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Xara Web Designer+ Changelog

What's new in Xara Web Designer+ 23.8.0.68981

Apr 3, 2024
  • Mold Tool - Replace Image
  • Replacing images inside molds can now be done directly by right-clicking on the Mold and choosing the new Replace photo option
  • Tables
  • When in the Table Tool, clicking on an object embedded in the table now selects the table cell instead of the object. This improves consistency - now in all cases clicking in a table will select the table cell.
  • Cutting table row goes wrong in heavily merged table. Fixed.
  • Unexpected column widths when adding or pasting rows. Fixed.
  • Internal error when cutting cells in some table designs. Fixed.
  • Web Export:
  • New - Modular Website Tutorials, to help you get started building modular websites from Web Blocks. See Help > Modular website tutorials.
  • The option for an image to fill the browser window doesn’t work until the document is saved. Fixed.
  • When navigating from page to page, where each page has a button in the same position under the mouse pointer, it was necessary to move the mouse a little before the button would become clickable. Fixed.
  • Very quickly moving an object out of a Flexible Web Block could result in the object disappearing. Fixed
  • Page deletes and page re-orders now warn if they result in the first page of a website not being called “index”.
  • Status bar messages improved when dragging objects over Blocks.
  • Can’t change the height of blocks containing text columns. Fixed.
  • New Blocks are now inserted behind any floating objects and on top of all existing Blocks. FTP dialog layout improvements.
  • Applying shadow to text changed Flexible Web Block layout unexpectedly. Fixed.
  • Other Web Block fixes
  • Other Fixes & Improvements:
  • Display of CMYK JPEGs with a color profile incorrect. Fixed.
  • Selection wrong after making a single object repeating. Fixed.
  • Serious error on deletion of a presentation step, in presentation document with ‘All layers the same’ turned on. Fixed.
  • Logging improvements to aid problem resolution, for Designer+ Activation and FTP Publishing.
  • PDF import: PDF file would not open. Fixed. Italian translation improvements

New in Xara Web Designer+ 23.7.0.3163 (Feb 22, 2024)

  • Other Web Improvements:
  • First time publishing user experience is now smoother and simpler
  • Publishing details are now always saved in the document (the option to control this has been removed).
  • When publishing with FTP, the password is now automatically saved in the project file by default (but this can still be turned off in the Publish dialog).
  • Xara Hosting users are now kept signed in by default.
  • Improved handling of port number in FTP settings. Port number is automatically extracted from the server address, if included, and set correctly.
  • Option to view FTP password.
  • Import/Export Improvements:
  • PDF Import: Some PDFs with form fields did not import. Fixed.
  • PDF Import: Non 8-bpp images could import solid black from some PDFs. Fixed.
  • Web export: PDFs with a “+” in their filenames were not linked to website correctly. Fixed.
  • Other Fixes & Improvements:
  • Improved error reporting on program activation failure.
  • Widget maximum height increased, to allow for very long form widgets.
  • Serious error copy/pasting page from one document to another. Fixed

New in Xara Web Designer+ 23.5.0.2533 (Nov 15, 2023)

  • Fixes & Improvements:
  • On newly created documents, the document language is now set according to the current device language.
  • Serious error optimizing a specific PNG file. Fixed.
  • Tolerance and Fade controls not visible on Photo Tool InfoBar with some languages. Fixed.
  • Serious error possible if font warnings are shown during program startup. Fixed.
  • Serious error possible selecting inside photos with effects. Fixed
  • Web Improvements:
  • Save publish settings in document option was being turned off if there are no publish settings. Fixed.
  • Serious error adding text inside to object in Web Block. Fixed.
  • Web export: Export of empty href without a nofollow. Fixed.
  • Web font problems could be triggered by very long analytics code. Fixed.
  • WebP export library updated, with latest security fixes

New in Xara Web Designer+ 23.4.0.2084 (Sep 4, 2023)

  • Support for Dutch, Spanish & French
  • Designer+ now supports Dutch, Spanish and French, in addition to the English and German languages already available. When starting the application for the first time on a device, it will use the current language as defined in Windows. Thereafter you can change the language at any time using Help > Language (requires an application restart).

New in Xara Web Designer+ 23.2.0.67158 (Jul 6, 2023)

  • Working with Responsive Websites:
  • Using Web Blocks in Existing Websites:
  • Our new Web Blocks offer an extremely easy way of to build a new Modular Website (see Modular Websites above). But now you can also use the wide range of Web Block designs in your existing (non- modular) websites. You’ll find the Web Blocks in the Designs Gallery and Online Content Catalog, under Modular Websites > Web Blocks. Add a Web Block by double-clicking on it in the Designs Gallery, or simply drag & drop it onto your page. If you drop the Web Block onto an existing page it will be added to the bottom of the page, just above any footer, and it will automatically adjust to fit the width of your page. But you can now also create completely new pages in your existing sites, built from our large and constantly expanding library of Web Blocks.
  • Improved Positioning of New Live Shares:
  • Now when you Live Share an object with other variants, it is positioned more usefully in those other variants, relative to neighboring objects. Where you need a different layout in the other variant(s), you will still need to manually re-position the shared object, but in most cases this will be a time-saver.
  • Other Web Improvements:
  • When you delete an object that is shared with other variants, a prompt offers to delete from all variants.
  • Dragging live shared embedded objects between text areas doesn’t work across variants. Fixed.
  • Widget/placeholder HTML Head code is now shared across variants, as body code is.
  • Google Analytics code is now inserted immediately after <head> element, the current recommendation from Google.
  • NavBar menus with links to headings not updated correctly. Fixed.
  • Issue with cut & paste of Web Block. Fixed.
  • Links to SmartFields would only open in current tab. Fixed.
  • Undo of Web Block height change doesn’t work if smart transform is disabled. Fixed.
  • Personal SmartFields:
  • The set of Personal SmartFields in Web Designer+ (Utilities > SmartFields …) has been extended to match the fields in your Xara Cloud profile, so that templates and documents using these fields will work the same way in both Web Designer+ and Xara Cloud. The new fields in Web Designer+ are full address, website text, facebook text, instagram text, linkedin text, twitter text, tiktok text and link, adding to the great time-saving potential of SmartFields

New in Xara Web Designer+ 23.1 (Jul 6, 2023)

  • German Support:
  • Web Designer+ now supports both English and German languges. When starting the application for the first time on a device, it will use the current language as defined in Windows. Thereafter you can change the language at any time using Help > Language (requires an application restart).
  • Accounts Menu:
  • The Accounts menu now has some additional options to help you manage your Web Designer+. Account details This option shows you which account email and Team you used to activate Web Designer+. Sign-out Use this if you need to re-activate Web Designer+ using a different account email or Team. This is important if you purchased Web Designer+ using a different email address to the one you used to activate it. Change sign-in details This option opens your web browser to let you change the name or email address in your Xara account.
  • Other Fixes & Improvements:
  • Deleting all Web Block contents now deletes the whole Block.
  • Link dialog: Link to page and Link to heading menus are now wider to show longer headings and page names.
  • Spelling dictionaries have been added for Ukrainian and Amharic.
  • Adding link to PDF doesn’t work if website is set to export to .html. Fixed

New in Xara Web Designer+ 22.5.1.65716 (Jan 27, 2023)

  • A completely new, modern UI;
  • Extra SEO optimization tools;
  • More than 100 new web graphic and website templates;
  • Improved performance of mobile variants;
  • A flexible table tool;
  • 2000+ photo filters

New in Xara Web Designer+ 12.2.0.45774 (Aug 23, 2016)

  • Improved List Editing:
  • You can now select just the bullets/numbers in bulleted/numbered lists, so you can then adjust the color, size or font independently of the list text;
  • Two separate numbered lists can now be linked (so for example you could have a graphic in the middle).
  • Stock Photos & Illustration:
  • New in the Online Content Catalog: In partnership with Pixabay we've added fully integrated access to a free library of over 500,000 quality royalty-free stock photos and over 59,000 vector illustrations. All available under the CC0 license.
  • Import & Export:
  • Minor SVG import improvements.

New in Xara Web Designer+ 12.0.1.45229 (Jun 8, 2016)

  • Enhanced 'On Reveal' Animations:
  • On reveal animations were one of the hits of v11. These are animations that are triggered as your object comes into view, and we’ve added 40 new animation types that work on reveal, such as bounce, zoom and flip.
  • Check out our Example Site 2 and Example Site 3, which include lots of examples of the new animations (based on the new Fresh and Able themes).
  • Stick At Top
  • By popular demand, you will now have the option for an object to scroll to the top and then stick. See our Example Site 2 (the NavBar sticks when it reaches the top of the page).
  • THE NEW FRESH THEME HAS A STICK AT THE TOP NAVBAR:
  • New Scrolling Animations:
  • We also have a completely new type of animation. You'll find 30 'scrolling animations' in the Reveal tab of the web animation dialog, which link an animation to the position of the scroll bar.
  • Instead of the animation running once when the object first appears (like reveal animations), the object animates whenever the document is scrolled, and the speed of the animation is proportional to the scrolling speed.
  • Parallax Scrolling Effects:
  • The must-have effect for any contemporary site, parallax is a kind of 3D effect created by the background moving at a slower rate to the foreground.
  • The header in this site has a parallax effect applied
  • TEXT HANDLING:
  • Symbols & Icons:
  • Check out Insert > Symbol. These are not just useful symbols and icons that you can add to your text, but fully editable vector shapes!
  • The popular Font Awesome collection has been updated, and is now supplemented by a collection of Google Material Design Icons making more than 1500 symbols in total
  • We’ve added a search function for the symbols, eg search on ‘Face’ and it will show you Facebook symbols, smiley faces etc
  • The symbols will be automatically updated as new versions become available
  • Plus there’s improved handling of symbols that have been added to your text (so for example they aren’t affected by font changes to the text)
  • A new right click Replace Symbol option (including symbols in bullet lists)
  • You can now choose from over 1500 icons and symbols
  • Other Text Enhancements:
  • Better handling of text on buttons (so font and font size changes are synchronized on the mouse off and mouse over state)
  • Improved subscript / superscript positioning
  • A new rectangular text repelling option
  • Option to change the case of selected text, switching between UPPER CASE, lower case or Sentence case
  • The spell checker menu now allows you to set the language for your whole document
  • Improvements to the auto-kerning (now supports kerning between character classes, so many newer OpenType fonts now render with the correct kerning)
  • List editing improvements
  • And other minor enhancements
  • XARA ONLINE DESIGNER:
  • Significant improvements since last year include:
  • Dramatically improved editing features (add & delete objects, move & resize, add & delete pages)
  • Bitmap export & download
  • PDF export and download
  • Create New Document (yes, your document no longer needs to be created in Web Designer!)
  • Edit your Xara websites in a browser using any device
  • CONTENT:
  • All Business Themes Now Included:
  • Yes, we really are including ALL 166 business themes in Web Designer Premium. These were previously sold for $15 each!
  • Each theme is a complete website, with linked pages typically required for that business type, and with professional photography suited to the business. This makes it easier and quicker than ever to create a complete, professional looking website for almost any type of small business!
  • View previews of the Business Themes.
  • A New Online Content Catalog:
  • An enhanced Online Content Catalog will be included free for one year as part of our new Update Guarantee. Based on the v11 Content Catalog, this new and improved version will now offer:
  • Regular updates to the templates as part of the Update Guarantee
  • Full keyword search of the entire catalog
  • A new more logical structure to the content offering a better work flow
  • The Designs Gallery (now 'Local Designs Gallery') will now be used to display only your current assets (those downloaded from the Online Content Catalog or from the optional back-up CD) making it quicker to access the resources you are already using.
  • Finding the right content is now easy with the Search feature in the new Online
  • CONTENT CATALOG:
  • Photo Grids:
  • These are a cool new way to display your photos. We’ve added both fully editable Smart Photo Grids (Smartshapes) and simple photo grid templates.
  • The Smart Photo Grids let you display any collection of photos, even those with different shapes and aspect ratios, in a compact grid on your website. Drag and drop your photo onto the grid and it automatically updates to fit your photo in, no matter what shape it is!
  • Photo Grids offer a cool new way to display your photos
  • OTHER NEW TEMPLATES:
  • 9 new General Website Themes all including mobile variants
  • A selection of new modern NavBar and standalone button designs
  • Social media templates such as Facebook, G+ and Twitter covers
  • A wider range of photo hovers and photo sliders, and extra photo clipart
  • A handy new page counter widget
  • View previews of a selection of the themes and other templates (select the NEW filter to see some of the new ones).
  • New templates include covers, profiles and more for all the most popular social sites
  • New SmartShapes:
  • SmartShapes are an amazingly quick and easy way to create and edit some of the most commonly required shapes. There are improvements to the way SmartShapes work (eg improved handles) plus some great new additions to the library of these ultra-editable ready-made shapes:
  • New Chart SmartShapes for percentage ring, bar chart and column chart
  • New Text Panels and Photo Panels
  • Other new SmartShapes include some simple shapes such as a rectangle where you can edit corners individually and custom lines
  • New variants of existing SmartShapes such as arrows and speech bubbles
  • We will soon be offering a public API for SmartShapes for anyone interested in developing their own (programmed in Javascript). Contact Us.
  • New SmartShapes include bar charts, column charts, pie charts and percentage rings
  • OTHER:
  • Update Guarantee: Access New Features As They Are Developed
  • We know that many of you find it frustrating that you have to wait a whole year for our next update - knowing that we are working on (and likely finished) new cutting edge features and on-trend content. We have the answer! For the first time you’ll have access to new features and content as we develop them, at any time during the 365 days after you purchase. You’ll be able to download and use these new features, for no extra charge, in addition to the version that you buy today.
  • The Update Guarantee gives you 365 days access to:
  • Xara Online Designer, including any updates during that time
  • The new Online Content Catalog, including any new templates released during that time
  • M Website Hosting
  • Upgrades and patches to Web Designer released in the 365 days after you purchase and register. Note: these updates continue to work after 365 days in any installations at the date of expiry, but if you reinstall the software after the Update Guarantee expires (and you don't renew) then these updates will not be included (the software will revert to the version at your date of purchase or registration).
  • Import & Export:
  • Improved Word import and export
  • Improved PDF import
  • Improved RTF import and export
  • Other Enhancements:
  • A new and improved media player (by default it uses the HTML5 capabilities of the web browser to play the audio and video where the browser supports it, otherwise Flash)
  • The preview window has been updated to include MS Edge preview (Windows 10)
  • You can now give individual objects names in the Page & Layer Gallery, to help find objects and to organize your designs
  • Distribute operations have been added to the Align toolbar

New in Xara Web Designer+ 11.0.0.38607 (May 29, 2015)

  • PAGE DESIGN:
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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)
  • What's more there are some eye catching new animation types for mouseover and click such as wobble and bounce
  • 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).
  • ONLINE EDITING:
  • 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
  • Online Editing With cloud.xara (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:
  • 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
  • And for everyone:
  • 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.
  • CONTENT:
  • New Slideshow Widget:
  • A powerful and flexible new Widget for creating slideshows from TaskPilot. 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, nb free registration with TaskPilot is required).
  • New Templates:
  • More than 30 new General Website Themes (normally sold in Web Packs for $10 each!) with up to 16 page layouts, all including new mobile variants.
  • OTHER ENHANCEMENTS:
  • Secure FTP Publishing Options:
  • Web Designer 11 now offers support for publishing with SFTP and FTPS.
  • 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.
  • TaskPilot 'Website M' hosting included free:
  • Web Designer 11 Premium includes TaskPilot ‘Website M’ hosting, free for one year (worth $1.99 a month). This includes 2GBytes of free web hosting space, one free domain name (e.g. yourname.com or .co.uk or .de etc), and TaskPilot Organizer (including cloud based calendar and contacts). Plus if you publish with TaskPilot you can password protect your web pages.
  • Other Minor Enhancements:
  • Objects are automatically resized down to column width when you insert them into a text column
  • 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.

New in Xara Web Designer+ 10.0.0.33607 (Apr 26, 2014)

  • Supersites:
  • How to create a Supersite
  • Page transitions o Transition direction
  • Scale to fit screen o Swipe Gestures & Hotkeys
  • Preview window
  • Supersite Web Analytics
  • Example Supersites
  • Responsive Web Design
  • Multiple Variants
  • Retina or HiDPI screens
  • How to create a variant
  • What’s shared across variants
  • How to add an object to all variants
  • NavBars, Repeating Objects & Menus
  • Multi-column behaviour
  • Screen Orientation
  • Common screen widths
  • How to change the text size in one variant
  • The costs of creating RWD websites
  • Presentations:
  • SmartShapes
  • Content Catalog
  • Other changes
  • Xara Web Designer - design philosophy

New in Xara Web Designer+ 9.0.1.27404 (Apr 22, 2013)

  • Improved HTML5 compatibility
  • Improved web page background handling (inc. stock backgrounds in the Designs Gallery)
  • Improved web font embedding (Premium only)
  • Direct support for 600+ Google Fonts and new Google Font picker (Premium only)
  • Improved re-coloring of group objects (e.g. clipart) and website backgrounds
  • Automatic page item positioning
  • Improved integration of Google Analytics (Premium only)
  • Improved Web Presentation creation and editing (Premium only)
  • Simpler publishing
  • MAGIX hosting ‘M’ option included free for Web Designer Premium users (Premium only)
  • NavBar replacement
  • Retina compatibility (high resolution photos & graphics) (Premium only)
  • 64-bit version (Premium only)
  • 20 new general web theme template designs (Premium only, Web Designer classic will get 3 new themes)
  • A library of >100 new business-specific template available. 1 included free for those upgrading to Web Designer Premium 9.
  • New Widgets
  • Other small improvements:
  • Useful right-click menu options on document tabs
  • Improved speed and quality for JPEG / PNG export
  • Flyout toolbars easier to use
  • Large thumbnails for .web (and .xar) files.
  • ‘Link to top’ option for web links
  • Improved Windows 8 touch compatibility
  • More efficient grad filled rectangles
  • Favicon and Tileicon improvements

New in Xara Web Designer+ 8.0.2.21761 (Apr 18, 2012)

  • Support for Text Styles, automatic object re-positioning & page resizing as you add text
  • Embedded fonts (you are no longer limited to 'web safe' fonts)
  • New & updated website themes & web graphic templates
  • New & updated widgets
  • Graphical bullet & numbered lists & Live Effects Tool