Xara Press Releases http://www.xara.com/press/ Press releases from Xara en-us Tue, 13 Nov 2018 11:56:26 +0000 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss <![CDATA[Design Software Powerhouse Xara Launches A Suite of Updates to Shake Up the Industry]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2018-10-15/ Xara releases the latest version of their ground-breaking design software Xara Designer Pro X along with new and enhanced features guaranteed to get designers excited. 

Xara is releasing version 16 (v16) of their award-winning program Designer Pro X. With this release comes a range of new and cutting-edge features that ensures Xara continues to stand out in the market as the perfect alternative to the Adobe Creative Cloud.

Designer Pro X offers a powerful all-in-one creative platform that fulfills all major design requirements professional designers would ever need including graphic design, photo editing, website design and document creation. Designer Pro X comes with an easy to use UI, a superior graphics rendering engine and an unrivaled WYSIWYG web builder. Designers can let their creativity flow with unparalleled vector power and pixel-perfect control in a multi-page environment. 

Designer Pro X v16 release introduces exciting new features into the market, through Color Palette from Photo, a feature that gives designers the ability to easily achieve color consistency by automatically creating a color palette from any photo or logo and applying that palette across designs or documents. Other additions include enhanced SmartShape designs and controls, such as Pie Charts and Arrows, providing designers with the robust and visual components they need to make their designs stand out. 

v16 also includes significant enhancements to the already powerful PDF editing function, improved PDF im/export capabilities, and new text controls such as widow & orphan support and OpenType improvements.

“We’re especially excited about the new ‘color palette from photo’ feature, which automates an otherwise tedious manual process for professional designers, auto matching their document colors to those of the main photo. And the intelligent hue and brightness adjustments ensure the results are fantastic! In combination with our auto page resize feature it makes Designer Pro the most productive creative tool on the market.” 

“We’ve also found some new ways to make our ultra-easy to edit ‘Smart Shapes’ even more flexible, including pie charts, arrows and tables. And for the typography purists the key update will surely be enhanced Open Type support - ligatures, stylistic sets and alternates.” says Charles Moir, CTO, Xara.

Xara Designer Pro X is built upon providing designers with a superior experience through ultra-fast graphics rendering, non-destructive photo editing, responsive mobile editing and powerful smart components to maximize efficiency while offering an outstanding price-performance ratio. 

Xara Designer Pro X is the design program designers never fall out of love with. 
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Thu, 18 Oct 2018 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2018-10-15/
<![CDATA[Xara goes cloud, and secures global distribution of its desktop products with partner, MAGIX Software]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2017-10-23/
Xara signs a worldwide distribution agreement for its desktop products with MAGIX Software, and will continue driving forward its new cloud solution.

Xara has always led the desktop publishing industry with award-winning solutions and will now be doing the same with a revolutionary new rich content creation and collaboration SaaS platform for businesses. As the launch nears in early 2018, Xara has entered into a worldwide sales, marketing, and distribution partnership for its desktop products with MAGIX Software GmbH. 
 
As of October 23rd, 2017 MAGIX will be the worldwide distribution partner for Xara Web Designer, Xara Page & Layout Designer, Xara Photo & Graphic Designer and Xara Designer Pro. 
 
“Xara sees a massive opportunity to bridge the gap between business documents and professional design. As we rapidly grow this new solution, focus and execution will be paramount. The MAGIX team has a unique expertise in selling desktop software and we feel confident that they will service existing customers, and develop new channels extremely well.” said Xara CEO, Matt Bolton.
 
Existing Xara customers will benefit from the strengthening of this partnership and will not see any interruption to their software and support. All new license purchases, upgrades, and renewals will be a familiar process through MAGIX channels. Xara will continue to deliver exciting new features and releases of these desktop products.

“The Xara Designer products have been a great addition to our portfolio for many years,” said MAGIX Managing Director Aishvarya Agarwal. “Now this new global partnership allows us to use our strong presence in the United States and the United Kingdom to deliver a superior customer experience for Xara product users.”
 
The Xara sales and marketing team will focus on introducing the new cloud based creative service to the world.

“Drawing upon our strong expertise in graphics, photo, and text editing software, we have pushed the boundaries to develop a new cloud-based solution for businesses, not seen before. We look forward to telling you about our exciting new SaaS solution soon.” said Charles Moir, Xara’s Founder and Chief Software Architect.
 
Press Contact:  Nova Fisher -  nova@xara.com  Tel: Int (44) 1442 351038

There is more information about MAGIX Software and Xara Online Designer at magix.com and xara.cloud

 

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Mon, 23 Oct 2017 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2017-10-23/
<![CDATA[New: Xara Designer Pro X365]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2016-07-04/

This new release of Xara Designer Pro X contains major enhancements for both web and graphic design, including significant improvements to Xara Online Designer, and a new delivery model that gives access to new updates as they happen in the 365 days after purchase.

Xara’s popular Designer Pro X is the ultimate all-in-one creative software, that provides powerful vector illustration, photo editing, page layout and website design, in one unrivalled WYSIWYG design tool. By combining all these tools in one program, Xara Designer Pro achieves faster performance with no program switching, lower memory and computing requirements, an easier learning curve, higher productivity and significantly better value for money.

The photo editing tools have been enhanced with two new W3C standard transparency blend modes and a new ultra-easy way to rotate, scale / pan and crop (which is great for horizon straightening). The photo editor provides vector based, editable, non-destructive photo editing so the user can return to the original image at any time.

Applying popular effects to photos is quick and easy with the new Photo Filter Pre-sets. There are almost 30 of these ready-made effects in the Content Catalog. Users can also create some dramatic contrast and saturation effects with the new Cross Process Photo Effects that simulate a traditional photographic effect created by mixing up the chemicals. The Effect Painter tool is a new way to paint effects directly on the photo, such as, brighten, dodge and burn, saturation changes and a growing range of other effects.

There are two new types of photo grids. ‘Static’ Photo Grids are simple, fixed, visually attractive grids of photos onto which users can drag & drop their own photo. ‘Smart’ Photo Grids smartly resize to fill the rectangles as photos are added or deleted, and users can swap the positions of the photos, adjust the number of rows and columns and the border / gap between all the photos.

The Xara SmartShapes are an amazingly quick and easy way to create and edit some of the most commonly required shapes. Xara has also evolved this concept to include more complex objects, such as smart charts for percentage ring, bar chart and column charts. There are new smart text panels and photo panels and an enhanced version of the popular Spiral SmartShape.

Flexible text handling is one of the strengths of Xara Designer Pro X, yet Xara has still found room for some improvements. The popular Font Awesome collection of symbols has been updated, and is now supplemented by a collection of Google Material Design Icons providing more than 1500 symbols in total. To find the required symbol there’s a quick search function. Xara Designer Pro X symbols can be inserted as editable vector graphics, or inserted inline into text as a font (where they are automatically placed in a subset of symbols used, converted to WOFF and included in the website HTML).

For Web Designers there are new Parallax scrolling effects, 30 types of scrolling animation, plus 40 new ‘on reveal’ animation types. The popular ‘sticky’ feature has also been enhanced, so that items such as NavBars can scroll and stick to the top of the window when they reach it.

Web designers also benefit from 9 new general website themes and 166 Business theme sets that were previously sold for $15 each set (a total value of nearly $2500).

Xara Designer Pro X includes the cloud-based editor, Xara Online Designer. This gives Web designers the unique ability to edit their document both offline or online and sync their files with Dropbox, Google GDrive and Microsoft OneDrive. Furthermore, it gives commercial designers the option to enable their clients to update their own website to edit text and replace photos. Client access is free.

Xara Online Designer is evolving rapidly with planned enhancements (which will be released under the Update Service) including more editing controls such as colour, transparency, stack order, smart snap and SmartShapes.

Xara Designer Pro X includes an upgrade to ‘Website M’ hosting, free for one year (worth $1.99 a month). This includes 2GBytes of free web hosting space and one free domain name (e.g. yourname.com).

Xara’s Update Service means that users will no longer have to wait a year between releases to access new features and content. Users will have access to new features and content as Xara develop them, at any time during the year after their purchase. An enhanced Online Content Catalog will also be included free for one year as part of Xara’s new Update Service. The catalog will provide access to a new library of over 500,000 quality royalty-free, high quality, high-resolution stock photos, provided under a CC0 license.

Charles Moir, Managing Director said “This release of Xara Designer Pro represents a significant change for us as we move away from yearly releases to a more regular release cycle. So features that we develop 3 or 6 months from now, which would traditionally not be available until the 2017 release will now be included in this year's product.

Although Xara Designer Pro 365 includes a component of online services that are subscription, (hosting, domain name, Online Designer) it's important to understand this is not a subscription product in the way that Office 365 or Adobe Creative Cloud are. With Designer 365 you purchase the program which is yours to keep, and it will remain functional even if you do not renew or upgrade. We think this is a fundamentally better deal for customers.

There are also significant new features in this release plus completely cost and royalty-free, searchable libraries of stock photos and stock vector illustrations and 166 Business theme sets worth $2500 that previously sold for $15 each set.”

Xara Designer Pro X365 costs $299/ £2199 (inc VAT) / €299 (inc VAT)
System requirements are Windows Vista, 7, 8 and 10 and it requires a minimum 500MB of RAM and 300MB hard-disk space.

For more information and a trial version visit xara.com

 

More information and downloads

Please see the press center.
This includes press materials, example graphics, screenshots, product information and details of what's new.

For detailed information on the new features see the release notes and Update Service.

 

Contact

For more details or a serial number to unlock the trial version please contact: Nova Fisher, nova@xara.com Tel: +44 1442 351035]]>
Mon, 04 Jul 2016 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2016-07-04/
<![CDATA[New: Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 365]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2016-05-25/

Xara announces a new release of their creative design and photo editing software, Xara Photo & Graphic Designer, that comes with a new and unique Update Guarantee which provides regular updates during the year.

Xara Photo & Graphic Designer is an easy-to-use program that provides all the tools needed for a range of graphic design and photo editing tasks. The new release provides some exciting new photo tools and SmartShapes, significant text enhancements and some great new content.

There are two new types of photo grids. ‘Static’ Photo Grids are simple, fixed, visually attractive grids of photos onto which users can drag & drop their own photo. ‘Smart’ Photo Grids smartly resize to fill the rectangles as photos are added or deleted, and users can swap the positions of the photos, adjust the number of rows and columns and the border / gap between all the photos.

Applying popular effects to photos is quick and easy with the new Photo Filter Pre-sets. There are almost 30 of these ready-made effects in the Content Catalog. Users can also create some dramatic contrast and saturation effects with the new Cross Process Photo Effects that simulate a traditional photographic effect created by mixing up the chemicals.

The Effect Painter tool is a new way to paint effects directly on the photo, such as, brighten, dodge and burn, saturation changes and a growing range of other effects.

The photo editing tools have also been enhanced with two new W3C standard transparency blend modes and a new ultra-easy way to rotate, scale / pan and crop (which is great for horizon straightening). The photo editor provides vector based, editable, non-destructive photo editing so the user can return to the original image at any time.

Flexible text handling is one of the strengths of Xara Photo & Graphic Designer, yet Xara has still found room for some improvements. The popular Font Awesome collection of symbols has been updated, and is now supplemented by a collection of Google Material Design Icons providing more than 1500 symbols in total. To find the required symbol there’s a quick search function.

The Xara SmartShapes are an amazingly quick and easy way to create and edit some of the most commonly required shapes. Xara has also evolved this concept to include more complex objects, such as smart charts for percentage ring, bar chart and column charts. There are new smart text panels and photo panels and an enhanced version of the popular Spiral SmartShape.

Xara's Update Guarantee means that users will no longer have to wait a year between releases to access new features and content. Users will have access to new features and content as Xara develop them, at any time during the year after their purchase. An enhanced Online Content Catalog will also be included free for one year as part of Xara’s new Update Guarantee. The catalog will provide access to a new free library of over 500,000 quality royalty-free, high quality, high-resolution stock photos.

Charles Moir, Managing Director said "Xara Photo & Graphic Designer has evolved into being a supremely capable non-destructive photo editor. The under-pinning vector graphics are the basis for everything resulting in vector editing of photos, which is pretty unique. It remains the fastest vector graphic editor available - and with new features such as SmartShape charts, inclusion of Font Awesome and Google's Material Design symbols fonts, gives searchable access to more than 1500 great quality vector symbols.

Photo editing now includes the ability to paint enhancements or effects onto images, new preset filter effects, new ways of cutting images out of backgrounds and more. This really is the greatest version of Xara Photo & Graphic Designer we've ever released."

Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 365 costs just £49.99 (inc VAT), €59.99 (inc VAT), $59.99

System requirements are Windows Vista, 7, 8 and 10 and it requires a minimum 500MB of RAM and 300MB hard-disk space.

For more information and a trial version visit xara.com

 

More information and downloads

Please see the press center.
This includes press materials, example graphics, screenshots, product information and details of what's new.

For detailed information on the new features see the release notes and Update Guarantee.

 

Contact

For more details or a serial number to unlock the trial version please contact: Nova Fisher, nova@xara.com Tel: +44 1442 351035]]>
Wed, 25 May 2016 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2016-05-25/
<![CDATA[New: Xara Web Designer 365]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2016-04-13/

Xara Web Designer 365 is the first release from Xara under its new and unique 365 Update Guarantee. Customers who buy Designer 365 products will be purchasing a perpetual license to the very latest version, but they will also be able to access new features and content as Xara develop them in the 365 days after purchase. What’s more all supporting online services – such as hosting and Xara Online Designer - will be included free during those 365 days.

The first release of Xara Web Designer 365 is already packed with new features, and there will be more to come under the 365 Update Guarantee. Parallax, reveal and scroll animations are popular in contemporary websites, so the April 2016 release adds parallax scrolling, 30 other types of scroll animation, plus 40 new ‘on reveal’ animation types. The popular ‘sticky’ feature has also been enhanced, so that items such as NavBars will stick to the top of the window when scrolling the page up.

Xara has also evolved its unique Xara SmartShapes concept to include more complex objects such as smart charts and photo grids. A SmartShape API will soon be available to third parties enabling developers to add new enhancements to Xara Web Designer. Those JavaScript SmartShape plug-ins will work with both the desktop Xara Web Designer and Xara Online Designer.

The initial release of Xara Web Designer 365 includes two new types of photo grids. ‘Static’ Photo Grids are simple, fixed, visually attractive grids of photos onto which users can drag & drop their own photos and then scale / rotate / pan to adjust the photo within its frame. ‘Smart’ Photo Grids smartly resize to fill the rectangles as photos are added or deleted, and users can swap the positions of the photos, adjust the number of rows and columns and the border / gap between all the photos.

The photo editing tools have also been enhanced, with a new ultra-easy way to rotate, scale / pan and crop - great for horizon straightening!

Another addition recognises the popular trend of incorporating simple vector graphic symbols into websites, such as social media symbols, shopping cart or credit card symbols. The existing Font Awesome symbol collection has been supplemented with Google's Material Design icons, providing integrated access to more than 1500 high-quality, professionally designed vector icons. And to find a symbol, there’s a new easy search function. The Xara Web Designer symbols can be inserted as editable vector graphics, or inserted inline into text as a font (where they are automatically placed in a subset of symbols used, converted to WOFF and included in the website HTML).

Xara Web Designer includes the cloud-based editor, Xara Online Designer. This gives Web Designer owners the flexibility to edit their Web Designer sites in a browser, from anywhere and with any device and sync their files with Dropbox, Google GDrive and Microsoft OneDrive. Xara Online Designer is still in beta but evolving rapidly with planned enhancements (which will be released under the 365 Update Guarantee) including more editing controls such as colour, transparency, stack order, smart snap and SmartShapes.

The combination of Web Designer and Online Designer means that Web Designer customers have the unique ability to edit their document both offline or online. Furthermore, it gives commercial designers using Web Designer the option to enable their clients to update their own website to edit text and replace photos. Client access is free.

Charles Moir, MD of Xara said “Xara Web Designer 365 is an important change for us, away from yearly releases and version numbers towards more regular releases throughout the year. So features that we develop 3 or 6 months from now, which would traditionally not be available until the 2017 release will now be included in this year's product.

Although Xara Designer 365 includes a component of online services that are subscription, (hosting, domain name, Online Designer) it's important to understand this is not a subscription product in the way that Office 365 or Adobe Creative Cloud are. With Designer 365 you purchase the program which is yours to keep, and it will remain functional even if you do not renew or upgrade. We think this is a fundamentally better deal for customers.”

Web Designer Premium includes an upgrade to ‘Website M’ hosting, free for one year (worth $1.99 a month). This includes 2GBytes of free web hosting space and one free domain name (e.g. yourname.com or .co.uk, etc).

 

Example websites showing some of the new features

Example 1 - With a parallax effect on the heading graphic, new scrolling animations, percentage ring and chart SmartShapes, a photo grid and new photo panels.

Example 2 - With a 'scroll and stick' NavBar, new on reveal animation types, percentage ring SmartShapes and new photo hovers.

Example 3 - With more new on reveal animation types, and two 'Packed Photo Grid' SmartShapes (home and gallery pages).

 

Xara Web Designer Premium retails for £69.99, €99.99 and $99.99 An entry level (reduced feature) version, called Xara Web Designer, is available for £34.99, €49.99 and $49.99, which is ideal for customers who are completely new to web design.

Xara Web Designer operates on Windows Vista, 7, 8 and 10 and requires a minimum 500MB of RAM and 300MB hard-disk space. Web Designer includes free hosting with 500MB of web space. Premium includes an upgrade to ‘M’ hosting, free for one year, which includes 2GBytes of web hosting space and a domain name (e.g. yourname.com or .co.uk, etc).

 

More information and downloads

Please see the press center at http://www.xara.com/press-center/web-designer
This includes press materials, graphics, screenshots, product information and a full list of new features.

 

Contact

For more details or a serial number to unlock the trial version please contact: Nova Fisher, nova@xara.com Tel: +44 1442 351035]]>
Wed, 13 Apr 2016 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2016-04-13/
<![CDATA[New: Xara Designer Pro X11, Creative Software with Online Editing]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2015-07-20/ Xara announce a new release Xara Designer Pro X11, the ultimate all-in-one creative software, that provides powerful vector illustration, photo editing, page layout and website design, in one unrivalled WYSIWYG design tool.

Most creative design work for page and website design consists of arranging content on the page, typically a combination of illustration, text and photos. By combining these tools in one program, Xara Designer Pro achieves faster performance with no program switching, lower memory and computing requirements, an easier learning curve, higher productivity and significantly better value for money.

Illustration and Graphic Design
Designer Pro has one of the most powerful vector design engines at its heart, and this release brings new vector-based Art Brushes, offering real time ‘painting’ of complex vector or bitmap brush designs along an editable freehand vector path. A range of realistic textured brushes are included. In addition there are vector shape processing plug-ins to manipulate vector shapes and lines (third party API to be published later). The Transparency Tool introduces five new W3C standard, web-safe and PDF-safe blend modes. New plug-ins include a Spiral SmartShape tool.

Website Design
Xara Designer Pro X11 has some great new features for creating state-of-the-art contemporary websites. With one click objects can be stuck to any given place in the browser window while the content scrolls under. This is very useful for ‘sticky’ social icons or a permanent navigation bar across the top of the screen. Website designs with no obvious page boundary are now very popular so Xara make it easy to stretch rectangle backgrounds and photos to fill the browser width.

New web animation tools make it super-easy to make objects animate (in a variety of styles) on mouse-over, click and even when an object first comes into view. This ‘reveal’ animation takes advantage of HTML5 animation features. Users can now use any font on their computer and Designer Pro X11 will automatically create a WOFF font that is compatible with all modern browsers. This is in addition to the integrated Google Font picker that provides nearly 700 fonts.

Xara Designer Pro is a ‘design focussed’ website creation tool and does all of this with no HTML hacking, programming, scripting or CSS. The focus is on the design, not on the technical.

Web Hosting
Xara Designer Pro X11 can publish to any web hosting provider (which now includes FTP and SFPT options). But for those who do not want to use third party web hosting Xara includes 2GBytes of free web-hosting space, which also enables password protection for web pages.

Text layout
There are new and improved text features including advanced hyphenation controls, to give higher quality text layout; new auto-correct options for faster text creation; text background colour controls and document-wide font search & replace. The new text wrap options for inline graphics and automatic scaling of inline graphics make it easy to do major site-wide column width changes which is perfect for multi-column work or ‘mobile-friendly’ responsive website design. .Further improvements to PDF import and export make Xara Designer Pro X11 one of the most powerful PDF editing tools available.

Online File Syncing in the Cloud
Xara Designer Pro X11 has the ability to sync files via Dropbox and Google Drive (OneDrive coming soon). So if a user has the same file open on multiple computers (or shared with other users), saved edits will be automatically updated on the other computers with that file open.

Xara Online Designer
Xara is developing a new, ultra-high performance (60fps scroll and zoom) online editor. Included in Xara Designer Pro X11 is a beta release that is limited to text and photo replacement. It provides an easy way to view, edit and update the content of Xara documents and websites using a web browser on any computer or tablet (Mac, iPad or Android tablet) from anywhere in the world.

Xara Online Designer offers an accurate WYSIWYG editing interface with a hi-fidelity page representation, including accurate fonts and page layout. Drag and drop photo replacement, along with high performance scrolling and zoom, and one-click re-publishing. For commercial web designers this provides a way that their clients can edit text and replace images using the simplest possible web browser interface (without messing up the design!). The designer gets the edits and updated pictures automatically synced to their master .xar file on their computer. It is dramatically simpler than WordPress or other CMS systems.

Charles Moir, Managing Director, said; “Unlike other website creation solutions that require some degree of technical ability, Xara make it easy for designers so that they can focus on the design and content and not on the programming aspects. This may be compared with the creation of print documents or PDFs, where designers don’t have to learn PDF scripting or mark-up language. This release brings new illustration features, new page and text layout features with faster and easier ways to create really modern websites. We’re also giving users the first taste of Xara Online Designer, a cloud-based document editor that’s faster, easier to use and is a universal web app that’s touch and tablet friendly.”

Xara Designer Pro X11 costs just $299 / £219.99 (inc VAT) / €279 (inc VAT) with upgrades from £65 / €89 / $99 (this is the launch offer for v10 owners, and the cheapest way to buy it)

It operates on Windows Vista 7 / 8 / 8.1 / 10 and requires a minimum 500MB of RAM and 300MB of hard disc space.

For more information see - xara.com/designer-pro


More information and downloads
Please see the press center at www.xara.com/press-center/designer-pro/
This includes press materials, graphics, screenshots, product information, a full list of new features and release notes that describe all the new features in detail.

Contact:
For more details or a serial number to unlock the trial version please contact: Nova Fisher, nova@xara.com Tel: +44 1442 351035]]>
Mon, 20 Jul 2015 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2015-07-20/
<![CDATA[New: Xara Photo & Graphics Designer 11]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2015-06-29/

Xara announces the release of the latest new version of their creative design and photo editing software, Xara Photo and Graphic Designer v11 - an easy-to-use program that provides all the tools you need for a range of graphic design and photo editing tasks.

Charles Moir, Managing Director said “As the name suggests 'Photo & Graphic Designer' is more than just another photo editor. It's one of the most advanced and powerful vector graphics programs available, and seamlessly combines vector graphics with the photo editing features that any graphics enthusiast, small company or academic user are likely to need. It's simply the most advanced photo and graphics editing tool available, for the money. We believe the new real-time brush features are the fastest, most fluid available anywhere".

In this release there’s a big step forward for the Brush Tool with new Art Brush technology that smoothly stretches either vector or bitmap, in real time, along a freehand drawn line. We include a range of high quality realistic textured brush effects emulating paint, chalk and water-color effects. Users can, of course, create their own bitmap (photo) or vector brush designs.

New to this version is the ability to sync files via Dropbox and Google Drive. So if a user has the same file open on multiple computers, and makes an edit then saves the file on one computer, it will be immediately updated in Photo & Graphic Designer on the other computers. As a bonus Dropbox and Google Drive maintain older versions of user’s files, thus providing an easy way of viewing and reverting back to earlier versions. This is a safe, easy and storage-saving way of maintaining multiple versions of website files.

Fans of the Shape Painter Tool will love the extra flexibility offered by a new selection of vector shape editing tools (in the drop down list in the Shape Painter InfoBar). In the Transparency Tool 5 new W3C standard, web-safe and PDF-safe blend modes have been added - Overlay, Hard Light, Soft Light, Luminosity & Color.

There are new and improved text features including autocorrect (the ability to create a personal list of abbreviations that expand when typed), text background color options, easy font replacement throughout an entire document, and more. There are also significant improvements to the PDF import and export.

Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 11 includes two valuable free additions – the Premium version of MAGIX Online Photo Album to share photos with friends, families and colleagues (free for one year) and Photolooks 2, a powerful and flexible plug-in (previously sold by Red Giant for $199!) that can change the color and light effects in a photo. It includes over 100 presets, but provides a powerful way of manipulating color and light so that users can create their own custom effects.

Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 11 costs just $89.99 for US customers, £49.99 (inc VAT) for UK and €69.99 (inc VAT) for the EU.
Upgrades from v10 to Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 11 cost $35 for US customers, £20 (inc VAT) for UK and €25 (inc VAT) for the EU (intro offer)

It operates on Windows Vista 7 / 8 / 8.1

For more information and a trial version visit xara.com

More information and downloads
Please see the press center at www.xara.com/press-center/photo-graphic-designer/
This includes press materials, example graphics, screenshots, product information and details of what’s new in v10.

For detailed release notes see www.xara.com/photo-graphic-designer/notes

Contact:
For more details or a serial number to unlock the trial version please contact: Nova Fisher, nova@xara.com Tel: +44 1442 351035

]]>
Mon, 29 Jun 2015 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2015-06-29/
<![CDATA[New: Xara Web Designer 11 & Web Designer 11 Premium with Online Editing]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2015-05-20/

Xara announces a new release of Xara Web Designer Premium, a programming-free web design tool. This new version 11 has some great new features for creating state of the art sites in contemporary styles, with features such as sticky navigation, full width stretching backgrounds, new animations as well as an innovative new way to update websites online, using cloud.xara (in Beta).

Sticky Objects
Navigation bars, social media links, text panel or images can be stuck in position on the browser so they remain visible on screen as the page scrolls under. This increasingly popular web technique is an easy one-click on the item wanted to stick.

Stretchy Backgrounds
Website designs with no obvious page boundary are now very popular. It's common to see a strip background, sometimes an image, that covers the entire browser window and dynamically stretches to fill the browser width. With Web Designer 11's new Stretchy feature this is also one easy click. See the demo website.

Animations
Another fashionable web trend is toward more exciting animations, taking advantage of modern HTML5 animation capabilities. For example, images that slide or fade in as a viewer scrolls down a page or objects that animate during a mouse-over or when they are clicked/tapped on a touch device. These animations are now possible in Web Designer 11.

Cloud-sync
Xara Web Designer 11 can now sync files via Dropbox and Google Drive. So if a user has the same file open on multiple computers, and makes an edit then saves the file on one computer, it will be immediately updated in Web Designer on the other computers. As a bonus Dropbox and Google Drive maintain older versions of users files, thus providing an easy way of viewing and reverting back to earlier versions. This is a safe, easy and storage-saving way of maintaining multiple versions of website files.

cloud.xara
Xara Web Designer 11 comes with the beta version of cloud.xara which is an ultra-simple way to view, edit and update the content of a Xara website using a web browser on any computer or tablet (yes, even a Mac or Apple or Android tablet!), from anywhere in the world, and to re-publish the website.

Users will be able to update the text (blogs, news and prices, for example) or replace images and re-publish their own website from any web browser. After editing a website using a web browser, click Save and this updates the master Xara file in the cloud, and even back to the user's desktop computer.

For commercial designers, cloud.xara gives controlled editing rights to their clients, allowing them to edit text and replace images and update their website, without needing to own or know anything about Web Designer (most small business owners have neither the time or inclination to learn web design).

Other Features
Xara Web Designer 11 also includes a flexible new widget for creating slideshows and more than 30 new website themes with up to 16 page layouts, all including mobile variants. Other additions include text handling enhancements, and import and export improvements.

Xara Web Designer 11 Premium includes Task Pilot 'M' hosting, free for one year (worth $1.99 a month). This includes 2GBytes of free web hosting space, one free domain name and Task Pilot Organizer (including cloud based calendar and contacts).

Charles Moir, Founder and Managing Director of Xara said, "Google made a well publicized change to their search engine recently, promoting 'mobile friendly' websites. Xara Web Designer 11 is one of the simplest, and most powerful 'programming-free' ways of creating mobile-friendly responsive websites. Version 11 can produce the most contemporary website designs, that are as slick as the most expensive 'hard coded' custom designs. cloud.xara is the start of something totally new for Xara: a universal web app, a way to update your Xara file just using a web browser. It's early Beta at this stage but will rapidly evolve in the future."

Xara Web Designer is an ideal choice for novices as well as professional designers, infact, anyone wanting a high quality website, without the need to know HTML coding, scripting or the usual technical jargon. The websites produced are compatible with all modern mobile and desktop browsers.

Example Websites showing some of the new features:
http://www.xara.com/web-designer-examples/site1/
http://www.xara.com/web-designer-examples/site2/

Xara Web Designer 11 Premium retails for £69.99, €99.99 and $99.99
An entry level (reduced feature) version, called simply Web Designer 11, is available for £34.99, €49.99 and $49.99, which is ideal for customers who are completely new to web design.
Existing Xara Web Designer users can upgrade for as little as £19.99, €24.99 and $24.99 (Web Designer 11) and £39.99, €49.99 and $49.99 (Premium version)

Xara Web Designer 11 operates on Windows Vista, 7, 8 and 8.1 and requires a minimum 500MB of RAM and a minimum of 300MB hard-disk space.

More information and downloads

Please see the press center at http://www.xara.com/press-center/web-designer
This includes press materials, graphics, screenshots, product information and a full list of new features.

 

Contact

For more details or a serial number to unlock the trial version please contact: Nova Fisher, nova@xara.com Tel: +44 1442 351035]]>
Wed, 20 May 2015 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2015-05-20/
<![CDATA[New: Xara Designer Pro X10]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2014-07-23/ Xara announces a new release of Xara Designer Pro X10, the ultimate all-in-one creative software that provides all the tools for a range of graphic design tasks that would normally require three or more separate ‘suite’ programs: illustration, photo editing, web graphics, advanced page layout (Desktop Publishing & PDF), websites and more. By combining all these tools in one program, Xara Designer Pro achieves faster performance with no program switching, which has the advantage of an easier learning curve, high productivity and excellent value for money.

Xara Designer Pro is the world's highest performing graphics software with speeds enabling more complex and realistic graphics to be created more easily and in less time. Xara Designer Pro supports multi-core processors for even faster performance, and provides tools that might typically be required by professional designers such as PANTONE®, CMYK, color separations and PDF/X.

This new release features Xara’s innovative new publishing technique called Supersites that are an alternative way of publishing print documents and websites; instead of just being a separate set of web pages, with the typical ‘click-wait-load’ way to navigate a website, a ‘supersite’ provides instant navigation between pages, along with slick animated page transitions - all designed to make a website stand-out from the crowd. In addition, users can choose to have all web pages presented as a single scrolling list of pages, one below the other (ideal for pages to be viewed in a PDF style format), or arranged horizontally, one beside the other, with swipe actions (on touch devices) to navigate from page to page. The website can be set to ‘fit to screen’ so that it smoothly and automatically resizes to fit any browser window.

Xara Designer Pro X10 supports Responsive Web Design, a technique to create multiple layout variations of the same website optimized for different devices such as mobiles, tablets and desktop computers. Xara’s responsive web design solution allows users to create a single HTML file containing multiple variants of their website at different widths. The website responds dynamically to the screen size of the viewer (using CSS media queries), presenting the design most appropriate to their device. Users have the ability to freely customize the layout of the variants to suit the target device size, eg. desktop, tablet and phone. In line with the Designer Pro philosophy, it’s a genuinely WYSIWYG solution, no coding required.

Xara SmartShapes are a new and innovative way to draw aesthetically attractive shapes on a document, that require no knowledge of any drawing tools, and furthermore, they remain fully customizable. Users can quickly and easily create and edit some of the most commonly required shapes. The library of SmartShapes will grow over time, but starts with text panels, speech bubbles, arrows and more. Xara has also introduced a quick and easy way to insert graphical symbols from the large and growing Font Awesome selection.

Bundled with this release is a new Photoshop plug-in called PhotoLooks from Red Giant (previously sold by Red Giant for $199) for users wishing to intensify the mood of their photo via various color and lighting effects or adding a popular film look from soft lighting to Hollywood drama. The plug-in includes over 100 pre-sets inspired by real commercial projects, from wedding vignettes to popular cinematic looks.

New shadow and highlight controls provide the user with precise editing control over specific areas of their photo that are in deep shadow or bright light. The automatic panorama stitching has been improved to automatically detect the position of stitched images and it also produces higher quality results.

This release also includes a new online content catalog, new templates and widgets, support for the automatic rotation of images from iPhones and other cameras with orientation sensors, a new insert menu, improved web presentations, improved import/export support for .doc and .docx files, RTF files. Also new is a significantly improved PDF import that allows almost all PDF files to be edited.

Charles Moir, Founder and Managing Director said, "Almost every published document, be it a website, a printed document, PDF, flyer or company report, consists of a combination of photos, vector graphics, text and page layout. Xara Designer Pro is the only single-product solution that combines all these features into a single, lightning fast, WYSIWYG design tool. It's not just easier to learn and easier to use, but dramatically better value than alternative solutions.

Supersites are a new way to publish print documents online. No PDF or plug-ins required and it's compatible with all modern browsers. Xara Designer Pro X10 can also now produce Responsive Websites, so you can design the perfect layout for mobile and tablets or desktop and it's all one intelligent HTML5 compatible website, that responds to the device (or browser dimensions) viewing the website."

Xara Designer Pro X10 costs just $299 for US customers, £249 for UK (inc VAT) and €279 (inc VAT) for the EU. Upgrades are available from $99, £79 and €89.

It operates on Windows XP/Vista/7/8.1 and requires a minimum 500MB of RAM and 300MB of hard disc space.

For more information see - xara.com/designer-pro


More information and downloads
Please see the press center at www.xara.com/press-center/designer-pro/
This includes press materials, graphics, screenshots, product information, a full list of new features and release notes that describe all the new features in detail.

Contact:
For more details or a serial number to unlock the trial version please contact: Nova Fisher, nova@xara.com Tel: +44 1442 351035]]>
Wed, 23 Jul 2014 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2014-07-23/
<![CDATA[New: Xara Photo & Graphic Designer v10]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2014-07-16/ Xara announces the release of the latest new version of their creative design software, Xara Photo and Graphic Designer v10 - an easy-to-use program that provides all the tools for a range of graphic design and photo editing tasks. Xara Photo & Graphic Designer is ideal for any graphics enthusiast, small company or academic user.

New shadow and highlight tools provide the user with precise editing control over specific areas of their photo that are in deep shadow or bright light. Bundled with this release is a new Photoshop plug-in called PhotoLooks from Red Giant (previously sold by Red Giant for $199) for users wishing to intensify the mood of their photo via various color and lighting effects or adding a popular film look from soft lighting to Hollywood drama. The plug-in includes over 100 pre-sets inspired by real commercial projects, from wedding vignettes to popular cinematic looks.

A new way to ‘enhance by color’ provides a way to selectively enhance or process areas in an image based on its color. So for example, users can just click on the sky, and all similar blue areas are now active, and further adjustment of any photo enhance control (e.g. brightness levels, saturation, blur/sharpen, tinting, re-coloring etc) will now apply to all those blue areas.

Xara SmartShapes are a new and innovative way to draw aesthetically attractive shapes on a document, that require no knowledge of any drawing tools, and furthermore, they remain fully customizable. Users can quickly and easily create and edit some of the most commonly required shapes. The library of SmartShapes will grow over time, but starts with text panels, speech bubbles, arrows and more. Xara has also introduced a quick and easy way to insert graphical symbols from a large and growing Font Awesome selection.

The automatic panorama stitching has been improved to automatically detect the position of stitched images and it also produces higher quality results. This release also includes a new online content catalog, support for the automatic rotation of images from iPhones and other cameras with orientation sensors, a new insert menu, improved import/export support for .doc and .docx files, RTF files, and significantly improved PDF import that allows almost all PDF files to be edited.

Charles Moir, Founder and Managing Director said, "Photo & Graphic Designer is different and superior to standard photo editors because it's not only a great photo editing tool but it’s also combined with powerful vector graphics and illustration tools."

Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 10 costs just $89.99 for US customers, £69.99 for UK (inc VAT) and €69.99 (inc VAT) for the EU.
Upgrades from v9 to Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 10 cost $35 for US customers, £25 for UK (inc VAT) and €25 (inc VAT) for the EU.

Photo & Graphic Designer 10 operates on Windows XP/Vista/7/8/8.1 (PhotoLooks 2, XP not officially supported).

For more information and a trial version visit xara.com


More information and downloads
Please see the press center at www.xara.com/press-center/photo-graphic-designer/
This includes press materials, example graphics, screenshots, product information and details of what’s new in v10.

For detailed release notes see www.xara.com/photo-graphic-designer/notes

Contact:
For more details or a serial number to unlock the trial version please contact: Nova Fisher, nova@xara.com Tel: +44 1442 351035]]>
Wed, 16 Jul 2014 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2014-07-16/
<![CDATA[New Release Xara Web Designer 10 Premium for Creating new 'Supersites'.]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2014-04-24/

Xara announces a new release of Xara Web Designer 10 Premium, a programming-free web design tool. This new release features an innovative new publishing technique called Xara Supersites and also supports Responsive Web Design, a technique to create multiple layout variations of the same website optimised for different devices such as mobile, tablets and desktop computers.

Supersites
Xara’s single page ‘Supersites’ are an alternative way of publishing a website; instead of just being a separate set of web pages, with the typical  ‘click-wait-load’ way to navigate a website, a ‘supersite’ provides instant navigation between pages, along with slick animated page transitions - all designed to make a website stand-out from the crowd. In addition, users can choose to have all web pages, presented as a single scrolling list of pages, one below the other (ideal for pages to be viewed in a pdf style format), or arranged horizontally, one beside the other, with swipe actions (on touch devices) to navigate from page to page.  The website can be set to ‘fit to screen’ so that it smoothly and automatically resizes to fit any browser window.

Responsive Web Design
With the surge in popularity of browsing on mobiles and tablets it is becoming essential to create websites that are tailored to the needs of these visitors. Xara has created a responsive web design solution that allows users to create a single file of content containing multiple variants of their website at different widths, so that the website responds dynamically to the screen size of the viewer, presenting the design most appropriate to their device. Users have the ability to freely customize the layout of the variants to suit the target device size, eg. desktop, tablet and phone.
Web Designer 10 Premium exports a single HTML file that can dynamically change from one layout to another depending on the screen size of the viewer.

Smartshapes
Drawing something simple such as an arrow or a speech bubble on a website can be an extremely complex process for even the most skilled of designers. Xara SmartShapes are a new and innovative way to drawing aesthetically attractive shapes on your document, that require no knowledge of any drawing tools, and furthermore, they remain fully customizable. The library of SmartShapes will grow over time, but starts with text panels, speech bubbles, arrows and more.

This release also includes a new online content catalog, new templates and widgets, free 2GB of web hosting for Premium users, presentation creation usability improvements and various other improvements.

Charles Moir, founder and Managing Director of Xara said “We realised that, with the use of the latest HTML5 and CSS3, we could create a new type of website using hardware accelerated animated transitions. Supersites are a great attention-grabbing way of creating a website, while still being compatible with all modern web browsers. 

Creating Responsive Websites is normally a complex time consuming technical process. For the first time we have created a simple no-programming system where you can create alternative page arrangements for the same content. For example one layout can be for phones and another for tablets; even one for portrait and another for landscape arrangements. Web Designer 10 Premium does all the clever work to automatically show, and instantly switch (respond) to the changing browser size.”

Xara Web Designer  is an ideal choice for novices as well as professional designers, infact, anyone wanting a high quality website, without the need to know HTML coding, scripting or the usual technical jargon. The websites produced are compatible with all mobile and desktop browsers. The usual limitations of HTML web authoring simply do not exist in Xara Web Designer. Users have the freedom to use any font, to place anything anywhere on the page with pixel precision, the freedom to automatically repel text around irregular shapes or alpha-channel images and the freedom to draw vector graphics on the page, with transparency.

Example websites 
xaragroup.magix.net/vue2/ - A responsive website (the new Vue theme) with desktop, tablet and mobile variants
xaragroup.magix.net/menu2/ - A print style Supersite, designed for tablets & desktop browsers including landscape and portrait variants
xaragroup.magix.net/menu3/ - A scrolling version of the same Supersite
xaragroup.magix.net/menu1/ - A version of this Supersite with transitions, responsive to browser width (includes a mobile version) and tablet orientation
xaragroup.magix.net/islands1/ - A responsive Supersite with transitions and Scale to Fit
xaragroup.magix.net/WD10releasenotes1/ - The V10 Release Notes as a scrolling Supersite
xaragroup.magix.net/WD10releasenotes2/ - The V10 Release Notes as a Supersite with transitions

 

Xara Web Designer 10 Premium retails for £89.99, €99.99 and $99.99

An entry level (reduced feature) version, called simply Web Designer 10, is available for £39.99, €49.99 and $49.99, which is ideal for customers who are completely new to web design.

Existing Xara Web Designer users can upgrade for as little as £19.99, €29.99 and $29.99 (Web Designer 10) and £39.99, €49.99 and $49.99 (Premium version)

Xara Web Designer 10 operates on Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8 and 8.1 and requires a minimum 500MB of RAM and a minimum of 300MB hard-disk space.

 

More information and downloads

Please see the press center at  http://www.xara.com/presscenter/webdesigner
This includes press materials, graphics, screenshots, boxshots, product information and a full list of new features

 

Contact

For more details or a serial number to unlock the trial version please contact: Nova Fisher, nova@xara.com Tel: +44 1442 351035]]>
Thu, 24 Apr 2014 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2014-04-24/
<![CDATA[New Xara Designer Pro X9]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2013-07-09/ Xara is pleased to announce the release of their flagship program, Xara Designer Pro X9, the ultimate all-in-one creative tool that provides all the tools for a range of graphic design tasks that would normally require three or more separate ‘suite’ programs: illustration, photo editing, advanced page layout (Desktop Publishing), web graphics, websites and more.

By combining all the photo, graphics, page layout and web design tools in one program, Xara Designer ProX9 achieves a smaller memory footprint, faster performance, no program switching and reduced hardware requirements. This also has the advantage of an easier learning curve, high productivity and excellent value for money.

Xara Designer Pro X9 key features:
  • Combines the full functionality of the suite of Xara creative tools:
    • Web Designer 9 Premium for website creation and rapid website prototyping
    • Photo & Graphics Designer 9 for vector illustration and photo editing
    • Page & Layout Designer for printed documents, PDF and Xara's unique 'DTP for the web' document publishing
  • Includes both 32-bit and 64-bit versions for large memory configurations
  • Google font integration of 600+ fonts suitable for print, PDF and websites
  • Automatic image optimization for Retina or very hi-res displays on modern phones & tablets
  • Produces HTML 5 / CSS3 compatible websites
  • Advanced photo healing brush with content aware scale and zoom and color select and erase
  • Significant new page layout tools
  • 'DTP for the Web'. Pioneering production of precisely accurate 'brochure style' documents for the web, without using PDF
  • Hand-tuned assembly-language rendering engine for ultra-fast and responsive working environment
  • One program resulting in a smaller memory footprint, faster performance and reduced hardware requirements
Xara Designer Pro X9 is the world's highest performing graphics software with speeds enabling more complex and realistic graphics to be created more easily and in less time. It also supports multiple processors for even faster performance, and provides tools that might typically be required by professional designers such as PANTONE®, CMYK, color separations and PDF/X.

Charles Moir, founder of Xara, said:
"We take the view that the production of a creative document, whether it be printed, PDF or a website, is far more productive coming from a single program than separate ones. Why switch tool just because you want to create or edit some illustration on the page, or enhance a photo. Better that these are done in-situ on the page than out of context. Xara has always been renowned as being fast. By combining the suite of tools into one program, the result is not just lightning fast, but requires a fraction of the memory and PC power of other suites."

"This latest version of Xara Designer Pro X9 is a large step forward on all fronts. With significantly enhanced page layout (DTP) features, enhanced vector and photo tools and significantly more capable website creation features, and the unique 'DTP for the web' abilities, Xara Designer Pro X9 is the best, most powerful Designer tool we have ever created."

Xara Designer Pro X9 costs just $299 for US customers, £249 for UK (inc VAT) and €279 (inc VAT) for the EU. Upgrades are available from $99, £79 and €89. There are also ‘welcome’ discounts for Adobe® customers who are looking for a subscription-free alternative to Creative Cloud™.

It operates on Windows XP/Vista/7/8 and requires a minimum 500MB of RAM and 300MB of hard disc space.

For more information see - xara.com/designer-pro


More information and downloads
Please see the press center at xara.com/press-center/designer-pro
This includes press materials, graphics, screenshots, product information and a full list of new features.

Contact:
For more details or a serial number to unlock the trial version please contact: Nova Fisher, nova@xara.com Tel: +44 1442 351035]]>
Tue, 09 Jul 2013 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2013-07-09/
<![CDATA[New Xara Page & Layout Designer 9]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2013-07-02/ Xara is pleased to announce the launch of a new DTP product adding to their highly successful Xara Designer range. Xara Page & Layout Designer is a general purpose ‘document processor’. Everything needed to produce printed and PDF documents is included in this one single program - word processor, graphic design and photo editing.

Xara Page & Layout Designer is the perfect solution for creating a wide range of marketing materials to professionally present an individual, a business or organisation. It is ideal for creating brochures, product guides, flyers, reports, company stationary, posters etc to be printed or as PDFs. 

With Xara Page & Layout Designer it’s easy to create documents and marketing materials either by customizing one of the royalty-free templates from the wide range on offer or by creating your own from scratch. There are 3000+ graphics available for you to add additional impact. Templates provide impressive results quickly and easily with no graphic or technical skills required.

Xara Page & Layout Designer provides comprehensive text handling tools
  • Text Styles
  • Multi-column support
  • Google Fonts integration (600+ fonts, with advanced font picker an automatic download and install)
  • Headers & footers, repeating objects, page numbering styles
  • Word processor-like text flow with automatic page creation for easy long document handling
  • Multi-language spell checkers
  • Automatic repel text around irregular shapes or images
Other key features include:
  • Comprehensive vector drawing tools
  • Incredible 72,000 dpi working resolution
  • Fast and powerful photo editing
  • CMYK, PANTONE ® color support
  • Fast, high quality PDF and PDF/X support
  • A huge range of import and export types including Word .docx support
DTP for the Web - Most 'designer created' documents are disseminated via the web, typically as PDFs because traditionally that's the only way to ensure accurate fidelity of design. Xara Page & Layout Designer contains a direct and unique way to publish any document to the web, with full fidelity that they're calling 'Web Documents'.

Web Documents are multi-page documents, where the designer has total freedom of design in a similar manner to a print document created with DTP or page layout software. Xara Page & Layout Designer enable the designer to include all the things typically regarded as difficult, if not impossible, on the web (multi-column layouts, text repel around irregular shapes, a free mix of vector illustration, text and photos, and precisely accurate fonts and text layouts). Documents created are fully HTML compatible and fully WYSIWYG.

Charles Moir, Founder and Managing Director of Xara said, "For the first time designers can use page layout software with all the usual 'design for print' freedoms, but with the ability to publish these as totally accurate WYSIWYG web documents. No PDFs or plug-ins are required and its fully compatible with modern browsers including phones and tablets. Smartphone or tablet users can quickly swipe through a whole multi-page document, with design as complex as any print layout. No longer it is necessary to use one program for producing brochures or DTP material and then have all this design work re-created and re-purposed for the web. Xara brings DTP to the web without using PDFs."

Xara Page & Layout Designer is part of the Xara Designer family and, as such, there's an upgrade path to Xara Designer Pro where users can use the same files, designs, documents and artwork to produce websites.

Xara Page & Layout Designer costs just $89.99 for US customers with an introductory offer of $20 off, £69.99 for UK (inc VAT) and €69.99 (inc VAT) for the EU with introductory offers of £10 and €10 off.  

It operates on Windows XP/Vista/7/8 and requires a minimum 500MB of RAM and 300MB of hard disc space.

For more information see - xara.com/page-layout-designer


More information and downloads
Please see the press center at xara.com/press-center/page-layout-designer
This includes press materials, graphics, screenshots, product information and a full list of new features.

Contact:
For more details or a serial number to unlock the trial version please contact: Nova Fisher, nova@xara.com Tel: +44 1442 351035

Technology
The W3C and browser vendors are working on ways to introduce advanced layout capabilities to the web, beyond HTML5, with features such as multi-column support and text flow-around (see CSS regions and CSS multi-column). It's excepted it will be years before such features become widespread. but Xara Page & Layout Designer can do this right now, with the current web standards.]]>
Tue, 02 Jul 2013 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2013-07-02/
<![CDATA[Xara offers Salvation to Disgruntled Adobe Users]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2013-06-05/

Following the widespread unease at Adobe's move to force users to a subscription model, Xara is offering a special discount on their flagship creative design software 'Xara Designer Pro' to disgruntled Adobe users who want to find a suitable alternative.

Xara Designer Pro is often quoted in the press as having features that compare very favourably with Adobe’s Creative Suite applications, being faster, cheaper and easier to learn. Xara Designer Pro is a professional level graphic design tool, that offers integrated tools for illustration, DTP, photo editing and web design in a single package using a fraction of the memory resources of the Adobe Creative Suite of products.

Charles Moir, Managing Director, said: "You can understand from a business income point of view why a subscription revenue is desirable. However, what's good for Adobe, is not necessarily good for their customers. For many users, especially the smaller or independent freelance designer, the cost of a subscription is simply prohibitive. Adobe have upset swathes of users with their new pricing model.

For online services such as hosting, or purely web-based services we agree that a subscription model makes sense. But not for downloaded, installable desktop software.

Xara has always had a loyal enthusiastic customer base, many of them ex-Adobe users, so we're offering a special discounted price, to make it even more attractive for Adobe users to try Xara software.”

Xara Designer Pro is a one-off purchase - no subscription and no obligation to purchase future versions - it's yours to do with as you want, forever. It normally retails for $299, but is offered to registered owners of Adobe software for just $199. In addition to the 30 day no-quibble money back guarantee Xara is offering a free upgrade to the forthcoming Xara Designer Pro X9 due out shortly.

Xara Designer Pro is available for Windows operating systems. For more information see http://www.xara.com/graphics/alternative-software/

 

Contact:  

For more details or a serial number to unlock the trial version please contact: Nova Fisher, nova@xara.com Tel: +44 1442 351035

 

What the press say about Xara and Adobe

http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,199999-order,4/description.html

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews/software/3365672/xara-designer-pro-x-review/?tab=verdictTab#top

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews/software/3362396/xara-photo-graphic-designer-mx-2013-review/

http://www.graphics.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4982

]]>
Wed, 05 Jun 2013 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2013-06-05/
<![CDATA[New Xara Photo & Graphic Designer v9]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2013-05-21/ Xara today announced the release of the latest new version of their creative design software, Xara Photo and Graphics Designer v9.

Xara Photo & Graphic Designer is ideal for any graphics enthusiast, small company or academic user that requires the best value general purpose photo and graphic design tool.

The headline new features include:
  • Advanced Healing Brush – remove blemishes with a single click, or brush over an area to erase it.
  • New Mask and Selection tools. Easily paint, or draw a region or area to enhance, such as adjust the brightness, sharpness, color temperature etc.
  • Advanced background erase. Extract complex shapes such a people or objects in the foreground, and place them on alternate backgrounds.
  • Drag and drop re-colouring of clipart and vector groups.
  • Google Font support. Browse, preview and install any of the 600+ Google Fonts. Although Google Fonts were primarily designed to be web fonts, they are open source Truetype or OpenType fonts and Xara has built in a way to automatically download and install the font as a Windows font.
  • 11 new Photo Effects including Fake HDR, Polarized Grayscale and Color Splash to highlight a color.
  • New clipart including a wide range of ‘company logo’ designs
Most of Xara's photo editing tools are non-destructive. Also known as 'parametric image editing', this non-destructive technique allows you to adjust or even remove edits at any point in the future, without affecting the original image. Photo edits are stored as the parameters to be changed (such as brightness or blend levels) rather than the altered pixels. This is much faster, more powerful, more memory efficient, and allows near infinite Undo.

Xara Photo and Graphic Designer introduces some really advanced photo editing features. An automatic background erase that normally takes hours of careful manual masking (or would be impossible), can be done in seconds. The Healing Brush is built on what Xara believe to be the most advanced intelligent 'fill in' algorithms anywhere. The new Mask and Selection tools make it easier than ever to apply edits to specific areas, and to have those edits seamlessly blended into your photo.

Charles Moir, Managing Director of Xara said: "As the name suggests 'Photo & Graphic Designer' is more than just another photo editor. It's one of the most advanced and powerful vector graphics programs available, and seamlessly combines all the photo editing features you're likely to need. Why should you have to use one program for general vector 'artwork' style graphics and another for photo editing, when you can get one, really fast, really easy-to-use graphics program that does it all? It's simply the most advanced photo and graphics editing tool available, for the money."

Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 9 costs just $89.99 for US customers, £69.99 for UK (inc VAT) and €69.99 (inc VAT) for the EU.
Upgrades from v8 to Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 9 cost $45 for US customers, £35 for UK (inc VAT) and €35 (inc VAT) for the EU

It operates on Windows XP/Vista/7/8  

For more information see - xara.com
Demonstration pages of the new features - xaragroup.magix.net/PGD9Demo1/


More information and downloads
Please see the press center at www.xara.com/press-center/photo-graphic-designer/
This includes press materials, graphics, screenshots, product information and a full list of new features.

For detailed release notes see www.xara.com/photo-graphic-designer/notes

Contact:
For more details or a serial number to unlock the trial version please contact: Nova Fisher, nova@xara.com Tel: +44 1442 351035]]>
Tue, 21 May 2013 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2013-05-21/
<![CDATA[New Xara Photo & Graphic Designer v9]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2013-05-21/ Xara today announced the release of the latest new version of their creative design software, Xara Photo and Graphics Designer v9.

Xara Photo & Graphic Designer is ideal for any graphics enthusiast, small company or academic user that requires the best value general purpose photo and graphic design tool.

The headline new features include:
  • Advanced Healing Brush – remove blemishes with a single click, or brush over an area to erase it.
  • New Mask and Selection tools. Easily paint, or draw a region or area to enhance, such as adjust the brightness, sharpness, color temperature etc.
  • Advanced background erase. Extract complex shapes such a people or objects in the foreground, and place them on alternate backgrounds.
  • Drag and drop re-colouring of clipart and vector groups.
  • Google Font support. Browse, preview and install any of the 600+ Google Fonts. Although Google Fonts were primarily designed to be web fonts, they are open source Truetype or OpenType fonts and Xara has built in a way to automatically download and install the font as a Windows font.
  • 11 new Photo Effects including Fake HDR, Polarized Grayscale and Color Splash to highlight a color.
  • New clipart including a wide range of ‘company logo’ designs
Most of Xara's photo editing tools are non-destructive. Also known as 'parametric image editing', this non-destructive technique allows you to adjust or even remove edits at any point in the future, without affecting the original image. Photo edits are stored as the parameters to be changed (such as brightness or blend levels) rather than the altered pixels. This is much faster, more powerful, more memory efficient, and allows near infinite Undo.

Xara Photo and Graphic Designer introduces some really advanced photo editing features. An automatic background erase that normally takes hours of careful manual masking (or would be impossible), can be done in seconds. The Healing Brush is built on what Xara believe to be the most advanced intelligent 'fill in' algorithms anywhere. The new Mask and Selection tools make it easier than ever to apply edits to specific areas, and to have those edits seamlessly blended into your photo.

Charles Moir, Managing Director of Xara said: "As the name suggests 'Photo & Graphic Designer' is more than just another photo editor. It's one of the most advanced and powerful vector graphics programs available, and seamlessly combines all the photo editing features you're likely to need. Why should you have to use one program for general vector 'artwork' style graphics and another for photo editing, when you can get one, really fast, really easy-to-use graphics program that does it all? It's simply the most advanced photo and graphics editing tool available, for the money."

Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 9 costs just $89.99 for US customers, £69.99 for UK (inc VAT) and €69.99 (inc VAT) for the EU.
Upgrades from v8 to Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 9 cost $45 for US customers, £35 for UK (inc VAT) and €35 (inc VAT) for the EU

It operates on Windows XP/Vista/7/8  

For more information see - xara.com
Demonstration pages of the new features - xaragroup.magix.net/PGD9Demo1/


More information and downloads
Please see the press center at www.xara.com/press-center/photo-graphic-designer/
This includes press materials, graphics, screenshots, product information and a full list of new features.

For detailed release notes see www.xara.com/photo-graphic-designer/notes

Contact:
For more details or a serial number to unlock the trial version please contact: Nova Fisher, nova@xara.com Tel: +44 1442 351035]]>
Tue, 21 May 2013 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2013-05-21/
<![CDATA[New Release Xara Web Designer 9 Premium - the Jargon-Free Way to Create a Website.]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2013-04-03/ Xara announces the release of Xara Web Designer 9, a web authoring tool for Windows, aimed at both graphic designers and anyone wanting a high quality website, without the need to know HTML coding, scripting or the usual technical jargon.

The usual limitations of HTML web authoring simply do not exist in Xara Web Designer. Users have the freedom to use any font, to place anything anywhere on the page with pixel precision, the freedom to automatically repel text around irregular shapes or alpha-channel images, the freedom to draw vector graphics on the page, with transparency, and for all of this to just work.

Xara Web Designer 9 Premium comes many innovative new features:
  • HiDPi or Retina compatible websites - automatically
  • Direct integration of 620+ Google Web Fonts
  • HTML 5 and CSS3 support ( websites are automatically backwards compatible with older browsers)
  • Improved Google Analytics integration
  • A 32bit and a 64-bit version for 64-bit Windows. No more memory limits.
  • Bundled web hosting, with simple no-FTP-jargon publishing. ¹
  • A Free top level domain for one year. (e.g. a .com, .co.uk or .de, etc)
  • 100+ new business-specific website templates available ²

The world is rapidly moving to HiDPI or Retina screens.  Creating hi-resolution compatible websites the traditional way can be technically complicated and time consuming. With Xara Web Designer it's as simple as a single check-box. It automatically creates two versions of all graphics and photos, and corresponding script code so that the right image resolution is shown on each device.

Charles Moir, founder and Managing Director of Xara said, "The dual nature of Xara Web Designer separates it from the myriad of simple website creators.  We have professional website and graphic designers who use it as the fastest way to create custom designs. It's the perfect rapid prototyping tool, but unlike Photoshop, you get a real working website, not just a mock-up. For everyone else, the template approach means you can take one of the hundreds of website templates and customize the content, fonts and colours to create a unique final design.”

Web Designer is Xara's most popular product and this version 9 is a big step forward. With automatic Retina compatibility, support for leading edge features such as Google fonts, HTML5 and CSS3, super-smooth hardware accelerated transition effects such as pop-ups, and all websites being compatible with mobile and desktop browsers makes Xara Web Designer an ideal choice for novices as well as professional designers. 

Xara Web Designer 9 Premium retails for $99.99 / £89.99 / €99.99
An entry level (reduced feature) version, called simply Web Designer 9, is available for $49.99 / £39.99 / €49.99, ideal for customers who are completely new to web design.
Existing Xara Web Designer users can upgrade for as little as $29.99 / £19.99 / €29.99

Xara Web Designer 9 operates on Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8 and requires a minimum 500MB of RAM and a minimum of 300MB hard-disk space.

Additional information:
¹ Web Designer Premium customers gets 2Gbytes of free hosting space and a free top level domain for one year, provided by MAGIX Online World. All customers can get 500Mbytes free hosting 'forever' with no subscription.

² In addition to 20 new general purpose website themes bundled with this new release, we have made available more than 100 business specific template designs, as ready-to-use websites (just edit the contents to suit) including relevant stock photography. Web Designer 9 Premium customers can select one design for free, additional business designs costs just $15

³ Web Designer is available under both the Xara and MAGIX retail brands.

 

 

More information and downloads

Please see the press center at  http://www.xara.com/presscenter/webdesigner
This includes press materials, graphics, screenshots, boxshots, product information and a full list of new features

 

Contact

For more details or a serial number to unlock the trial version please contact: Nova Fisher, nova@xara.com Tel: +44 1442 351035]]>
Wed, 03 Apr 2013 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2013-04-03/
<![CDATA[New Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 2013 and Xara Designer Pro X (version 8)]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2012-05-14/

Xara today announced the availability of their new version 8 Designer products - Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 2013 and Xara Designer Pro X.

Both products are super-fast, easy-to-use single integrated programs that provide all the tools for a range of graphic design tasks that would normally require three or more separate ‘suite’ programs; iIllustration, photo editing, advanced page layout, web graphics and animations – and in the case of Designer Pro X building complete websites and online presentations.

Xara Photo & Graphic Designer and Xara Designer Pro X are the world's highest performing graphics software titles, with their speed enabling more complex and realistic graphics to be created more easily and in less time.

Xara Photo & Graphic Designer is ideal for any graphics enthusiast, small company or academic user that requires the best value general purpose photo and graphics design tool.

Xara Designer Pro X is the flagship of the Xara product line, the ultimate all-in-one creative tool. As well as the website design features, it provides tools that might typically be required by professional designers such as PANTONE®, CMYK, color separations and PDF/X. It also supports multiple processors for even faster performance.

New features in Xara Photo & Graphic Designer and Xara Designer Pro X include:

  • Powerful Color Erase /Selection to enhance (change color, adjust brightness, blur, etc) or make parts of photos transparent based on the selected color.
  • Photo hue adjustment to change the color tint of any part of a photo.
  • An innovative new Shape Erase Tool that can perform both vector erasing or path adjustment, as well as 'soft mask' painting to perform detailed soft-edged erasing of vector, text and photo objects.
  • A new Text Styles feature that offers an efficient and powerful way of controlling the global appearance of text. Generates CSS compatible styles.
  • New Inline Graphics for embedding symbols and icons into text.
  • Many new Template Designs including a selection of modern new print templates, such as greeting cards, brochures, business cards, CD covers and certificates, plus many new categorised clipart designs.
  • Many other Photo Tool improvements and additions including the integrated Panorama stitching tool, a more efficient ‘Optimize all images’ function and ability to optimize images upon upload.
  • Media Exchange. All titles in the MAGIX/Xara range can share media files with each other and with some important third party services such as Flickr and Facebook.

In addition to the above features Xara Designer Pro X includes:

  • A Shape Builder Tool to ‘paint’ onto an existing shape to enlarge it, add new areas or adjust the shape or outline. This compliments the new Erase Tool to provide two basic new shape editing tools, that are entirely vector in nature (resolution independent, fully editable) that can edit vector outlines of shapes, or provide soft air-brush like painting and erasing.
  • Smart object positioning and page resizing which automatically adjusts the size of a web page and position of objects as you enter more text
  • Embedded fonts – website creators are no longer limited to a small list of websafe fonts, but can use just about any font (assuming the font allows website embedding).
  • New resizable JavaScript Widgets, such a smooth photo slideshows and an interactive Chart Widget for embedding high quality charts into documents or websites.
  • MP3 player widget - just drop an MP3 audio file onto the page, and this will embed a fully cross-platform compatible audio player (including iOS for iPad and iPhone) into your website. This joins the existing MP4 player that does the same for MP4 video files.
  • Create numbered lists and graphical bullet points - using Xara's vector graphics capabilities you can now design your own graphics for use in numbered and bulleted lists.

Managing Director, Charles Moir says “The Adobe approach of selling separate, expensive programs to perform the common creative editing operations is fundamentally wrong in our opinion. Modern documents (whether printed, PDF or web document) should not need separate tools to edit the text, the graphics or the photos. This is not just a costly process, in time and money, but totally inefficient.  Xara's approach offers not just dramatically better value, but we believe it makes the software considerably faster and easier to understand and learn.“

Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 2013 costs just $89 for US customers, £69 for UK (inc VAT) and €69 (inc VAT) for the EU.

Xara Designer Pro X costs just $299 for US customers, £249 for UK (inc VAT) and €279 (inc VAT) for the EU.

Upgrades from v7 to Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 2013 cost $45 for US customers, £35 for UK (inc VAT) and €35 (inc VAT) for the EU

Upgrades from v7 to Xara Designer Pro X cost $99 for US customers, £79 for UK (inc VAT) and €89 (inc VAT) for the EU

It operates on Windows XP/Vista/7

For more information see - xara.com/products/designer
Example website tutorial - designer.xara.com


More information and downloads

Please see the press center at xara.com/presscenter/designer
This includes press materials, graphics, screenshots, boxshots, product information and a full list of new features.


Contact

For more details or a serial number to unlock the trial version please contact: Nova Fisher, nova@xara.com Tel: +44 1442 351035]]>
Mon, 14 May 2012 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2012-05-14/
<![CDATA[Xara releases new Web Designer MX (v8)]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2012-03-27/ Xara today released version 8 of its popular Web Designer software. Xara Web Designer MX (v8) together with a more advanced version Xara Web Designer MX Premium (v8) combine the advantages of customizable design templates and free-form, anything-anywhere web page design with flexible and innovative options for creating modern, multimedia websites. It offers unlimited possibilities for text layout, graphic design, image optimization and publishing, all in one easy-to-use program.

All aspects of the design can be customized. Users can re-arrange all page elements, add their own text, graphics and photos anywhere on the page. It's genuinely WYSIWYG, what you see in Xara Web Designer MX is exactly what you get on the web page. Xara Web Designer MX provides fast single-click re-coloring of all graphical elements throughout the entire website and uniquely amongst all web authoring tools there’s advanced text wrap around irregular shaped graphics and photos. The Designs Gallery includes a collection of widgets to add more dynamic functionality to the website. Site upload is covered too and there's even a free web hosting offer from MAGIX Online World!

The MX stands for Media Exchange whereby Xara Web Designer can exchange any graphic or photo with any other installed MAGIX MX application such as MAGIX Movie Edit Pro MX and MAGIX Online Albums, as well as Flickr and Facebook.

Xara Web Designer MX offers a host of additional exciting new and innovative features that enable both novice and professional web designers to quickly create and optimize content for greater impact on the web.

The time-saving workflow and productivity features in Xara Web Designer MX Premium will inspire designers and developers to easily publish professional websites with creative content for maximum impact. It is the first program to provide automatic font embedding, thus removing the font limits that have bugged designers. This provides a dramatic leap forward as Xara Web Designer has overcome the requirement to encode fonts in special formats and upload them to the server with the use of special JavaScript and HTML.

Both versions include enhancements that make it even easier to create a website in Xara Web Designer.

New v8 features in both Xara Web Designer MX and Xara Web Designer MX Premium include:

  • A new text styles feature that offers an efficient 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 and page resize ensures that all of your content is adjusted to fit neatly on the page when you add new content.
  • New inline graphics for embedding symbols and icons into text.
  • Many new page and graphic templates and over 3000 new categorised clipart designs
  • Many improvements and additions such as in-document pop up link checker, resizable color editor, reposition or re-order multiple pages together, fast optimize all images on the page, photo enhance the hue, new key shortcuts, new widgets and many more.
New v8 features in Xara Web Designer MX Premium:
  • Embedded fonts – website creators can now use just about any font (assuming the font allows website embedding) and Xara Web Designer will create the special font and script required and automatically upload it to the website.
  • New photo transition and improved slideshow Widgets. These no-Flash Widgets are compatible with all modern browsers including phones and tablets.
  • New interactive Chart Widgets. Enter your CSV data and create a resizable interactive chart, line graph or pie chart. Again this no-Flash solution is compatible with all modern browser and devices
  • Create graphical bullet points and numbers – using Xara’s vector graphics capabilities you can now design your own graphics for use in numbered and bulleted lists, greatly enhancing the appearance of lists, especially valuable in Web Designer’s presentation feature.
  • Many other improvements and additions such as a Live effects tool that introduces support for Photoshop plug-ins (and a bundle of over 30 plug-ins), support for SVG, OpenOffice Impress (.odp) and PowerPoint (.pptx) imports and updated camera RAW import.
Managing Director, Charles Moir said, “With each new release we're making Web Designer not just more powerful, but also easier to use. With a growing number of professional web designers now using Xara Web Designer exclusively for all their website creation we appeal not just to graphic designers. The improved template handling makes it even easier for absolute beginners to create great looking websites. And with the free web hosting provided by MAGIX this is truly a complete web package. Improved text handling, great new Widgets, the world's easiest 'font embedding' solution, and new template make this the best Web Designer release yet.”

Xara Web Designer MX costs just $49.99 and Xara Web Designer MX Premium costs just $99.99. Existing Xara Web Designer users can upgrade to MX v8 for as little as $29.99.

Xara Web Designer MX operates on Windows XP, Vista and 7 and requires 500MB of RAM and 600MB hard-disk space.

For more information see www.xara.com/webdesigner

 

 

More information and downloads

Please see the press center at  http://www.xara.com/presscenter/webdesigner
This includes press materials, graphics, screenshots, boxshots, product information and a full list of new features

 

Contact

For more details or a serial number to unlock the trial version please contact: Nova Fisher, nova@xara.com Tel: +44 1442 351035]]>
Tue, 27 Mar 2012 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2012-03-27/
<![CDATA[Xara Celebrates its 30th Anniversary]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2011-08-19/

Xara Celebrates its 30th Anniversary with 30 Days of Birthday Presents!

Xara is celebrating its 30th anniversary with a series of very special offers for new and existing customers.

For all 30 days there will be birthday giveaways with all purchases of Xara’s key titles. For example there will be 3 photos a day for 7 days from Fotolia, worth $210 or more (customer’s choice from Fotolia’s subscription collection of over 12 million quality photos) and free photo clipart with all new purchases of Xara Designer Pro.  Xara Photo & Graphic Designer will also include free Fotolia photos, Xara 3D Maker free fonts, and Xara Web Designer will come with free web page and website templates.

And there will be plenty of other offers during the month, including upgrade deals and a very special offer on the MAGIX music and video titles now sold by Xara.

Xara  was formed in 1981 as Computer Concepts, making it one of the world’s oldest continuously trading software companies. Its first highly successful software, the word-processor Wordwise, secured its place as the major software developer for the Acorn BBC micro, one of the first micro computers in the world.  Since then Xara has developed a wide range of products covering the whole realm of publishing and graphics software, constantly building on its reputation for speed, quality and reliability, currently supporting products used by more than 2 ½  million customers worldwide.

“I have been a loyal user since 1996, and Xara keeps getting better and better.  The programs offer a solid set of tools for vector and bitmap editing and I typically use them for DTP, web design and compositing. Xara unseated Corel as my primary “go to” package for that type of work.” Says Tony Thomas, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief, Tony Thomas' TechTrends

Xara has a particularly strong technology and innovation history. It pioneered many of the graphics technologies and techniques now standard in the industry today such as anti-aliased vector graphics, vector transparency, object feathering, etc. Many of its user interface techniques have been adopted by the industry.

With over 100 software titles, many of them internationally successful, Xara is truly a formidable software company.

Charles Moir, Founder and MD of Xara Group Ltd said, "When I started this business, leading edge computers had 16Kbytes of memory - and that was enough for me to create a fully functional word processor which was one of the company's most successful early products.

At the time it was impossible to imagine desktop computers with 10,000 times more RAM, and storage and processors running 1000 times faster. The fact that the phone in your pocket can now have all this shows what an incredible ride the last 30 years has been.

Xara as a software developer has survived those 30 years making us one of the very few companies still in existence from those early days. The values that made our products stand-out then are exactly the same as now - the best value, the best performance, and the easiest to use software you can buy."

For more information on the offers see  - http://www.xara.com/30years

For the complete company history see – http://www.xara.com/history

 

EDITORS' NOTE

 

For more information or software review copies please contact:  

Nova Fisher, nova@xara.com Tel: +44 1442 351035

]]>
Fri, 19 Aug 2011 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2011-08-19/
<![CDATA[New Releases: Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 7 and Xara Designer Pro 7]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2011-05-25/ Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 7 and Xara Designer Pro 7 both offer a single application for every type of creative or artistic document creation. Instead of requiring three or more separate programs to edit photos, or create web graphics, illustrations, or page layouts, Xara Designer is one super-fast, easy-to-use program that does it all. They are the world's highest performing graphics software titles with their speed enabling more complex and realistic graphics to be created more easily and in less time.

Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 7 and Xara Designer Pro 7 are powerful, flexible bitmap and vector graphics programs, making them perfect for any design that combines drawing, photos and text, from simple button or logo designs to incredibly detailed illustrations, posters, multi-page brochures, photo compositions and web graphics and they can produce animations too, including animated GIF, AVI and Flash.

Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 7 is ideal for any graphics enthusiast, small company or academic user that requires a single general purpose photo and graphics design tool.

Xara Designer Pro 7 includes all the same features, but adds a range of advanced Website design features, plus support for tools that might typically be required by professional designers such as PANTONE®,  CMYK colors, color separations and PDF/X. It also supports multiple processors for even faster performance. Xara Designer Pro 7 is the ultimate all-in-one creative tool for everything from advanced illustrations, DTP and PDF documents to web graphics and websites.
 
New features in Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 7 and Xara Designer Pro 7 include new fly-out galleries with advanced docking options, a new magnetic snap feature that makes positioning and alignment of items on the page much easier, cut/copy/paste of whole pages including their attributes and layers within and between documents and an amazing photo erase feature that seamlessly erases objects from photos and replaces the space with an appropriate background sampled from other parts of the photo.

Xara Designer Pro 7 is Xara’s top of the line product that also includes all of the new features of the recently released Xara Web Designer Premium 7. These include the ability to create web slideshows for web presentations and Webinars, a new range of advanced photo and text animation ‘eye-catcher’ widgets, footers which automatically move as the page is resized, the ability to anchor graphics and photos into flowing text, automatic updating of repeating objects such as NavBars, headers and footers, and a new ‘live copy’ feature that enables the creation of multiple ‘live’ copies of vector or photo objects which all automatically update when any one is edited.

“Xara software has always been regarded as the easiest graphics software to learn, despite offering the highest performance. Xara Designer Pro 7, our flagship product, carries on the tradition by adding new innovations that will appeal to our professional users, as well as useability enhancements to make the software even easier for our growing audience of novice customers.” says Managing Director Charles Moir.
 
Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 7 costs just $89 for US customers, £69 for UK (inc VAT) and €69 (inc VAT) for the EU.
Xara Designer Pro 7 costs just $299 for US customers, £249 for UK (inc VAT) and €279 (inc VAT) for the EU.
Upgrades to Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 7 cost $39 for US customers, £29 for UK (inc VAT) and €35 (inc VAT) for the EU
Upgrades to Xara Designer Pro 7 cost $99 for US customers, £79 for UK (inc VAT) and €89 (inc VAT) for the EU.

It operates on Windows XP/Vista/7

For more information see - xara.com/products/designer
Example website tutorial - designer.xara.com


More information and downloads

Please see the press center at xara.com/presscenter/designer
This includes press materials, graphics, screenshots, boxshots, product information and a full list of new features.


Contact

For more details or a serial number to unlock the trial version please contact: Nova Fisher, nova@xara.com Tel: +44 1442 351035]]>
Wed, 25 May 2011 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2011-05-25/
<![CDATA[Xara announces the launch of Xara Web Designer 7]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2011-03-23/

Xara today released Xara Web Designer 7 and a new more advanced version called Xara Web Designer 7 Premium.  Xara Web Designer allows free-form, anything-anywhere web page design and is perfect for creating graphical webpages containing text, graphics, photos, widgets and Flash. Xara Web Designer Premium offers a host of additional exciting new and innovative features that enable novices and web designers to quickly create and optimize content for greater impact on the web.

Xara Web Designer 7 includes customizable web graphics, web page and website template designs plus tools for creating vector graphics, for photo editing (an integrated ultra-fast, non-destructive photo tool), and for advanced text layout including text wrap around objects and a check-as-you-type spell checker.

All aspects of the design can be customized. Users can re-arrange all page elements, add their own text, graphics and photos, anywhere on the page. It's genuinely WYSIWYG, what you see in Xara Web Designer is exactly what you get on the web page. Xara Web Designer provides fast single-click re-coloring of all graphical elements throughout the entire website. The Designs Gallery includes a collection of widgets to add more dynamic functionality to the website. Site upload is covered too and there's even a free web hosting offer from MAGIX Online World! 

Many improvements have been made to make it even easier to create a website in either version. For example, the user interface has been enhanced for page management and gallery docking, there’s a new ‘magic’ snap for object alignment, footers now automatically move as the page is resized, graphics and photos can be anchored into flowing text, and repeating objects – such as NavBars, headers and footers – automatically update throughout the document with just a single edit.

There are many new template designs and customizable graphics. Web pages can now be edited in single or multi-page view, and previewed instantly in the 5 most popular web browsers. Favicons are easy to add to web pages and for extra promotional exposure users can add their website to the Web Designer Website Gallery.

Xara Web Designer 7 Premium offers some more advanced web and graphic design functions. For example it is easy to add a wide range of animated effects to a website. With Premium you can create effective flash animations, and/or Javascript based animated transitions can be added to any page link or pop-up layer. Websites can be made more eye-catching and dynamic with a range of new smart widgets that enable slick photo and text animations to be added to web pages without the need for any coding knowledge. Other Premium benefits include the automatic creation of Sitemaps for search engines on export, and support for HTML5 video.

Xara Web Designer 7 includes many customizable graphic templates and a good set of basic drawing tools, but Xara Web Designer 7 Premium includes a range of additional graphic creation tools for those who wish to create their own graphics from scratch. These include freehand and quick-shape drawing tools, shadow, bevel and mould tools, 3D extrude and feathering. Plus additional photo features such as red-eye removal and content aware scaling.

Xara Web Designer 7 Premium takes web authoring and publishing to a new level with capabilities such as an innovative web slide-show style presentation feature, suitable for both website presentations and remote presentations to an invited audience.

Managing Director, Charles Moir said, “With V7 we're now releasing two new versions of Web Designer, already one of the most successful Xara products of all time.  We've improved dozens of features, and updated the user-interface to make it even easier to create beautiful websites. The new Premium version includes a real innovation: you can create PowerPoint-like presentations for the web, either as a stand-alone presentation (the viewer can step through at their own speed) or as a remote 'webinar' where  one person controls the presentation for invited guest viewers.  And unlike PowerPoint or other Webinar software, there's no download required, or software to install in order to view the animated presentation - it's just a web page!”

Xara Web Designer 7 combines time-saving workflow and productivity features with easy to use creative tools, and enables designers and developers to publish a truly professional website with creative content and maximum impact.

Xara Web Designer 7 costs just $49.99 or €49.99 (inc VAT) for EU and £39.99 (inc VAT) for the UK.
Xara Web Designer 7 Premium costs just $99.99 or €99.99 (inc VAT) for EU and £89.99 (inc VAT) for the UK.
Existing Xara Web Designer 6 users can upgrade for $39.99, €39.99 (incl VAT) and £29.99 (incl VAT).
It operates on Windows XP, Vista and7 and requires 256MB of RAM and 400MB hard-disk space.

For more information see www.xara.com/webdesigner

 

More information and downloads

Please see the press center at  http://www.xara.com/presscenter/webdesigner
This includes press materials, graphics, screenshots, boxshots, product information and a full list of new features

 

Contact

For more details or a serial number to unlock the trial version please contact: Nova Fisher, nova@xara.com Tel: +44 1442 351035]]>
Wed, 23 Mar 2011 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2011-03-23/
<![CDATA[Xara announces the launch of Xara 3D Maker 7]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2011-02-16/

Xara 3D Maker 7 is designed to create the highest quality 3D text and graphics, such as headings, logos, movie titles and buttons. It's the perfect way to add impact to your web pages, mailshots, presentations and movie opening and closing credits (all images are fully anti-aliased for that smooth, professional quality).

Xara3D Maker 7 can also create awesome 3D animations in seconds - GIFs, AVIs and simple Flash movie sequences - and you can even enhance your desktop by saving any animation as a screensaver! Xara3D Maker is extremely popular with Photoshop owners for creating 3D typographic effects for use in Photoshop.

Version 7 includes some more great new animation types and 7 new bevel styles. Plus there are new controls over X & Y position and viewpoint, a wireframe mode, some essential updating for Win 7 compatibility and automatic save and restore of the current design on program exit and start-up, or on Windows shutdown.

There’s a new ‘scroll’ animation type, designed to create dramatic animating 3D ‘credits’ for the start or end of your movies. The text can be scrolled vertically, horizontally or into and out of the screen, with full control over the speed. There’s a second new ‘scroll in/out’ animation type, that includes separate control over how the text enters and leaves the screen - so for example it could scroll in slowly from the right, hesitate and then exit quickly upwards!

“Traditional 3D programs are notoriously difficult to use and understand. But Xara 3D Maker is different – it is very simple to use! Unlike many 3D programs that take an age to learn and understand, Xara 3D Maker has been created to perform one job - create stunning 3D text headings - and it performs that job with style, speed and simplicity. Xara 3D Maker is one of our most popular products; it's affordable for anyone wanting to create high quality 3D headings and logos in seconds” said Charles Moir, Managing Director of Xara.

Xara 3D Maker 7 costs just $39.99 for US customers, £29.99 for UK (inc VAT) and €29.99 (inc VAT) for the EU.

Existing users can upgrade for $19.99, £14.99 (incl VAT) and €14.99 (incl VAT)

It operates on Windows XP/Vista/7

For more information see - xara.com/products/xara3d
For some examples see  xara.com/products/xara3d/examples/

 

More information and downloads

Please see the press center at  http://www.xara.com/presscenter/3dmaker
This includes press materials, graphics, screenshots, boxshots, product information and a full list of new features

 

Contact

For more details or a serial number to unlock the trial version please contact: Nova Fisher, nova@xara.com Tel: +44 1442 351035]]>
Wed, 16 Feb 2011 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2011-02-16/
<![CDATA[Two New Releases - Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 6 and Xara Designer Pro 6]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2010-06-16/ Xara Xtreme has had a major makeover for Version 6 and there are new names to go with the new features and new look! Xara Xtreme is now Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 6 and the new feature packed Xara Xtreme Pro becomes Xara Designer Pro 6.

Xara Photo & Graphic Designer and Xara Designer Pro are the world's highest performing graphics software titles—by a large margin. Their speed enables more complex and realistic graphics to be created more easily and in less time.

Both products are very flexible with vector or bitmap graphics, making them perfect for any design that combines drawing, photos and text, from simple button or logo designs to incredibly detailed illustrations, posters, multi-page brochures, photo compositions and web graphics. And they can produce animations too, including animated GIF and Flash.

One of the unique selling points of the Xara Designer titles is that they offer a single application for every type of creative or artistic document creation. Instead of requiring three or more separate programs to edit photos, or create web graphics, illustrations or page layouts, Xara Designer is one super-fast, easy-to-use program that does it all.

Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 6 is ideal for any graphics enthusiast, small company or academic user that requires a single general purpose photo and graphics design tool. Xara Designer Pro 6 includes all the same features, but adds a range of more advanced website design features, plus support for tools that might typically be required by professional designers such as PANTONE®, CMYK colors, color separations and PDF/X. It also supports multiple processors for even faster performance.

New features in these releases include:
  • A totally new and modern application appearance and user interface
  • Innovative new photo features including Content Aware Zoom
  • New photo editing options including selected-area photo enhancements using the mask, new clone tools and curves brightness tool
  • Additions to the world class transparency support, with new a ‘enhance’ transparency type and vector-based transparency masks
  • Enhanced graphic tablet support with powerful pressure profile controls and real-time variable width drawing
  • Extended page layout capabilities, including an enhanced Page & Layer Gallery
  • Many new web graphic and presentation templates and (Pro only) website templates
  • Xara Developer Pro also has significant additions to the web design capabilities including easy NavBars & DHTML menus, enhanced Widget integration and new Widget library, powerful new publish options and a free hosting offer.

"With a dramatic new look and user interface the Designer 6 series is the fastest, easiest and most powerful we've produced. It includes a range of photo editing enhancements including our unique Content Aware Zoom that intelligently scales the important content of photos. This is a world first."

"It's always struck me as wrong that you should have to use separate programs for what are very closely related creative activities, such as vector illustration, photo work, and page layout or website layout. Xara Designer Pro 6 is a single program that can be used for everything from really advanced vector design work, to photo editing and page layout. It has world-class PDF support, and it’s one of the best tools for web graphics. Xara Designer Pro 6 provides the most flexible page layout of any web authoring product. It offers website creation for designers, not programmers." says MD Charles Moir.

Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 6 costs just $89 for US customers, £69 for UK (inc VAT) and €69 (inc VAT) for the EU. Xara Designer Pro 6 costs $299 for US customers, £249 for UK (inc VAT) and €279 (inc VAT) for the EU. It operates on Windows XP/Vista/7

For more information see - xara.com/products/designer
Example website tutorial - designer.xara.com


More information and downloads

Please see the press center at xara.com/presscenter/designer
This includes press materials, graphics, screenshots, boxshots, product information and a full list of new features.


Contact

For more details or a serial number to unlock the trial version please contact: Nova Fisher, nova@xara.com Tel: +44 1392 209509 ]]>
Wed, 16 Jun 2010 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2010-06-16/
<![CDATA[Xara launches MAGIX software in their online shop]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2010-05-24/

The MAGIX brand has become known for its economically priced multimedia software for consumers. This reputation, known the world over, is more than deserved. Now, the MAGIX products will be available for the first time on the Xara international websites. Initially, there will be six of the most popular MAGIX products available

Movie Edit Pro 16 Plus  - video editor to produce perfect high definition videos

Music Maker 16  - taking the user from beginner to advanced hobby music producer

Audio Cleaning Lab 16  - record, edit and restore recordings from LPs, tapes and MP3s

MP3 deluxe 16 – organize your music collection and find any title with a quick search

PhotoStory on CD & DVD 9 delux  - for a perfect movie slideshows in 3 minutes

PX Check & Tuning 2010 – tune up with intelligent testing and maintenance for a faster PC.

Xara, one of the oldest UK software developers, was acquired by MAGIX AG in January 2007 and operates as a wholly owned subsidiary. Consequently, Xara are now able to offer the MAGIX products to its customers.


Editors’ notes:

To obtain a review copy, or for more details on the MAGIX product range please contact:

Europe:
Tom Schwarzer, PR & Communications Manager,
www.magix.com
email:  tschwarzer@magix.net
Tel:    +49 30 29 39 23 31

USA:
Adam Zarboni, PR & Communications Manager, North America
www.magix.com
email:  azarboni@magix.net
Tel:    +1 (905) 470-0400 x.225

To obtain a review copy, or for more details on the Xara products please contact:
Nova Fisher
Communications Manager, Xara Group
www.xara.com
email: nova@xara.com
Tel: +44 1392 209509 

]]>
Mon, 24 May 2010 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2010-05-24/
<![CDATA[New Xara Web Designer 6 for Stunning Graphical Websites]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2010-03-25/ Launched today is Xara Web Designer 6 which goes beyond the realms of other website builders. Unlike other website builders, Xara Web Designer is the only truly free-form WYSIWYG web design tool, that allows complete freedom of web page design including the the ability to draw shapes. You can position text, graphics and photos anywhere on the page, at any size or angle, overlaid or with transparency and Web Designer will produce a pixel accurate, perfect web page.

Xara Web Designer 6 can do things that are regarded as near impossible with other web-authoring software, such as repel text around irregular shapes and photos and the ability to draw anything from simple shapes to complex company logos and graphics using its advanced vector graphic tools. Xara Web Designer 6 includes automatic optimization of graphics that not only produce optimized resolution images, but automatically detects repeating elements across the website thus producing faster, more optimized websites.

Aimed at graphic designers who do not want to learn HTML or scripting languages, it's also the perfect 'rapid website prototyping' tool for graphic designers and webmasters. The simplicity of Xara Web Designer means that even the beginner can create professional looking websites with ease.

"Xara Web Designer 6 provides no programming tools, no script editing and doesn't even provide an 'HTML view'", says Managing Director, Charles Moir, "Our design philosophy is this: You don't need to know the PDF programming language in order to produce PDF files, so neither should you have to know anything about HTML or Javascript in order to create great websites."

Xara Web Designer 6 supports CSS layers with advanced features such as full or graduated transparency, mouse-over effects, animated photo pop-ups and more. It creates cross-browser, cross-platform XHTML compatible websites. With its new, modern re-designed appearance, Xara Web Designer 6 introduces a number of new innovative web authoring software features some of which are :
  • New NavBars with DHTML sub-menus, intelligent, automatic stretching as you enter text and automatic linking to all the pages of your website.
  • New photo slideshows and improved, more slick, photo thumbnail pop-ups.
  • Drag 'n' drop multiple photos in one go to populate a gallery page.
  • Enhanced text tool to include bullets, numbered lists, indents and fully justified text wrap around images and graphics.
  • Anchored graphics so photos and graphics can flow with the text.
  • Gallery changes include auto-updating designs gallery, drag 'n' drop Widgets from the Designs gallery, a new Widget library, lots more designs in the Template Gallery, enhanced 'Page & Layer' gallery providing a quick way to view and re-arrange pages by simple drag & drop and pre-built color schemes.
  • Easy MP4 video upload and built-in video player.
  • Ability to support rounded corner pages, and with drop shadows.
  • Paste HTML snippets in directly with an automatic preview/placeholder created.
  • Easy way to add links to (and upload) external files such as PDF and Word files etc.
  • Better page color and background support so you can color the pasteboard separately from the page.
  • Automatic backups and save of open documents on application closedown.
  • Incremental Publishing for faster upload so only the changed files are uploaded.
  • FTP details can be stored with the document including password. As if that isn't enough, Xara Web Designer 6 also comes with a free web hosting offer.
Xara Web Designer 6 costs just $49 for US customers, £39 for UK (inc VAT) and €39 (inc VAT) for the EU. It operates on Windows XP/Vista/7.

For more information see - xara.com
Example website tutorial - webdesigner.xara.com
Demo Movies - xara.com/webdesigner/demos


More information and downloads

Please see the press center at xara.com/presscenter/webdesigner
This includes press materials, graphics, screenshots, boxshots, product information and a full list of new features.


Contact

For more details or a serial number to unlock the trial version please contact: Nova Fisher, nova@xara.com Tel: +44 1392 209509]]>
Thu, 25 Mar 2010 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2010-03-25/
<![CDATA[Xara releases Template pack for Xara Xtreme and Web Designer]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2009-12-10/ ​XARA has today released its first template pack for its popular and easy-to-use Web Designer software, and for Xara Xtreme which includes the functions of Web Designer in addition to its graphics and photo features.

To meet the growing demand for ever changing trends for websites, Xara are keen to ensure that its users have the latest designs.

The new pack contains 3 new web page designs each having up to 18 layouts, meticulously created by professional designers. Plus there's a new category of web clipart with 20+ miscellaneous graphics/text panels that are useful for every site. Users can easily customize every template to suit their website, and with the unique instant theme colour change they can create an infinite variety of possibilities.

For time-pressed designers, or web-graphics novices, Web Designer is the ideal tool for professional quality web page graphics and designs - no design or technical skill is required. Web Designer follows in the Xara tradition of creating innovative, industry-leading technology and yet being really simple to use.

Web Designer works by providing a range of customizable graphic template designs. Users simply have to change the graphic properties - colours, fonts, text, size, background etc., to create the look they want. The possibilities are virtually limitless, but because the templates are professionally designed, they will always look great.

Web Designer also provides tools for creating vector graphics and animations, for photo editing (an integrated ultra fast, non-destructive photo tool), and for advanced text layout. For those users wishing to have more extensive graphics, illustration and photo tools then Xara Xtreme provides the solution.

"Our aim with Web Designer and Xara Xtreme is to make it possible for absolutely anyone to create top quality websites, regardless of their technical or artistic skills," says Charles Moir, Managing Director of Xara. "This latest template pack adds some strong modern designs to the existing professionally designed sets”.

The new designs can be seen at www.xara.com/products/templatepack1

The Xara Web Designer Template Pack costs just $39.99 / £29.99 incl VAT / €29.99 incl VAT

The templates in this pack are suitable for Xara Web Designer, Xara Xtreme 5 and Xtreme Pro 5, MAGIX Xtreme Photo & Graphic Designer 5 and MAGIX Xtreme Web Designer 5.


Contact

For more details or a review copy of Xara Xtreme, Xara Xtreme Pro or Web Designer please contact: Nova Fisher, nova@xara.com Tel: +44 1392 209509 ]]>
Thu, 10 Dec 2009 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2009-12-10/
<![CDATA[First Book on Xara Xtreme Publishes In Time For Christmas]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2009-11-17/ Xara Xtreme 5: The Official Guide by artist Gary Bouton
Learn how to use the vector drawing program that is also a full featured bitmap editor and web page designer!

November 2009 – This month McGraw-Hill Professional will release the much-anticipated and definitive Xara Xtreme 5: The Official Guide, written by bestselling author and well-known graphic artist Gary Bouton. In the US, where the book first pubished last month, Amazon.com sold out within days of the launch.

In 368 full-colour pages, Xara Xtreme 5: The Official Guide teaches readers the principles of vector drawing along with technique, composition, and application for websites, animations, logos, and retouches. Readers will also learn how to customise the software, use QuickShapes, draw vector paths, use fills for photorealistic effects, and compose professional desktop publishing documents. This hands-on resource brings you from concept to completion with examples that span a range of art styles--using the vector drawing program that thinks it's a bitmap editor. With these tutorials that apply to Xara Xtreme, Xara Xtreme Pro, and Magix Xtreme Photo & Graphic Designer, you'll:

  • Work with vector paths that look like paint strokes
  • Tag colours to dramatically change complex drawings in seconds
  • Build multi-page, graphically rich websites in a few hours
  • Convert bitmap web graphics to resizable vector shapes
  • Design artwork in minutes that looks like it took days
  • Create and export original Flash animations for the web in no time
  • Create 3D text and apply special effects to imported photos and vector shapes
  • Invisibly retouch photographs with feathering, fractal fills, multi-step gradients, and transparencies
Inside the book readers will also benefit from an inspirational Xara Grand-Masters Gallery showcasing and celebrating the talent of Xara artists from the UK, Mexico, Australia, Hungary, Sweden, Portugal and Russia, who were selected in a recent design competition organised by Xara.

Xara’s popularity is thanks to its lightning-quick speed, wide range of tasks and tools, and consumer-friendly price tag relative to other vector graphics programs like Adobe Illustrator CorelDRAW.

Xara Xtreme 5: The Official Guide retails for £28.99 but Xara have a special introductory offer of 20% off, giving a price tag of only £23.19. see www.xara.com/uk/products/xtreme/guide

-- END --

Editors' Notes

For an image of the book cover and some artwork created by Gary Bouton http://downloads.xara.com/press/XaraXtreme-TheOfficialGuide.zip

For further information please contact Nova Fisher, nova@xara.com Tel: +44 1392 209509

About the Author

Gary David Bouton holds four international awards for graphics and desktop publishing and is the author of more than 20 books on computer graphics and images, including CorelDRAW X4: The Official Guide, Photoshop Elements for Dummies, Photoshop CS3, Photoshop CS3 Extended and Inside Adobe Photoshop. Gary has documented a wide range of graphics applications and techniques, including video editing and special effects, photo retouching, 3D modelling, and illustration. Visit Gary’s popular site for more info: www.theboutons.com

About the Book

Xara Xtreme 5: The Official Guide by Gary Bouton
McGraw-Hill Professional
Pub date: 23rd November 2009 (UK/Europe)
ISBN: 9780071625593
Paperback, 368 pp
]]>
Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2009-11-17/
<![CDATA[Xara releases Xara Xtreme and Xara Xtreme Pro 5]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2009-06-08/ ​Whether it's creating high quality illustrations, designing your brochures or designing your website the versatility of Xara Xtreme or Xara Xtreme Pro 5 is the solution.

Already appreciated by many as the fastest graphics illustration program with pioneering graphics technologies, it now has many more features to assist website creation and photo handling,

Favored by many professional designers for its slick workflow, new in this version 5 release are:
  • New website design features aimed at designers who want to focus on design, not coding, Xara Xtreme is a supreme rapid website prototyping tool producing fully cross-browser, cross platform, standards compatible (X)HTML.
  • Fast photo editing tools enhanced to include Content Aware Photo Scaling which allows images to be stretched without distorting key points of interest in the photo. Combined with the new photo masking tool you can additionally protect any part of your photo.
  • The ability to anchor graphics (vector, or photo) to text so they flow with the text.
  • Automatic font embedding, enables Xara documents to be distributed, viewed and printed WYSIWYG with any fonts.
  • A new multi-language real-time check as you type spell checker.
  • A new Object Gallery enabling easier page / layers / object identification, re-ordering and selection. e.g. you can now just drag the page thumbnail for page re-ordering.
  • Improved file import / export including EPS, PDF import and export, camera RAW
  • Improved Flash creation
  • A new range of professionally designed templates, ready for easy customization, including business media, flyers, brochures and now a wide range of website templates.
...and more than 100 other improvements.

Xara Xtreme is a great all-round graphics and document production tool, able to create vector illustrations, web graphics, flyers and now high-quality websites with ease. This one tool can produce all your documents. Instead of using separate, often expensive, difficult-to-learn software packages, with Xara Xtreme you can re-use the same creatives for brochures, (it includes excellent PDF export) and websites.

Create once and use for multiple creative media - DTP style documents, brochures, PDF files and websites.

Xara Xtreme works with Microsoft® Windows® XP/Vista/7 and retails for only $89 and Xtreme Pro is only $249.

For further details see xara.com

For a full list of the new features see xara.com/products/xtreme/upgrade/

You can see some examples of work created by our customers at xara.com/gallery

Demonstration movies showing Xara Xtreme Pro in operation (WMV format) are available from: xara.com/xtreme/movies

Performance - Xara Xtreme remains the highest performance graphics application, towering above other market leading vector products. see xara.com/products/xtreme/performance/


Contact

For more details or a review copy of Xara Xtreme or Xara Xtreme Pro please contact: Nova Fisher, nova@xara.com Tel: +44 1392 209509 ]]>
Mon, 08 Jun 2009 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2009-06-08/
<![CDATA[Xara & McGraw Hill combine to offer graphic artists a chance to see their work in print]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2009-04-21/ ​Xara has announced a new artwork contest and they’re offering something very unique as a prize: the chance for six lucky winners to have their work published in 'Xara Xtreme, The Official Guide' by Gary David Bouton, to be released by the fall by McGraw Hill Professional.

Six full color pages will be devoted to showcasing and celebrating the talent of Xara artists. The contest is open to anyone and artwork can be in any style or on any theme of the artist’s choosing – though naturally the artwork must be created in Xara's award winning graphic design software Xara Xtreme (full or free 30 day trial). Five judges from the graphics industry will pick the fortunate winners in early July.

The book is being written by popular computer guide author Gary Bouton, who has documented a wide range of graphics applications and techniques, including video editing and special effects, photo retouching, 3D modeling, and illustration. Readers will see how to create both commercial and fine art using Xara and more importantly, how to develop techniques that display their own style of artistic expression.

Charles Moir, Managing Director of Xara said "Gary has written a series of excellent and very popular books on Photoshop, so it's great that he's creating a book about Xara Xtreme. It helps support the growing popularity of Xara software. The opportunity from McGraw Hill Professional to showcase some new and original Xara created artwork in his book is a great idea."

The closing date for entries is June 15th and you can find out more at xara.com/competition


Contact

For more details or a review copy of Xara Xtreme please contact: Nova Fisher, nova@xara.com Tel: +44 1392 209509 ]]>
Tue, 21 Apr 2009 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2009-04-21/
<![CDATA[Xara releases new low price, download-only Xara3D 6]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2009-04-01/ ​Launched today is a new version of Xara3D 6. Just like the no-frills airlines Xara have launched a stripped down version - it's a download-only – no CDs, no free Webster and no manual – just the program itself and associated resources, such as sample images, textures and fonts. Users can now buy this version for only US$29 (+ VAT in EU).

The boxed retail version remains but the price has been adjusted to US$49 (+ VAT in EU) slightly lower than it was before. So now there are two versions, the download costing US$29 and the boxed including Xara3D and Webster CDs and a manual for US$49. It operates on Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/Vista.

Xara3D can be used to create top quality still and animated 3D text and graphics, such as titles, headings, buttons and logos – perfect for web pages, mailshots and presentations. It’s also extremely popular with Adobe Photoshop owners for creating 3D typographic effects in combination with Photoshop.

"Using 3D software is notoriously hard.It's not just expensive, but the UI, the usability of almost all existing 3D software is intimidating to say the least. This is not so with Xara3D. We call it simple-ware - the easiest, simplest 3D software you'll ever likely to come across. It's designed to do one thing - create stunning 3D text headings, and to do that job supremely well with the absolute minimum learning curve". said Charles Moir, "Now with the launch of a download only version at a very low price, it's affordable for anyone wanting to create high quality 3D headings and logos in seconds. With millions of downloads, Xara3D remains Xara's most popular product."

For more information, including a demo movie, trial download and example graphics visit: xara.com/xara3d
For examples of use with Photoshop visit ShinyBinary.com


Contact

For more details or a review copy of Xara3D 6 please contact: Nova Fisher, nova@xara.com Tel: +44 1392 209509 ]]>
Wed, 01 Apr 2009 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2009-04-01/
<![CDATA[Xara releases Xara Web Designer]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2009-03-04/ ​Launched today is the new Xara Web Designer that is unlike any other web page software; it allows complete free-form, anything, anywhere web page design. It does this with absolutely no HTML or JavaScript skills required. Xara Web Designer is perfect for creating graphical webpages containing text, graphics, photos, widgets and Flash.

For the novice or time-restricted user it includes a set of ready-made professionally designed templates and graphics. The customizable graphics include headings, navigation buttons, logos, text panels and speech bubbles that can be simply dragged and dropped from the Designs Gallery onto the page. Buttons and headings dragged onto the page will automatically assume the theme color.

All aspects of the design can be customized. Users can re-arrange all page elements, add their own text, graphics and photos anywhere. It's genuinely WYSIWYG, what you see in Xara Web Designer is exactly what you get on your web page.

Xara Web Designer introduces a number of new innovative web authoring software features. It's the first to provide automatic text flow around photos and even irregular shapes. What has until now been almost impossibly difficult in other web authoring tools, creating irregular edged text flows, is now easy.

Included are graphics tools to allow creation and free mixing of vector graphics, photos and text, anywhere on the page. Having to use two or three separate software applications, one for your graphics, one for optimizing photos and your HTML editing tool, is a thing of the past. This single low-cost software provides all three - resolution independent vector graphics, ultra-fast photo editing and optimisation, and text layout all producing the HTML for your website.

The integrated, non destructive, ultra fast photo tool has many enhancement functions including automatic adjustment of photos to the correct web resolution.

The powerful text tool provides easy text entry as single lines or as columns with auto text flow between columns or pages and text flow around objects. There's also a check-as-you-type spell checker.

Xara Web Designer is unique in providing single-click re-coloring of all graphical elements throughout the entire website. You can take any template and re-color it or your entire website to your personal taste in a second or two.

Xara Web Designer can intelligently adapt graphics such as buttons and heading to accommodate any label text - stretching as you type, and automatically creates optimized graphics. So a process of creating highly detailed, graphical elements such as a button, customized to accommodate any length text, in any color, is now possible in a few few seconds, with no graphics skills at all.

Xara Web Designer offers automatic CSS layer creation (including semi-transparent objects), easy rollover and pop-up effects, photo thumbnails and more.

Very efficient Flash animations can easily be created with Xara Web Designer and users can also add widgets to their site such as Googlemaps, YouTube movies, Picasa photo albums, newsfeeds and many, many more. Using a simple FTP upload the website can be published in seconds.

Managing Director, Charles Moir says, "The few professional web designers that have seen demonstrations of early versions have stood open-mouthed. They have just one question - how on earth can it do that?

For professional designers Xara Web Designer can act as a supreme Rapid Prototyping Tool. But the largest market for us is consumers who want great looking website who do not know, and don't want to know, anything about HTML, graphics creations, JavaScript etc.

For the consumer, the ability to customize any of the large range of ready made templates is perfect. Xara's unique 'flow-around' text and automatically stretching buttons and panels, automatic creation of optimized graphics (such as buttons, headings etc - in whatever theme colour they like) means anyone can create a really high quality website, customized to their exact needs - and they need know nothing whatsoever about HTML.

For the designer Xara Web Designer provides unprecedented design freedom. Absolute freedom to place anything anywhere on the page, to mix text, graphics, photos, to wrap text around irregular shapes. It produces cross browser, W3C compliant, XHTML, and things like pop-ups, mouse-over effects are all easy.

I believe Web Designer is a revolutionary product." concluded Charles Moir.

Xara Web Designer costs just $49 for US customers, £39 for UK (inc VAT) and €39 (inc VAT) for the EU.
It operates on Windows XP/Vista

For more information see - xara.com
Example website tutorial - webdesigner.xara.com
Demo Movies - xara.com/webdesigner/demos



Contact

For more details or a review copy of Xara Web Designer please contact: Nova Fisher, nova@xara.com Tel: +44 1392 209509 ]]>
Wed, 04 Mar 2009 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2009-03-04/
<![CDATA[Xara releases Xara Xtreme and Xara Xtreme Pro 4]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2008-04-02/ ​Xara announced today a new release of Xara Xtreme and Xara Xtreme PRO, the world's fastest graphics program. But it's not only the speed that makes Xara Xtreme so popular, as it has pioneered many of the graphics technologies used in the industry today.

Favored by many professional designers for its slick workflow, Xara Xtreme is priced to be within the reach of all computer users. It's versatility makes it ideal for everything from graphic design tasks, DTP style documents, a wide range of photo handling tasks, website graphics and now complete website creation.

New in this version 4 release are:
  • Ultra-fast non-destructive photo editing features,10 times faster and resulting in files 10 times smaller, than other graphics tools
  • Real-time, fully shaded, 3D extrude
  • Multi-core support. An average of 40% faster and up to 80% faster on dual-core processors (Xtreme Pro only)
  • WYSIWYG website creation. Supports free-form web page design, 'anything anywhere' and advanced features such as text flow around shapes, mouse-over effects, pop-ups and more
  • Real-time 'flow around' text repelling
  • more than a dozen other new features and improvements
Charles Moir, Managing Director of Xara Group Ltd said "The truly spectacular performance of the new photo handling, plus the fact it's completely non-destructive, moves us into new territory. The 3D extrude is simply gorgeous and, of course, faster and more slick than on any other tool. The website creation feature has been described as a significantly useful feature by beta testers."

"Xara Xtreme was always the fastest graphics tool around, but with availability of multi--core processors, users of Xara Xtreme Pro can now take advantage of these processors for maximum performance. And with the support of our parent company, Magix AG, we're making the product available in multiple languages for the first time", he added.

Xara Xtreme and Xtreme Pro are probably the most powerful, versatile graphics software, at a price to suit anyone's pocket. Xara Xtreme retails for only $89 and Xtreme Pro is only $249 (+ VAT in Europe).

For further details see xara.com

For a full list of the new features see xara.com/products/xtreme/features/

You can see some examples of work created by our customers at xara.com/gallery

Demonstration movies showing Xara Xtreme Pro in operation are available from: xara.com/products/xtreme/tutorials-demos/

Performance - Xara Xtreme remains the highest performance graphics application, towering above other market leading vector products. See xara.com/products/xtreme/performance/


Contact

For more details or a review copy of Xara Xtreme or Xara Xtreme Pro please contact: Nova Fisher, nova@xara.com Tel: +44 1392 209509 ]]>
Wed, 02 Apr 2008 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2008-04-02/
<![CDATA[Xara Xtreme Pro now supports new Microsoft graphics format]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2007-10-22/ ​The latest release of Xara Xtreme Pro 3.2 now has full compatibility with the new Microsoft XPS format to provide users with even higher quality documents.

The Microsoft XML Paper Specification (XPS) provides users with a robust, open and trustworthy format for electronic paper. XPS documents print better, can be shared more easily and are more secure for archiving. The benefit of the XPS format is that it’s vector based, and so is a perfect companion for Xara Xtreme Pro - the highest performance vector graphics application. Being vector based makes XPS an ideal resolution-independent portable document format. Fonts are embedded into the document and so users are assured of a very high quality WYSIWYG document. Users of Windows Vista can view and print these documents directly. A free XPS Viewer download is available from the Microsoft web site to provide viewing and printing of these files when using older versions of Windows.

Xara Xtreme Pro writes XPS files directly rather than using the Microsoft standard XPS print system so users are ensured of a far higher fidelity, and far smaller XPS files. The Xara Xtreme Pro XPS supports advanced features such as vector transparency including its unique graduated transparency, CMYK colors and embedded fonts. Xara Xtreme Pro has multi-page support and is able to create multi-page, DTP style documents so it's the perfect companion for producing high-quality XPS documents.

Charles Moir, Managing Director of Xara Group Ltd said "XPS hasn't got the attention it deserves. It's a great new portable document format of very high quality, with a free viewer available for Windows XP. If you want to create documents to give to others, and need to ensure they see exactly the document you intended to publish, with the same fonts and graphics, in quality enough to zoom and print hi-fidelity copies, then I fully recommend the new XPS format'.

For further details see xara.com/xtremepro/


Contact

For more details or a review copy of Xara Xtreme or Xara Xtreme Pro please contact: Nova Fisher, nova@xara.com Tel: +44 1392 209509 ]]>
Mon, 22 Oct 2007 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2007-10-22/
<![CDATA[Xtreme power for Graphics Designers]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2007-06-11/ ​Xara Xtreme and Xtreme Pro have just been upgraded to version 3.2 making them even more powerful for graphic designers. The new releases include many enhancements to the bitmap and photo handling, the color, fill and text controls and the import and export options. Xara Xtreme Pro now benefits from the inclusion of Xara3D for high quality 3D headings, logos and animations.

Xara Xtreme and Xtreme Pro remain the fastest vector graphics editors available, by a large margin. Their versatility enables the user to design and process vector graphics, photos, flash and DTP documents. At a price of only $249 it's no wonder that many professional designers are choosing Xara Xtreme Pro above the more expensive alternatives, as it gives them the features they require such as CMYK support, PDF import, PDF/X export, support of both PANTONE color matching and multi-page documents.

Xara Xtreme users can now create animated Flash animations as well as benefiting from improved text handling with flowing columns and pdf import. Xtreme Pro users now have even more import/export options including Microsoft XPS and support for professional RAW photo files. Since Xara3D is now bundled, Xara Xtreme Pro users can now create 3D extrusions, headings and animations.

Both Xara Xtreme and Xtreme Pro benefit from more than 40 new enhancements including integration with external photo editors such as Adobe Photoshop and Corel PaintShop Pro. With only one simple click on a photo in Xara Xtreme to edit, and a second click on "Save", pictures will be automatically updated in Xara Xtreme.

The range of import and export options has been increased to accommodate RTF, EMF, SVG and, in Xara Xtreme Pro, XPS and RAW. Compatibility with Microsoft Vista has also been improved.

“With many professional designers switching to Xara Xtreme from Adobe, this latest release increases the performance, productivity and value gap between the Adobe and Xara products. Despite the new ‘faster’ Adobe Illustrator CS3 release, Xara Xtreme remains far and away the highest performance, easiest to use, vector illustration tool available”, says Managing Director, Charles Moir.

Xara Xtreme and Xtreme Pro are probably the most powerful, versatile graphics software, at a price to suit anyone's pocket. Xara Xtreme retails for only $79 and Xtreme Pro is only $249.

For futher details see xara.com/xtreme and xara.com/xtremepro/

For a full list of the new features see xara.com/products/xtreme/whatsnew.asp

Comparitive chart - xara.com/products/xtreme/

You can see some examples of work created by our customers at xara.com/gallery

Demonstration movies showing Xara Xtreme Pro in operation (WMV format) are available from: xara.com/products/xtreme/demos/

Performance - Xara Xtreme remains the highest performance graphics application, putting market leading vector products to shame. See xara.com/products/xtreme/performance.asp


Contact

For more details or a review copy of Xara Xtreme or Xara Xtreme Pro please contact: Nova Fisher, nova@xara.com Tel: +44 1392 209509 ]]>
Mon, 11 Jun 2007 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2007-06-11/
<![CDATA[Xara acquired by MAGIX]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2007-01-30/ ​Xara announce that it has been acquired by German company, MAGIX AG who hold the leading market position for the distribution of photo, music and video software in Germany and various other European countries, as well as being one of the three leading market players in the USA.

The acquisition is good news for Xara and its customers. The new financial resources that MAGIX provide together with the greatly increased distribution network for Xara products and technology will accelerate the development and market capture of the Xara products.

Xara will trade as a subsidiary of MAGIX under the existing management. It will continue to develop the Xara products such as the highly successful Xara Xtreme, to be marketed under both Xara and MAGIX brands.]]>
Tue, 30 Jan 2007 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2007-01-30/
<![CDATA[Xara releases Xtreme Pro]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2006-11-28/ ​Xara is pleased to announce the release of the most powerful member of the Xara X family - Xara Xtreme Pro which they believe to be the most versatile graphics software and it comes at a price to suit any Professional's pocket.

This new release builds on Xara Xtreme, the world's highest performance graphics software, and adds new Flash creation facilities, multi-page support and pre-press capabilities among many other useful features for the pro designer.

Charles Moir, CEO of Xara said "Xara Xtreme Pro is not designed to compete with the likes of InDesign or Quark Xpress, or Adobe's professional Flash authoring tools. We know most designers don't need or even want to get into scripting Flash - they are designers not programmers. Xara Xtreme has been acclaimed as the easiest to use vector graphics software by reviewers and users alike, and since Flash is a vector technology it's a perfect fit. Xara has produced a really simple, cost effective innovative approach to creating Flash animations".

"DTP products are gradually introducing more graphics capabilities. The latest Quark, for example, has introduced basic line drawing and transparency features that Xara has had for 12 years. Xara Xtreme is coming from the other side - primarily a graphics program adding DTP capabilities."

"Since most flyers, small leaflets, newsletters and the like incorporate a lot of graphics and photos, I believe it is fundamentally wrong to force users to buy two separate programs - graphics software and DTP software. Xara will continue to work towards complete seamless integration of both worlds."

"In summary, Xara Xtreme Pro brings better file interchange, better pre-press support for document production, simple Flash authoring and multi-page support. And it does all this and at a price that is a small fraction of the alternatives", concluded Charles Moir.

Xara Xtreme Pro has all of the features of Xara Xtreme with the addition of:

Key new features
  • Multi-page support. DTP style page layout, including single or double page spreads. Suitable for leaflets, flyers, newsletters etc.
  • Enhanced text tool and improved text flow. Support text frames and you can flow text from any page to any other.
  • An innovative and easy approach to efficient Flash animation creation.
  • Pre-press and color separations supports for professional document production.(see below)
  • Improved file interchange - more compatible than ever with Adobe and industry standard products. (see below)
  • Photo levels tool in the integrated Xara Picture Editor.
  • Improved Microsoft Office integration (e.g you can copy any graphics in Xara and paste in Outlook - it is embedded as a compressed JPG)
  • Lots of additional smaller improvements.
Dramatically improved file interchange
  • PDF export specifically able to be imported into Adobe Illustrator.
  • Photoshop PSD export and import file support including mapping of PSD layers to Xara Xtreme and Xtreme layers to PSD layers, RGB, Lab, and CMYK support.
  • TIFF import support including Adobe alpha channel (transparent TIFFs).
  • PDF import. Not just for importing vector graphics from a wide range of applications, but also general PDF files. (note this does not import encrypted files).
Dramatically enhanced pre-press capabilities:
  • CMYK color separations, on screen printer gamut simulation, on screen plate preview, spot colors, Pantone spot and process support.
  • Much improved PDF export, including real PDF transparency support of PDF versions 1.3 through 1.6.
  • PDF font embedding, and subsetting. Layer support (you can switch Xara Xtreme layers on and off in Adobe Reader).
  • Xara file embedding - you can now embed Xara Xtreme files into PDF files - for the ultimate in file portability and readability.
  • PDF/X export including ICC color profiles, 2001 and 2003 standards, spot color support, crop and printers marks and many more professional features.
Performance
Xara Xtreme remains, far and away, the highest performance graphics application, putting market leading vector products to shame. See http://www.xara.com/products/xtreme/performance.asp

Xara Xtreme Pro has an SRP of $199 USD + tax and shipping

Xara Xtreme will continue to be sold with an SRP of $79 + tax and shipping. This general consumer version does not have the professional features listed here.

Contact

For more details or a beta version of Xara Xtreme Pro please contact: Nova Fisher, nova@xara.com Tel: +44 1392 209509 ]]>
Tue, 28 Nov 2006 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2006-11-28/
<![CDATA[Xara celebrates its 25th Anniversary]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2006-07-26/ ​From a bedroom in a small English country village, in 1981, little did Charles Moir know that he was creating a software product - Wordwise, that would take the BBC Micro market by storm. From those little Acorns, his company grew vigorously to become one of the leading graphics software companies in the world. And now, the Xara Group is celebrating its 25th Anniversary.

In the 1980's, trading as Computer Concepts, it became the largest developer of software for the BBC, Acorn, Atari and Archimedes computers. It was from the rewards of those early days that Charles Moir bought the historic country mansion, Gaddesden Place, which now houses the Xara offices.

Over the years Xara has developed a wide range of products covering the whole realm of publishing software. It has pioneered many technologies taken for granted nowadays - from the world's first check-as-you-type spell checker in the early 80's, to award winning desktop publishing software in the nineties, to today's most advanced graphics technology. Xara continues to innovate and develop leading edge technical solutions to this day.

Xara has been involved in the Internet from the very beginning. Xara Networks, a subsidiary of the Xara Group, was a pioneer Corporate Internet provider in the mid 1990s (this business was successfully sold). Xara does most of its business via the Internet and has millions of online customers, worldwide.

Xara's first Windows graphics software, Xara Studio, was licensed to Corel and distributed for many years as CorelXARA. Now back under Xara control this product has been enhanced and was relaunched as Xara X and recently developed to become Xara Xtreme.

The latest, and perhaps most ambitious plan, is to take on Adobe and Microsoft in an attempt to create a new industry standard in the graphics and publishing tool market. Xara Xtreme is evolving from a relatively niche graphics product for Windows only, into a general purpose graphics and publishing tool for Mac and Linux. Xara has recently open-sourced their product as part of this plan to establish it as an industry standard on Linux. This is territory neither Microsoft nor Adobe dare to tread.

"I could have retired many, many years ago but I'm on a mission to create the best graphics and publishing tools the world has ever seen.", says Charles Moir. "I want to create a new industry standard. I'm sure that many people will think I'm mad, but I'm used to that. In the eighties they said we couldn't compete against Acorn - we came to dominate that market. In the nineties they said we couldn't compete with Corel - we were such a threat to them they tried to buy us out.

Now Xara is making waves again and people are starting to talk about us as a threat to Adobe, So that's our challenge - to compete with Adobe and Microsoft. And we have something that they do not - an absolute passion for what we do, better technology and product and soon a product on all three platforms including open-source Linux. So lets see what this decade brings!" concludes Charles Moir in fighting mood.

Meanwhile, on 1st August, as part of our 25th Anniversary celebrations Xara is going mad for a day with a Once Only, One Day Only Offer - half price on all of our products. So everyone can share in our celebrations.

Ends

For more details contact: Nova Fisher, nova@xara.com Tel: +44 1392 209509
]]>
Wed, 26 Jul 2006 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2006-07-26/
<![CDATA[New template pack 5 for Webstyle 4]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2006-07-07/ London, England - 7th July, 2006 - In response to popular customer demand, Xara has today released a fifth template pack for Webstyle 4, its popular and easy-to-use web graphics software.

Webstyle works by offering a huge range of fully customizable graphic template designs, including all the commonly used elements of a website such as NavBars & menus, banner ads, logos, buttons and even complete page layouts. Because Webstyle is template driven, it is able to keep users at the cutting edge of website design with the introduction of new templates that reflect constantly changing trends.

The new template pack contains 5 totally new web page designs, each with up to 9 different layouts including a photo gallery page, plus a collection of new standalone heading designs.

The template designs and page layouts are produced by professional web designers who are briefed to create a contemporary graphical look and feel with a variety of layout options to suit a wide range of common content. The graphical elements are highly optimized to ensure rapid loading of the finished page. The user can then easily customize the colors, text, fonts and size to suit their particular demands - and because the original templates are vector graphics there is absolutely no loss of quality, unlike most template collections.

Webstyle also includes an easy-to-use and fast photo-enhancement tool. Its one-click auto-enhance automatically optimizes the contrast, brightness, sharpness and color saturation of the imported photos, saving hours of experimentation.

Webstyle's unique combination of professional quality graphic design with a quick and easy template-based approach make it equally suited for both time-pressed pro designers and web graphics novices alike.

"Our aim with Webstyle is to make it possible for absolutely anyone to create top-quality graphics and photos quickly and easily for their website, regardless of their technical or artistic skills. Webstyle 4 follows in the Xara tradition of creating innovative, industry-leading technology that remains incredibly simple to use," says Charles Moir, Managing Director of Xara. "This latest template pack includes some of our strongest designs yet and we are confident that our users will adopt them with great enthusiasm".

The Xara Webstyle 4 Template Pack 5 costs just $19.95. A bundle of all 5 template packs cost only $49.95, with discounts for owners of previous packs (all prices are + VAT in Europe). ]]>
Fri, 07 Jul 2006 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2006-07-07/
<![CDATA[New Xara Xtreme for Linux]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2006-05-23/ ​Xara are pleased to announce a milestone target has been achieved with the release of Xara Xtreme LX version 0.5. This is the Open Source version of the commercial Xara Xtreme graphics and illustration software.

With the new save and export of designs as bitmaps Xara LX is now a functional, really useful design tool!

There has been substantial progress since the previous 0.4 stable release. All tools are now fully functional with most menu options and some galleries also completed. Xara recently passed build number 1000, representing more than 1000 patches, submissions and fixes to the public code repository.

There are still a number of areas of the program that need work before Xara will reach the 1.0 milestone, which will be the first official 'finished' version of Xara LX. Despite the current 0.5 version number, Xara estimate they are much more than half way there now!

Xara would like to thank those who have given their time to help the project. Without their support this project would not be progressing anywhere near as quickly.

Now that the program is more functional, Xara hope people will start to use it vigorously and that more developers will want to help them drive this forward to become what they hope will be the greatest graphics program to exist on Linux. Developers should visit www.xaraxtreme.org/developers/ for more information.

Several screenshots can be seen at www.xaraxtreme.org/about/screenshots.html

...ends...

Editors

For further details please contact: Nova Fisher, Communications Director, nova@xara.com

New features since the 0.4 release:-
* New Autopackage installer. It now appears in the Applications menu
* Save
* Bitmap export (JPG, PNG)
* Bitmap import
* Bitmap Gallery
* Colour Gallery
* A choice of document templates
* Layer Gallery and operational layer system
* Guidelines, guide snap and magnetic object snap
* Simple colour editor
* Ability to set the font in the text tool
* Status line & progress bar
* Many new menu items e.g. convert lines to shapes
* Clipviews - path clipping
* Improved combo boxes, drop down menus, buttons and sliders
* Improved toolbars
* Options dialog (and most options now operational)
* Freehand tool smoothing
* Many other features. Many bug fixes
* Full comprehensive Help now integrated]]>
Tue, 23 May 2006 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2006-05-23/
<![CDATA[Xara releases Xtreme open source code at Libre Graphics meeting]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2006-03-19/ ​Xara recently announced that it planned to make its flagship product Xara Xtreme available as open-source under GPL license. At the Libre Graphics meeting in Lyon on 18th March, Xara announced that, after the last few months of readying the source code, it has now made the first release of the majority of the Xara LX source code for public download.
  • All source code compiles under GCC and has been made 32-bit and 64-bit compatible.
  • The framework, based on WXWidgets, replacing the Windows MFC framework is largely done and works very well.
  • It loads and renders Xar files and demonstrates the speed and quality of the Xara rendering.
  • Working tools and functions include:
    • Select an object, scale, and drag it on the page. Delete, group, ungroup, duplicate objects. Undo and redo work.
    • Zoom and pan tools work with a really slick Windows update
    • Xara is making its subversion server public so that anyone can now download the source code and compile.
Commenting on Xara's goals, Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Ubuntu Linux and the second space tourist, says: "The announcement by the Xara team positions them well for the growing wave of momentum behind free and open source software. In each market sector, there is emerging a dominant open source application to challenge the existing dominant proprietary application. I wish the Xara team every success in their efforts to ensure that Xara becomes the leading open source graphics application, and to craft a strong community and business around that work."

Xara is inviting contributors to help progress the Linux port. "Xara has done all the ground-work and we hope that we can find contributors who can spare some time to help bring, what we believe, will be the most advanced graphics tool, to the Linux platform," says CEO Charles Moir. "We hope and intend this product to be a flagship Linux application, bringing graphics capabilities that more than compete with the best available on Windows and the Mac to the Linux platform. We hope development progress will accelerate now that we've made code available under GPL."

Demo movie

If you want to see what Xara Xtreme can do, there are demo movies available in various formats here

Demo download

You can find more details here

Source code download

Editors

For further details please contact: Nova Fisher, Communications Director, nova@xara.com nova@xara.com ]]>
Sun, 19 Mar 2006 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2006-03-19/
<![CDATA[Xara sponsors first Open Source Graphics conference]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2006-02-13/ ​Xara are pleased to announce they are co-sponsoring the first graphics conference focussed solely on open-source (free) graphics products, The Libre Graphics Meeting to be held in Lyon, France from 17th to 19th March, 2006

This meeting is open to everyone and free to attend. Confirmed delegates include many companies and developers as well as the press.

Xara will be demonstrating progress on Xara LX, the open-source version of Xara Xtreme, the world's fastest vector graphics software. Neil Howe, Xara's CTO will be giving a demonstration in the theatre on Saturday at 11am and Xara will have a major presence where people can meet some of the developers and support team.

Charles Moir the founder and CEO of Xara said "We announced the intention of making Xara Xtreme open source a few months ago, which generated a great deal interest and support from the open-source community. Since that time we've been working on the port of the codebase to Linux (at a million lines of code, this is not a small project). Progress was initially slow but has accelerated greatly in the last few weeks and we are really happy with the results so far. At the meeting, we will to be making some important announcements."

"Our goal is to create the fastest, most slick, easiest to use, general purpose graphics program available. And for this to be open-source (GPL) and available for Linux and Mac platforms. We're well on the way to doing that"

For further information on Xara's open source software see www.xaraxtreme.org

For further information about the Open Source Graphics meeting see www.libregraphicsmeeting.org

Editors

For further details please contact: Nova Fisher, Communications Director, nova@xara.com

Demo Movie

If you want to see what Xara Xtreme can do, there are demo movies available in various formats here http://www.xaralx.org/about

Demo Download

The current (and constantly changing) state of the Xara LX Linux version is available here: http://www.xaraxtreme.org/download/

More Info

See the Xara Xtreme website at http://www.xara.com/products/xtreme/
Or the Xara Open Source website at http://www.xaraxtreme.org]]>
Mon, 13 Feb 2006 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2006-02-13/
<![CDATA[Xara takes Xtreme action]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2005-10-11/ ​Xara plans to shake up the Graphics world with three major announcements.
1) A new product Xara Xtreme - the fastest most versatile graphics software available
2) Plans to create Linux and Mac versions
3) Plans to Open Source it.

"Few companies can take the announcement, that Microsoft intend to get into their market, lying down", says CEO Charles Moir.

Xara, a relatively small player in the graphics market, sometimes described as having a cult following, has decided that there is only one way to compete against these giants, and is doing so in a way they cannot possibly follow.

Charles continues, "The recent acquisition of Macromedia by Adobe can only reduce user choice and will likely see the elimination of hugely popular (and high quality) applications such as Freehand. The graphics world is becoming increasingly dominated by giants, to the detriment of the users. The second recent announcement by Microsoft to try and get into the graphics market is likely to distort the market even more."


Xara Xtreme

Firstly, Xara is announcing the release of a new product, Xara Xtreme. It's built on Xara's history of developing successful, award winning and innovative graphics software for 15 years. This is a new cross-category graphics application that can handle photos, business graphics, drawing and illustration needs.

Charles said "It absolutely knocks the stuffing out of Adobe and the new Microsoft product. In terms of ease of use, shear flexibility and performance. Adobe has tried for 10 years to get close to our performance levels and cannot. Microsoft are not going to be able to either. I guarantee it".

Xara Xtreme is available for Windows now, at just $79 A free trial can be downloaded from xara.com now. http://www.xara.com/downloads/xtreme/


Linux and Mac version

Secondly, Xara plans to create Linux and Mac versions of the graphics application. Charles said, "Mac and Linux users have been asking, in fact begging, for many years that we create versions for their platforms. Our plans are to change the graphics software landscape forever, and that means we have to be cross-platform.

It's ironic that Mac still dominates the creative industries, and yet there are few really good, general purpose, low cost graphics applications now available. You can pay $500 ($900 in the UK) for the latest Adobe Illustrator, but when you can get a new Mac for that price, that's outrageous and unjustified.

With the likely elimination of Macromedia products, Mac users will have even less choice. So by making a Mac version and Open Sourcing it we hope to bring the world's fastest and most versatile graphics software to the Mac platform, at last"


Open Source

Thirdly, Xara intends to make the new Xara Xtreme Open Source. Charles said "We're going to a place that Microsoft and Adobe cannot go. The Open Source world is the acknowledged largest threat to established giants such as Microsoft. We felt it was necessary for us to shake up the graphics world a bit, and making one of the most powerful, easiest to use graphics applications Open Source should do the trick."

Open Source means the source code is made available so that anyone can use it, modify it, develop and extend it. But while the Open Source license allows users to do what they want by giving them complete freedom, it prevents commercial competitors taking advantage of the Xara technology.

"The Linux desktop has come on leaps and bounds in the last year or two. It's now becoming a real challenge to Windows and it's a growing market (40% growth in the last year according to reports). To stand any chance of establishing a following in the Linux world you have to make the product free and open source, so despite the risks involved, that's what we're doing", Charles said.

"Key Apple products such as their Safari Web Browser and the core of the operating system itself are Open Source, so we're moving in with good company", he continued.

Charles concluded "There is a common theme to these announcements. A new product, aggressive price, and new platforms. Perhaps most significant of all, by moving to an Open Source model, we hope to gain from the massive development potential, and from the momentum that platform brings. We also hope to advance the state of the art on the Linux and Mac platforms and be a credible alternative to the two huge companies that look increasingly to dominate graphics market."

A demonstration movie showing Xara Xtreme in operation is available from:
http://downloads.xara.com/products/xtreme/movies/intro.wmv


Photo

http://www.xara.com/press/photos.asp
Charles Moir, founder and CEO of Xara, in front of the UK headquarters of Xara Ltd

This historic location is also used as a location for film and TV work, including Rory Bremner, Little Britain, Weightwatchers, Musical videos for Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Will Young and other films and commercials.


EDITORS:

For more information see http://www.xara.com/products/xtreme/

For further details and review copies please contact: Nova Fisher, Communications Director, nova@xara.com ]]>
Tue, 11 Oct 2005 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2005-10-11/
<![CDATA[Xara sponsors Open Source project]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2005-09-22/ ​22nd September, 2005 - Xara is pleased to announce it is sponsoring an Open Source project for a 'universal vector graphics translator' to help facilitate the conversion between various vector graphic file formats.

The Uber-converter is a universal vector graphics translator that can convert between numerous different vector formats. It is an Open Source software project produced by Scratch Computing.

Converting between graphics file formats is a nightmare for both users and developers. Each new format results in a factorial increase in the number of converters needed to directly convert from one format to all the others.

Eric Wilhelm's work establishes a universal "hub" format that can be translated to or from any of the other formats. This way, each file format need only develop two converters, and immediately gain rich conversion capabilities to all other formats.

Charles Moir, CEO of Xara, said "There are numerous vector graphics file standards in existence with pretty poor connectivity between the different formats. It's a problem that all graphics developers face. It's also a huge problem for users and graphics designers. They need more freedom to switch between tools.

So when we heard of Eric's plans we thought this sounded like a good solution. We're happy to sponsor this as Open Source work because it promotes connectivity and that drives the advancement of technology. The very nature of converting between competing formats means it should not be proprietary technology, but an open standard that multiple different contributors can support.

We hope by sponsoring this project to bring some compatibility between the Xara and Inkscape products while at the same time progressing the idea of a universal Open Source vector graphics format converter."

Bryce Harrington, one of the founders of Inkscape, said, "We've been excited to have Eric involved with the Inkscape community, as interoperability with professional drawing programs like Xara is critical for many of our users. It's thrilling to see Xara's sponsorship of Eric's work towards these objectives."

Xara already has an open vector format as used by Xara X. Another is SVG (a W3C standard) that has been widely adopted by the Linux community. So one of the first goals of this new project is to convert between these two types. Xara has committed $10,000 to sponsor Eric Wilhelm's work to achieve the 'universal vector graphics translator'.

Eric Wilhelm, founder of Scratch Computing and leader of the uber-converter project, said "I'm delighted to have the backing of a commercial software vendor. Users invest a lot of time in creating artwork and other vector graphics data. They need to be able to access that data with multiple programs so that they can use the right tool for the job. There are a lot of great off-the-shelf tools, but the uber-converter also makes it easier to build simple solutions for new problems. It's great to be building truly innovative software and working with Xara, a very forward-thinking company."

More information can be found from:
Uber-converter home page: http://scratchcomputing.com/projects/uber-converter/
Xara X home page: xara.com/xarax]]>
Thu, 22 Sep 2005 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2005-09-22/
<![CDATA[Xara releases Xara Graphic Studio]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2005-07-21/ ​Xara has just released Xara Graphic Studio, a special summer offer bundle of our 3 most popular products - Xara X1, Xara Webstyle 4 and Xara3D 6.

To find out more about this, please go to http://www.xara.com/products/graphicstudio/ ]]>
Thu, 21 Jul 2005 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2005-07-21/
<![CDATA[New Xara X¹ Movies]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2005-06-21/ ​To find out more about this, please go to http://www.xara.com/products/xarax/demos/]]> Tue, 21 Jun 2005 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2005-06-21/ <![CDATA[New template pack 4 for Webstyle 4]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2005-05-26/ London, England - 26th May, 2005 - Xara has today released a fourth template pack for Webstyle 4, its popular and easy-to-use, customizable web graphics software.

Being a template driven program, Webstyle 4 is able to keep users at the cutting edge of website design with the introduction of new templates that reflect constantly changing trends.

The new pack contains 5 totally new web page design sets each with up to 8 different layouts, including a self populating photo album. Also included are 68 buttons with all the most commonly used symbols such as Home, Info and Contact.

The designs and layouts are produced by professional web designers who are briefed to create a contemporary graphical look and feel with a variety of layout options to suit a wide range of common content. The user can then easily customize the colors, fonts, logos, images and text to suit their particular demands. The graphic elements are highly optimized to ensure rapid loading of the finished page.

If you are a time-pressed designer, or a web-graphics novice, Webstyle 4 is the only tool you need for professional-quality web-page graphics and designs - no design or technical skill is required. Webstyle 4 follows in the Xara tradition of creating innovative, industry-leading technology and yet being really simple to use.

Webstyle works by providing a huge range of customizable graphic template designs. All you have to do is change the graphic properties - colors, fonts, text, size, background etc. - to create the look you want. The possibilities are virtually limitless, but because the templates are professionally-designed, they will always look great. Webstyle's customizable graphics templates include page layouts, buttons, Nav Bars and banners ads.

Webstyle also includes an easy-to-use and fast photo-enhancement tool. With its one-click auto-enhance adjusting the contrast, brightness, sharpness and color saturation of your photos, you can save hours of experimentation.

"Our aim with Webstyle is to make it possible for absolutely anyone to create top-quality graphics and photos quickly and easily for their website, regardless of their technical or artistic skills," says Charles Moir, Managing Director of Xara. "This latest template pack includes some of our strongest designs yet and we are confident that our users will adopt them with great enthusiasm".

The Xara Webstyle 4 Template Pack 4 costs just $19.95 or $9.95 for users who own the Template Pack Bundle. A bundle of all 4 template packs cost only $44.95,

(All prices are +VAT in Europe.)]]>
Thu, 26 May 2005 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2005-05-26/
<![CDATA[Xara releases German Xara3D 6]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2005-04-29/ ​To find out more about this, please go to http://www.haage-partner.de/general/pressemeldungen/2005-04-29-Xara3D6.html ]]> Fri, 29 Apr 2005 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2005-04-29/ <![CDATA[Xara releases Xara3D 6]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2005-02-21/ ​February, 21st 2005 - Xara announces the release of a major new upgrade to their popular 3D graphics creator. Xara3D 6 can be used to create stunning static or animated 3D graphics, headings and logos in seconds. "It's so low cost that everyone can afford it, and so easy to use that anyone can use it", says CEO, Charles Moir.

Xara3D 6 sees a total overhaul of the user interface. A new docking panel provides clean, uncluttered access to all the main control features. The menus, keyboard short-cuts, toolbars are all now completely customizable. A new feature is the interactive adjustment of the extrude depth and bevel by simply clicking and dragging the image on-screen.

Version 6 includes new bevel types and a completely new system of boards and borders, where the 3D object can be placed on the board background or cut-out of the board, or a border can be placed around the object.

Xara3D can save in all the popular bitmap and animation formats: highly optimized PNG, JPG and static or animated GIF and Flash formats, and a wide variety of movie formats. Version 6 includes improved integration with Xara X¹, the Xara flagship vector graphic product. Users can now directly copy vector graphics to extrude into 3D, and copy directly back into X¹ with just 2 key presses.

The printed page doesn't need to be boring anymore, as Xara3D is ideal for print work too! Posters, birthday cards, leaflets and more can now be jazzed up with a cool Xara3D designs.

Version 6 includes the main functionality of the Xara ScreenMaker software (SRP $14.95) so it can produce really smooth 3D screensavers that can be freely distributed.

"Xara3D has been the most popular Xara product of all time" says Charles Moir, CEO of the Xara Group . "This version offers a dramatic advance in software usability. The beauty of Xara3D is the direct on-screen manipulation of the 3D object. By dragging on the object you can extrude, rotate and alter the bevels. You can drag the 3D lights to shine on the object from any angle and simply double click on a light to alter its color. It has to be the easiest interface for any 3D program"

The free trial version can be downloaded from the Xara website. The cost of Xara3D 6 is $44.99 with a special upgrade cost of $29.99 for existing version 4 and 5 users. A CD is sent to everyone who purchases with a backup copy of Xara3D, plus over 700 example files, 400+ textures, 65 TrueType fonts and a tutorial movie.


Editor's Notes

10 Key Features of Xara3D 6
  • Easy and fast creation of 3D text, graphics and animation for websites, presentations and print.
  • Animate any TrueType font or 3D shape in seconds.
  • Style Picker for copying settings from previous work (700 examples included).
  • Real time shadows, bevels, textures and extrusions.
  • Apply separate animation to individual characters or shapes.
  • New design styles include boards, boards with holes, borders and buttons.
  • Full, interactive control over color, extrusion, bevels and lighting.
  • Outputs JPEG, GIF, BMP, PNG (including full PNG alpha channel), ICO (icon), CUR (cursor), animated GIF, AVI, SWF (vector and bitmap) and screensavers.
  • Full optimization of output graphics and animation for use in web pages.
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Mon, 21 Feb 2005 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2005-02-21/
<![CDATA[Xara releases German Xara X¹]]> http://www.xara.com/press/2005-01-20/ ​To find out more about this, please go to http://www.haage-partner.de/general/pressemeldungen/2005-01-19-XaraX1DE.html ]]> Thu, 20 Jan 2005 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.xara.com/press/2005-01-20/