I have many questions????

[snoodlenoodle1]

Hi there, I have been a Dreamweaver user for quite a while now but to this day I still find it daunting and extremely painful trying to position item and div boxes on the screen. I recently came accross Xara xtreme and was quite blown away by some of it's features. Even so I do have some very important question that I would like answered before I abandon Dreamweaver altogether.

Q1: I would like to know if the final exported pages can be converted to a CMS system? I use a piece of software called Cube Scripts which takes normal .html pages and converts them to php script via the software. Can I convert Xara pages and still maintain the layout and all of the graphics??

Q2: I would also like to know if it is possible to export my pages into dreamweaver so I am able to add on an e-commerce or shopping cart system or can this be done directly from Xara Xtreme?

Q3: Also am I able to drag and drop .swf or any other movie files into Xara software?

Q4: Does Xara Xtreme have 'swap image' capability?

I hope that someone is able to shed some light on the above questions and any help would be greatly appreciated...thank you..

Louie

[Gare]

Hi snoodledoodle1—

This post might get a more detailed answer in the general Xara Xtreme forum(s) and not in this forum about the Official Guide book.

Nevertheless, I think I can answer some of your questions:

The website building capabilities in Xara Xtreme 5 are somewhat designed to be a closed system. It's difficult to migrate or inject a Xara Xtreme HTML page into a Content Management System. The web features are completely unlike Adobe Dreamweaver: you compose pages live in the workspace exactly as you'd compose a physical scrapbook, by shuffling elements around. The benefit is that there is almost no HTML the user has to see or deal with, the downside is that Xara-generated HTML "doesn't play fair" when you try to use or edit it with other applications. It's W3 compliant code; it's just that in order to do some of the astounding visual things you can do, some of the rules of proper and succinct HTML the community encourages need to be bent, but not broke, such as Xara's implementation of <div>s.

The features are intended to enable just about anyone to design multi-page sites, with internal and external links, to make rollovers in 3 seconds, to make Flash animations and embed them, to create editable text that flows around objects and images, and so on. The website looks in every way like a professional commercial website, but the features are intended to make small, personal, non-dynamic websites.

The good news is that Xara Xtreme can do 99% of what Adobe Flash+Adobe Fireworks can do at a fraction of the comparable softwares' cost.

Does this help?

My Best,

Gary

[pauland]

The good news is that Xara Xtreme can do 99% of what Adobe Flash+Adobe Fireworks can do

A large part of Adobes Flash product is concerned with sophisticated animation, scripting and software development. While Xtreme offers animation support and talkgraphics people have done some amazing things with it, it is not at the same level as the Flash product and Xtreme has no scripting or programming capability at all. As Gare says, the Xtreme product is far cheaper than the Adobe offerings and is able to do virtually all the design-oriented tasks that the Adobe products support. Gare didn't mention Dreamweaver, but Xtremes capabilities cross into that area as well (though not as an HTML editor). In reality, Xtreme does all of what most people want to do, but not all of what some people want to use it for - just like most software.

Xtreme is absolutely brilliant at doing most things, but unable to do a few things at all. I would suggest playing with the trial and see how you get on.

[dogbertbh]

Hi Louie,

Here's what I know.

Q1: Exported pages converted to a CMS system?
Once you export Xara HTML for any reason - if you wanted to make a change you would need to go back to Xara and make your edits, then re-export. Or you'd be abandoning Xara because you can't edit the code.

Q2: Export my pages into dreamweaver?
See #Q1. If you export to DW and make changes, the changes won't be there if you go back to Xara

Q3: Drag and drop .swf or any other movie files into Xara software?
Although there is no drag and drop, you can easily create a placeholder pointing to a flash file. I did that HERE. http://brodyharris.com/pix.htm

Q4: Does Xara Xtreme have 'swap image' capability?
I'm not totally sure what this means. You CAN easily swap images within Xara....
I'd need some example of what it is you want to do.

[steve.ledger]

Hi snoodledoodle1—

This post might get a more detailed answer in the general Xara Xtreme forum(s) and not in this forum about the Official Guide book.

Agreed.. Thread moved

[snoodlenoodle1]

Thanks for all your help guys, I will give the trial version a go and see how I go...It is a shame that you can't edit the html pages in dreamweaver and still retain the xara content. If Xara figure that one out it trully would be an amazing software...Anyway thanks to all of you again...

cheers,
Louie

[steve.ledger]

Or if Adobe figure out how to correctly read Xara's compliant output

[Soquili]

Programs like dreamweaver and frontpage must incorporate many compromises to offer their feature set.

Often using either program to edit some very carefully hand coded pages causes total destruction of how the elements are layed out.

The code created by Xtreme and Web Designer provides true WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get).

The same is not true with dreamweaver.

[steve.ledger]

Note: Kelly's post re video tutorials has been moved here
http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthre...855#post340855

[pauland]

Programs like dreamweaver and frontpage must incorporate many compromises to offer their feature set

Actually the situation is the other way around.

Dreamweaver supports just about any use of HTML - it is a HTML program with a design/layout view. I would agree that it is not WYSIWYG.

It is the most flexible program, but it is not the most straightforward to use. If anything the compromise is flexibility versus WYSIWYG.

Xtreme offers usability and WYSIWYG at the expense of HTML flexibility. While Xtreme is great to use, it uses a particular subset of HTML and consequently in HTML terms has limitations - which is why it's useless for things like HTML email flyers and the like and is the reason why fluid layouts and HTML standard usage such as Hx headers are verbodden.

I'm not knocking Xtreme - it's great, but it's at a price in terms of HTML flexibility (which is fair enough, since it isn't a HTML editor).