Xara WebStyle 2 Just Released

[gwpriester]

I received this press release this morning and thought I would pass it along. WebStyle is a cool product (of course, it's from Xara) that creates a variety of elements for web pages using pre-designed elements which you can modify ten ways to Sunday and back again.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR> A major upgrade to Xara's template-based web graphic creation software means that anyone can now create professional-quality custom graphics in seconds. No skill required!

London, England – August 21st 2001 - XARA announces the launch of a new and significantly enhanced version of Xara Webstyle.

Xara Webstyle 2 can be used to create top quality, fully customized web graphics. And there's no design skill or software expertise required.

Webstyle is template based - the user simply selects the type of graphic required from the hundreds of Webstyle graphic templates. The templates are designed by professional artists, which ensures the design and artistic quality of the original.

The real secret to getting the best on-screen quality is that the graphics are created from vector files and rendered using Xara's 2D and 3D vector rendering engines. All the individual elements of a graphic can be fully customized - including the text, size, color, font - with the quality remaining pixel perfect. This contrasts with the normal bitmap clipart collections where you can't change the color or wording or indeed even re-size without the image being distorted (which accounts for many of worst graphic offenses on the web!).

Webstyle uniquely solves the problem faced by practically every web site owner in the world; how to create professional looking original web graphics if you don't have the artistic ability or design skills!

Webstyle can produce eight classes of graphics - mouse-over or 'rollover' navigation bars, animated banner ads, 2D and 3D headings, buttons, backgrounds, bullets, dividers, logos - which can be customized to create an infinite collection of tailored graphics. In addition to hundreds of individual designs the program includes 40 'themed' sets of matching graphics. Advanced features include the automatic 'smart' resizing of buttons and NavBars to fit the new text and one-click addition of states for NavBars (Webstyle automatically creates and exports the necessary HTML and JavaScript).

Xara Webstyle does all this with no knowledge of jargon or graphics skills required. The underlying technology is leading edge - the resultant graphics (GIF, PNG or JPEG) are fully anti-aliased, palette optimized and color reduced - but the user doesn't need to know or understand any of the technology to achieve these professional results.

“We can all recognise good design when we see it, but if we're honest with ourselves very few of us have the real ability needed to produce it�, said Xara marketing director Kate Moir. “Creating good graphics requires an eye for design plus skill, time and patience. Not to mention a good working knowledge of illustration software and the intimidating subject of optimising graphics for the web. Absolutely none of this is necessary with Webstyle, which is why we feel we've created a killer app for web graphics�, she added.

There is now a free trial version available for download from xara.com and a CD will be sent to each purchaser with the complete set of Webstyle templates. Additional template packs will be offered to owners in future. List price of Xara Webstyle 2 is $69.00 (+ VAT in Europe). Win 95/98/2000, Me and NT4.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

<a href="http://home.earthlink.net/~garypriester">
burl me to beehives</a>

[gwpriester]

I received this press release this morning and thought I would pass it along. WebStyle is a cool product (of course, it's from Xara) that creates a variety of elements for web pages using pre-designed elements which you can modify ten ways to Sunday and back again.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR> A major upgrade to Xara's template-based web graphic creation software means that anyone can now create professional-quality custom graphics in seconds. No skill required!

London, England – August 21st 2001 - XARA announces the launch of a new and significantly enhanced version of Xara Webstyle.

Xara Webstyle 2 can be used to create top quality, fully customized web graphics. And there's no design skill or software expertise required.

Webstyle is template based - the user simply selects the type of graphic required from the hundreds of Webstyle graphic templates. The templates are designed by professional artists, which ensures the design and artistic quality of the original.

The real secret to getting the best on-screen quality is that the graphics are created from vector files and rendered using Xara's 2D and 3D vector rendering engines. All the individual elements of a graphic can be fully customized - including the text, size, color, font - with the quality remaining pixel perfect. This contrasts with the normal bitmap clipart collections where you can't change the color or wording or indeed even re-size without the image being distorted (which accounts for many of worst graphic offenses on the web!).

Webstyle uniquely solves the problem faced by practically every web site owner in the world; how to create professional looking original web graphics if you don't have the artistic ability or design skills!

Webstyle can produce eight classes of graphics - mouse-over or 'rollover' navigation bars, animated banner ads, 2D and 3D headings, buttons, backgrounds, bullets, dividers, logos - which can be customized to create an infinite collection of tailored graphics. In addition to hundreds of individual designs the program includes 40 'themed' sets of matching graphics. Advanced features include the automatic 'smart' resizing of buttons and NavBars to fit the new text and one-click addition of states for NavBars (Webstyle automatically creates and exports the necessary HTML and JavaScript).

Xara Webstyle does all this with no knowledge of jargon or graphics skills required. The underlying technology is leading edge - the resultant graphics (GIF, PNG or JPEG) are fully anti-aliased, palette optimized and color reduced - but the user doesn't need to know or understand any of the technology to achieve these professional results.

“We can all recognise good design when we see it, but if we're honest with ourselves very few of us have the real ability needed to produce it�, said Xara marketing director Kate Moir. “Creating good graphics requires an eye for design plus skill, time and patience. Not to mention a good working knowledge of illustration software and the intimidating subject of optimising graphics for the web. Absolutely none of this is necessary with Webstyle, which is why we feel we've created a killer app for web graphics�, she added.

There is now a free trial version available for download from xara.com and a CD will be sent to each purchaser with the complete set of Webstyle templates. Additional template packs will be offered to owners in future. List price of Xara Webstyle 2 is $69.00 (+ VAT in Europe). Win 95/98/2000, Me and NT4.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

<a href="http://home.earthlink.net/~garypriester">
burl me to beehives</a>

[smorg]

PC Pro out of England is offering Webstyler 2.0 on it's cover CD this month. I haven't gotten it yet, so I don't know the good/bad rating of their review (it's not on their website).

However, Issue 77 had a good review of Xara X by Tom Arah:

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/TonyWtkns/pri....php3?id=36261

[Erik Heyninck]

And all this VAT
is making Europe fat.

Shame it is that by asking some aunt Fedora, who lives in the States and who comes to Europe every Fall, to buy a European product for you, it is cheaper than buying it directly.

If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet...
and you're working for no one but me. (G.Harrison)
[img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_frown.gif[/img]

[jens g.r. benthien]

Gary,

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR> A major upgrade to Xara's template-based web graphic creation software means that anyone can now create professional-quality custom graphics in seconds. No skill required! <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Be an instant designer when you wake up tomorrow. No brains needed. No skills required. Beat all the educated, experienced designers, artists, craftsman in this world - just click here and submit your credit card data. We promise instant success, a wealthy, bright future. All 'how to be a millionaire in less than 60 days books' are fly shit compared to this application. You'll be da man.

Sad story, worst PR I've ever seen. And maybe time to leave this forum, because I belong to the skilled elite that doesn't seem to count anymore. Good Lord, I am an OLD FASHIONED designer, I HAVE A BRAIN, EYES and know how. Holy shit. Sorry that I have to apologize for my past.

Bye Xara. You couldn't update the plug-in for browsers, but but dedicated first priority to the development of a nobrainer tool. You sold yourself too cheap, lowering the true value of trained and skilled clientele - your flagship customers!

That's what I've missed the last years, but now I know I've been placing my bet on the wrong horse. This is a nightmare. Worse than a computer virus.

ciao & have fun,

jens (tired of all this European bullshit)

jens g.r. benthien
designer
http://jens.highspeedweb.net

[stlewis]

Come on, it's horses for courses - just as many sneer at Dreamweaver instead of hand-coding every last dot in HTML... If it it gives Xara a good dose of revenue so that they can afford to invest in XaraX and give it the marketshare it deserves, all well and good.

It's the kind of tool your accountant can use to help knock up a small, consistent website, that moves on from red text on yellow, that enables him/her to provide some info to clients. Fine. He/she isn't going to pay me or you a fair rate for 10 days work - so they have to do it themselves.

www.thelondonhouse.co.uk

[eky]

the software is geared toward those who are trying to make their own website to begin with and providing them with pre-designed templates and so I don't think it's competing with designers or graphic artists, nor can it. I think after a while you can distinguish the template websites from the artistically designed ones. I can see how the PR sounds insensitive to designers and graphic artists though.

[gwpriester]

Jay

Not everybody can be as talented as you are. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_rolleyes.gif[/img]

Here's the bottom line.

Xara makes these forums avaiable for free. If they charged a subscription fee, most would not pay it. I have seen this happen on other sites, such as Colorize.com, efuse.com, Unleash.com.

Everybody wants and expects free content. Nobody wants to pay what it is worth.

So, Xara offers products designed to appeal to a range of design experience, from a lot to a little. WebStyle is designed for new users who want to add quality images to their web sites but do not have the time or talent to create these images in Xara or any other graphics applications.

The person who is going to use WebStyle to create graphics for his or her web site it not your competition. But by purchasing WebStyle, they do help to pay the bills and keep this site free.

If something this innocouous offends you, then I really don't know what to tell you.

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

<a href="http://home.earthlink.net/~garypriester">
burl me to beehives</a>

[rgremill]

Gary, did you know XaraWebstyle has a logo maker? For only $69 you can create your own professional looking logos. (For the record, I wasn't really that impressed with the logo section.) That's a far cry from $600 - 1200. Isn't Xara harming the logo designer market with this new product??? (For the record, I don't think so!)

XaraWebstyle seems to be a wizard for Xara. It is definately a useful product for those not interested in learning how to create their own graphics.

[roman]

It's not flexible enough... I saw pages made with webstyle and all I can tell is that it's distingishable on the first look [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

I found one thing very sad about Webstyle. In previous Xara there was a wizard (which was not documented very well though) it was possible to make constrained texts, name objects etc and If you were form XARA Ltd. ;-) or some hacker, you could make your own templates in Xara. Now they disabled this function in XARA X (icon is still there in the icon palette though!!! ;-).

Webstyle could be a great professional tool if it was possible to make your own templates in Xara X.

Roman