Hello everyone!

I have read many threads that bash XWD and now Xara Xtreme 5. Many problems involve creating NavBars and SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Personally, I consider myself a Semi-Professional Xara Xtreme Designer because I have used this software for designing stickers, t-shirts, and tons of graphics for web use. When Xara Web Designer came out, I immediately bought a copy and I loved it. There were drawbacks, i.e. SEO and NavBar creation, but with the help of this forum I have been able to overcome most of these troubles.

I used to hand code my site in Dreamweaver (not using any of the WYSWYG features other than an instant preview). It seemed to always be different than what came out in the browser and this caused me many frustrating hours of learning code and tinkering to make my site work and look like I wanted it. I always made sacrifices in the final product because of this.

Now, XWD has freed me from the tedious coding part (mostly). I am using many techniques to help make my site Search Engine Friendly, but I must have faith in Google, Yahoo, etc. to properly recognize the content. I try, but if it isn't perfect, the ease of whipping up a page that almost validates outweighs the drawbacks of XWD.

I do worry about the future of my site sometimes though. Like what if I want to switch back to editing in code, or what if I need to make a tweak or SEO modification that requires coding. I also worry that I have taken a step forward that cannot be undone (my site has dozens of pages). Xara could make it easier to handle dozens or even hundreds of pages (single page export?), but I will just use several .web (or .xar files now) to create my site.

Also, on the topic of validation, before I even used Xara Web Designer, I checked their demo site at http://browsershots.org/ to see how the site looks in nearly every browser out there. I was truly amazed! The site looked great in every browser that my current site did. Even though Xara uses a different protocol (XHTML Transitional) than I did (XHTML Strict), it still looked great and worked in every current browser.

So, I now use Xara exclusively to both design my graphics (as I always did before), and now I can simply push a button and my site is exported exactly as I see it on the screen! Awesome! I don't have to export graphic files and then try to code them into the site. I just design it and it's done! Now I can focus on the site and content instead of the code.

I use XWD, and now XX5 Pro, because it delivers exactly what it promises. A way to focus on what matters instead of days of head-scratching coding nightmares.

Thank You Xara and Talkgraphics.com!

So why do YOU use Xara Web Designer (or Xara Xtreme 5) to create your website?