Designer 9 - No Mobile development included - What a dissappointment

[onlye]

My wife and I are small time web developers. We do strictly charity and non-profit sites and our fees are the same. In my day job I work with a company that includes website development for customers as part of the service offerings. I have over a hundred customers the company has done extremely simple 1-5 pages sites for. In reviewing site analytic this past year I am seeing 30 to 50% of visits coming from Safari. My interpretation is iPhone and iPad, so mobile is really increased. And the Safari numbers don't include Androoid.

How I was looking forward to the next release of Web Designer to include an integrated mobile site option. Well 9 is here and what a disappointment. Did I miss something? Is this already easy to do and I just missed it? Or, is Xara really missing on not offering an important feature in their product?

I just ordered a copy of Serif Web Plus to try out and am reviewing an online development offering. Both offer an easy mobile option for websites.

My limited knowledge is with Xara products used for the past 5 years. I really hate to loose that knowledge to move to something else.

If I am missing something please let me know. If not, hopefully Xara might hear this. Thanks for letting me ramble. What do you think?

[gwpriester]

Welcome to TalkGraphics

What do you hope to accomplish in designing a mobile site that you cannot accomplish in Xara Web Designer or Designer Pro?

I know a lot of people think that can push a button and have an instant mobile site. But the reality is a website viewed on a computer monitor is a very different animal than a website viewed on an iPhone or Adroid tablet. If you merely reduce a full blown website down to a mobile size, you may well have a site that most visitors will leave before your content has downloaded. Or the buttons will be so small that your visitor will have to spend more time than is necessary to move in and out trying to find your content.

I design a fair number of websites and my advice is to design for the medium, even if it means designing two or three different sites.

And you can do this as easily with Xara Web Designer or Designer Pro X as with any other product.

[teaser]

It's called "Responsive" website. It shifts with changes in browser widths. Heres a link that expalins it...... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSoWg29wPVc