Web Designer MX (v8) Just Launched

[katemoir]

We have just released V8 of Web Designer. The new V8 versions are called Web Designer MX and Web Designer Premium MX. The full info is on our site @ http://www.xara.com/products/webdesigner/ plus the trial download and release notes. And one other piece of good news, there is the usual ‘First Looks’ intro on the Xara Xone by Gary Priester (in an unfamiliar role as Guest Author). http://www.xaraxone.com/tutorials/xa...um-first-look/

Key new features include:

• Support for Text Styles. A new and powerful way of controlling the global appearance of text. Design your own named styles, and a single edit can update all text throughout your website. Generates CSS compatible styles.

• Automatic object positioning & smart page resizing. Previous versions of Web Designer required some manual repositioning of page elements, such as footers and text panels as you added more text. The new version automates this. So for example as you add more text to a text panel, it grows, pushing down any page elements below this, and enlarging the page. This makes using page templates much easier for all users and more productive.

• Embedded fonts (Premium only). You’re no longer limited to so called ‘web safe’ fonts!

• New Widgets & improvements to Widget handling (most but not all widgets are Premium only). The animated photo and content slideshows are now resizable and provide many of the effects previously requiring Flash, and are compatible with all modern browsers inc iOS. Plus new interactive Chart widgets enable a range of high quality, resizable, charts and graphs to be embedded on your website.

• Graphical bullet & number lists (Premium only). Using Xara's vector graphics capabilities you can now design your own graphics for use in numbered and bulleted lists, with an easy way of adding them to lists. Especially useful for presentations.

• Live Effects Tool and Photoshop Plug-ins (from Designer Pro, Premium only). Photoshop plug-in effects can now be applied to both photos and vector graphics, opening up a huge range of special graphical effects. What’s more we have included more than 40 plug-ins from MAGIX and Xara.

• Enhanced presentations (Premium only). New slide navigation, and dramatic improvements to list handling

• Designs Gallery, new templates and UI improvements. New web themes, new template page elements, new clipart and updates to the existing library to make the most of new MX features.

• Support for inline graphics. Embed inline graphics in your text with a simple Paste operation, great for really small items on the line such as symbols and icons.

• Page & Layer Gallery improvements. A new and easy way to select and manipulate (eg move, delete, cut, copy) multiple pages in your documents at once.

• Import & export. Improved import of text and graphics from the web, plus (Premium only) SVG import and beta import of .pptx and .odp

• A new Share menu, that allows easy photo upload to other MAGIX/Xara MX titles, plus Flickr and Facebook.

And plenty of other miscellaneous improvements to the features, usability and content. You can find more information, details of the upgrade intro offer, period of grace etc on the Xara site. We hope you enjoy the new version!

[JonH27]

Thanks Kate. Text styles! Here's hoping that there might just be a similar feature in Designer Pro 8 (Designer Pro MX?) when that makes an appearance in due course. For me, that might just mean Xara DP could seriously replace InDesign in my workflow, instead of just being a key component...

Jon

[Pixelpusher]

Just bought the Premium version. Had to pay full price because I cannot remember my login info to get to my previous purchases (could have just paid for an upgrade.) Xara doesn't make it very easy to get in contact with them.

[katemoir]

@ Jon, yep, all the WDP features will go into Pro at the next update, so Text Styles are on the way. And Pixelpusher, if you drop our sales guys a note via xara.com/contact, they will be able to put that right for you.

[mwenz]

Hello Kate—text styles in XDP. How wonderful! I am really looking forward to both paragraph and character styles.

Take care, Mike

[riburton]

Does this new version support the .mob file extension

[ssg_7]

And DP8 is scheduled to launch?????

-Steve

[gwpriester]

And DP8 is scheduled to launch?????

If last year's cycle is any indicator, late spring would be my guess.

pressnon3 - You are a software junkie. But I totally agree about the price. And if you are using the product in some sort of professional capacity, then you amortize the cost out over the course of a year and it's only pennies a day. (we used to tell our client's that)

[Pixelpusher]

Just bought the Premium version. Had to pay full price because I cannot remember my login info to get to my previous purchases (could have just paid for an upgrade.) Xara doesn't make it very easy to get in contact with them.

Thank you! I have contacted Xara to get this resolved.

[gsthunder]

Just bought the Premium version. Had to pay full price because I cannot remember my login info to get to my previous purchases (could have just paid for an upgrade.) Xara doesn't make it very easy to get in contact with them.

From what I can see it wouldn't matter if you did remember. The login page won't let you enter the e-mail and password info. I can login to support but not my account.