Sticky Objects
These are objects that you can 'stick' in place as the page scrolls underneath. A good example is the NavBar which you can stick to the top of the page as viewers scroll down, so they can still easily navigate to other pages without having to scroll back up to the top. In v11 any object can be stuck to any position on the page, or the left of right edge of the browser window.Example site (with NavBar and logo stuck to the top, social buttons stuck to the left and a footer stuck to the bottom. Based on the new Hipster theme)
You can now 'stick' objects such as social networking buttons, NavBars or footers, so they remain in view as the page is scrolled up and down
New Animation Possibilities
A new Web Animation dialog introduces powerful and easy to use new animation capabilities. You can now set up objects to:- Animate on mouseover
- Animate on reveal ie when the object first comes into view or a trigger object comes into view. So for example you can set objects to slide or fade into view as you scroll down a page
- Animate on click (or tap on a touch device)
Example site (on reveal - buttons on photo heading slide in from right and left, circular photos fade in, and Headlines slide in from right and left. Based on the new Ultimate theme.)
Also Gary Priester has had loads of fun trying out all the new animation types in his First Look at v11 on the Xara Xone.
Some of the new animation styles that can now be triggered by click (or tap), mouseover or 'on reveal'
Embedded Graphics (Added August 2015)
Two changes give you much greater control over any graphics that you embed into your text.Firstly when you insert a graphic into a text column it is now automatically resized down to column width.
Secondly you can control whether it's embedded inline in your text or whether text should flow to the left or right of your embedded graphic.
Choose whether a graphic is embedded inline, or whether text should flow to the left or right
Stretchy Backgrounds
Website designs with no obvious page boundary are now very popular, and in this sort of design you'll commonly see a page background that covers the entire browser window and stretches to fill the browser width. In Web Designer 11 you can make any rectangle or image stretch to fill the browser window, either horizontally or vertically.Example site (the top photo stretches across the whole width. Based on the new John James theme)
Add a 'stretching' background image across the full width of the page
Text Handling Enhancements
- Auto-correct / abbreviation expansion. Create your own list of abbreviations that will be automatically expanded as you type, so for example XWD could be expanded to Xara Web Designer as you type. It's great for symbols too - for example you might set up yen to render ¥
- Auto-creation of links when you type a URL so for example typing xara.com will automatically create a link to the Xara site
- A text background color option so you can easily highlight words
- An easy way to replace one font with another throughout a document (especially useful for replacing missing fonts in imported PDFs)
- 'Update style to match' option (useful for copying styles from another document or applying styles to unstyled documents, particularly imported PDFs)
- More detailed information on font permissions in Document Information
- Accurate export of text with manual kerns
- Update of the Font Awesome Symbols (a quick & easy way to insert symbols from the large and growing Font Awesome selection. The full set is displayed via the Insert menu)
- Google fonts updated
- Fonts will look correct in exported documents where fonts are missing if outlines are embedded (for example from imported PDFs, most of which include embedded character outlines).
Create your own list of abbreviations that will be automatically expanded as you type
Document Sync With Dropbox or GDrive
Web Designer can now sync files via Dropbox and Google Drive. So if you have the same file open on multiple computers, and you make an edit and save the file on one computer, it will be updated in Web Designer on the other computers.
And there's another bonus: Dropbox and Google Drive maintain older versions of your files, and provide easy ways of viewing and reverting back to earlier versions (in Dropbox simply right click on a file and select 'View previous versions'). This is a safe, easy and storage-saving way of maintaining multiple versions of your website files.
And there's another bonus: Dropbox and Google Drive maintain older versions of your files, and provide easy ways of viewing and reverting back to earlier versions (in Dropbox simply right click on a file and select 'View previous versions'). This is a safe, easy and storage-saving way of maintaining multiple versions of your website files.
Easily sync your documents via Dropbox or Google Drive
Online Editing With Xara Online Designer (beta)
An ultra-simple way to view, edit and update the content of your Xara website using a web browser on any computer or tablet (yes even a Mac or Android tablet!), from anywhere in the world, and to re-publish the website.
For commercial designers:
For commercial designers:
- Give controlled editing rights to your clients, namely allow them to edit text and replace images
- Brainstorming a new design with your client over the phone? Now you can update the cloud version in real time so you client can see the changes as you talk
- Update the text (blogs, news, prices for example) or replace images and re-publish your own website from anywhere
- Work with colleagues on the same website at the same time.
Find out more in the V11 Release Notes and the Xara Online Designer Intro. For anyone who signs up now the cloud.xara service will be completely free to use until the release of Web Designer 12 in 2016.
New Slideshow Widget
A powerful and flexible new Widget for creating slideshows. You can see another example in this demo site (the photos of the different bikes in the New Models section). You'll find the Widget in the Designs Gallery under Page Elements & Widgets > Photo Slideshows & Galleries..An example slideshow created with the new widget from TaskPilot
New Templates
View previews of a selection of the themes (including all new ones, marked NEW).
37 new themes (including the Hipster, Ultimate and John James designs used to create the example sites linked to from this page)
Secure FTP Publishing Options
Web Designer 11 now offers support for publishing with SFTP and FTPS.Other Minor Enhancements
- Ability to control the inter-page gap in vertical and horizontal supersites
- Web export options dialog now usable offline
- A new option Arrange > Combine Shapes > Intersect all shapes (the overlapping areas of shapes become separate shapes)
- Improved support in the drawing tools for modern touch devices, including the Microsoft Surface stylus
- Small improvements in the drop-down menus
- Some improvements to photo gallery widgets (you can now set the size of the pop-up)
- New photo text panel SmartShape
- InfoBar pulses on tool selection.
Import & Export Enhancements
PDF Import:
- Improved text editability (improved text reconstruction, margins, better text link import, better underline import)
- Better support for import of PDFs with embedded font subsets, where fonts are not installed locally
- Many other minor fixes and improvements.
Other Import / Export
- Option to export a Retina version of a graphic at the same time as the 96dpi version
- Improvements to Word import.