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.
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Gary Priester

Moderator Person

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