeist** · 30 April 2009, 05:30 AM

*EDIT* Sorry - didn't read post properly

**covoxer** · 30 April 2009, 05:54 AM

Sten, if you set a name to an object in the WD, it is exported as an ID attribute. Try it.
There's no way to set class names though.
Also, in your example code you had added class property to the mouseove layer container. You wouldn't be able to do it in WD since it is not an object anyway.

**netsi** · 30 April 2009, 06:16 PM

Oh yes, I see... That is a good start. Rules of how the HTML are generated are nice to know if you should be able to create javascript/DHTML which interacts with the autogenerated HTML.

It seems that you have a very in-depth understanding of these rules. Could you possible write about them in a sticky thread? That would be very nice!