COMPANY: Xara Group Limited | URL: (See Buy link below) | TYPE: Standalone | PLATFORM: Windows | PRICE: $49
Traditional web authoring tools are really just HTML editors, they are designed to create text layouts, providing few graphical capabilities. And yet it's evident that the vast majority of modern websites are of a graphical nature. Xara believes you should have complete freedom to include anything – text, graphics, photos – anywhere on the page, using just one tool. And you shouldn't need to know, or even see, the HTML that goes into creating your site, any more than a car driver needs to know how an engine works.

Xara Web Designer 6: There is no easier solution

The Web Designer approach is simple: Pick your design from the templates; customize it with complete freedom; publish. Absolutely no HTML or Javascript skills are required! Templates include individual web graphics, complete pages and even pre-built multi-page sites.

A one-tool solution

You only need one program for creating graphical websites – from design to publishing – and that's Web Designer.

Web Designer includes customizable template designs plus tools for creating your own vector graphics and animations, for photo editing (an integrated ultra-fast, non-destructive photo tool), and for advanced text layout. Site upload is covered too!

Total design freedom

Web Designer gives you total design freedom – using drag and drop you can literally place anything, anywhere on the page. And things which are normally difficult to achieve in HTML are a snap in Web Designer, for example text with curved edges, text or graphics at an angle, text flowing around objects – no problem!

WYSIWYG

Whether you customize one of the bundled templates or create your own graphics or animations, it's genuinely WYSIWYG – what you see in Web Designer is exactly what you get on your website.

Quality results guaranteed

Web Designer's templates are created by top professional designers, so the quality is guaranteed. But of course you can customize the color, text, images, size etc to create your own personal look without any loss of quality. It's the best of both worlds!

Clever stuff

But Web Designer has some clever tricks too, to make things easier for you – here are just a few of the things that will save you time and trouble:

Liquid text flow around objects; easy mouseover, thumbnail and pop-up creation; automatic adjustment of photos to the correct web resolution; one-click change of site wide theme colors and shades; automatic color matching of imported objects such as buttons; and buttons and text panels that automatically stretch as you change the text.

Compatibility

Working with industry standards is vital, so Web Designer sites are W3C compliant, cross browser compatible (IE 5.5, Firefox, Safari, Chrome) and XHTML, CSS standards based.
It can also import a huge range of files types for vector graphics, image and text including PDF, RTF, RAW, PSD, TIFF and of course JPEG, PNG, GIF.

Choose a design

Pick your page design from the bundled templates, all created by professional designers so that quality is guaranteed. There are pre-built, ready-linked multi-page sites, or you can build your own from the page layouts offered in co-ordinated theme sets. Add additional pages by simply duplicating the current one or dropping another layout from the Designs Gallery – made even easier by an auto color-matching feature and a Replicate command for button bars that allows you to match newly added pages to existing ones.

Then you can customize the pages with complete freedom and absolutely zero loss of quality.

Use professional templates

Web Designer also includes template designs for individual graphics, from buttons, NavBars and headings to text boxes and speech bubbles! Again they are all created by professional designers and can be customized to fit your site in seconds.

These individual graphics can be exported in the standard web formats such as GIF, JPEG, PNG for use on existing websites, or they can be added to any page being created in Web Designer.

Quick as a flash

Web Designer is one of the easiest tools for creating truly efficient Flash animations, which you can export as .swf or add to any page being created in Web Designer.

Fast prototypes for designers

For designers, Web Designer offers unparalleled design freedom. It's perhaps the fastest website prototyping tool around, even for websites created from scratch. As a designer you don't need to know anything about HTML, but you'll have complete freedom to design websites as simple or as complex as you need, with an actual working HTML result, rather than just a "fake" static mock-up.

What's New In Version 6

•Significantly enhanced NavBar handling and DHTML menu support

•Drag 'n' drop color schemes for instant color changes

•Drag 'n' drop Widgets from the Designs Gallery, and a new Widget library

•HTML snippets can be pasted directly into your document, with an automatic preview/placeholder created

•An easy way to add links to (and upload) external files such as PDF, Flash and Word files

•Incremental Publishing

•FTP details can be stored with the document

•Named FTP profiles

•Free web hosting offer

•Totally re-designed application appearance

•New fly-out tools and buttons

•A large selection of new designs in the Designs Gallery

•New "complete website" designs

•Enhanced photo thumbnail pop-ups

•Create a slideshow and Next / Previous on a gallery or any number of thumbnails

•Auto filling of the photo-gallery via simple drag 'n' drop

•Automatic photo-optimize feature

•Enhanced Text tool

•"Anchored" graphics (so photos and graphics flow with the text)

•Support for justified text

•Easy MP4 video upload and built-in video player

•Enhanced page color and background color support

•Ability to support rounded-corner pages, add drop shadows to the page and set the vertical offset

•Improved Page & Layer Gallery, with a new 'Solo' mode

•New time-saving "Preview current page" and "Preview whole document" options

•Auto-updating Designs Gallery

•Advanced: Simpler HTML and "pure HTML" paragraphs

•Automatic backup of all open documents

•Automatic save and restore of open documents on application closedown