Website Building Software > XARA WEB DESIGNER

Review XWD version 6: I like XWD alot

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Samrc:
After 10 years of helping on the Trellix Cafe, GlobalSCAPE, TCH and samisite forums for free, I FINALLY made a website about my skills and hung up a shingle to sell services.  All the free and paid work I have done for these years has been only word of mouth.  Don't expect to make lots of moola from it but at least I now have a 'professional'  LOL  presence on the web.  

I built Website Ads and Web Design Elements by aWebWench.com with Xara Web Designer, 6.0
I started with a template and did my own twist on it.  Not much change (yet).
Yes, purple and green and dragonfly are my signature but they are reinvented in the new site.

Though incomplete, I have enough posted that you can see where I am going with it.
I will be adding more features offered in the program to that web site as I learn to use them.

That site is basic. No special features (yet).
But even basic it has some decent features:
- dynamic drop-down menu
- layers
- fading
- transparencies
- iframes
- contact form inside iframe
- paypal button
- statcounter code
- repeating elements.
I will be adding some rollovers, photo elements and other features with time.

So now to get to the real reason for posting here:
What I like about the software:
It's Fun!  
It's Functional!  
Some features take seconds to learn. Some are so similar to CSB it is scary.

This one is different than any other builder I have tested.  

- USER:  This program is a website designer with the personal user/small business user in mind.
- FLASH & GIF: - This program is a web designer with a photo program at it's heart.  :hearts:  This thing doesn't just allow you to insert flash and animated gifs, slideshows, galleries. It builds flash, animated gifs, slideshows and galleries and very well too. Yes you can still insert pieces like that from other sources but it's nice to know you can build them right in the software itself!  [Though I have animations and flash on the site site I built, I did not build those in the XWD file. They were made with a variety of software at different times and inserted into the XWD page using drag and drop. The animations came in easily with little effort. The placeholder rectangle for my flash pieces had to be manually adjusted (drag/stretch) to look like the real thing and be the correct size-took a couple tries.]
- PHOTOS:  Gracious.. XWD excels here. Do anything, fix a photo, slideshows, popups, blur/fade, rollovers, galleries.
- TEMPLATES/NO TEMPLATES:  Ok. This is a big issue for some folks.  Some people ONLY build using templates. Others will not use a program that ONLY uses templates. Everybody wins with XWD. It's totally up to you. Build from scratch or use a template. Even if you use a template YOU have total control over every element of that template. Color, size, elements, text areas, photo layouts, you name it. Keep the whole template as is or change a few things to suit yourself. Each page can be EXACTLY the same or quite different. Your choice.
You can make each page a different length, or all the same.  Your choice.
Using a template you can quickly add/remove elements from the page without changing the nature of the template.
You can duplicate a page by right clicking and choosing that option. The templates that come with XWD are very usable with several page variations for each.
- REPEATING ELEMENTS: Want something on every page?  CSB can do this in a couple ways. And so can XWD. Couple simple settings and bam! it is taken care of.  Make a change to one of the repeating elements then click to update all of them and it's done.
- PRE-MADE COMPONENTS:  The designs gallery has a nice selection of pre-made components that you can drag/drop onto your web page and use. You can tweak these elements to fit your page better or use exactly as is.  Say you want a speech bubble overlaying an image.  No need to make one.  Just drag that component from your design gallery onto the page and type in the words you want. The bubble will stretch to fit what you type!
Lovely extras like that make this program a joy to work with.  Love the "stretchy buttons".
- WIDGETS:  Trellix used to offer WEBGEMS. They were special features like weather, etc that would load into your webpage. They depend on other sites to feed data to yours. Well, XWD has a lot of these to offer for YouTube, Google... Everything old is new again.  :TUP:
- NO CODING NECESSARY:  Still no coding necessary and like CSB to see the code you must go to view source on the website itself.
- INSERTING CODE:  Yes. Just like CSB, you CAN insert code snippets into your web page using a placeholder.
- UPLOADING EXTERNAL FILES: Yep.  XWD will grab a file for you and upload it to the website for you, putting a link on the page accessing the file (perfect for pdf files).
- PUBLISHING: Publishing is nearly identical to CSB, simple and easy. (CON: If you have difficulty w/publish, there is not direct facility to id the issue like CSB that logs process. But there is a separate utility you can add to assist).
- INTERFACE:  Clean, easy, uncluttered.  WYSIWYG. Drag and Drop.
- STORAGE:  This program compacts the website data into a proprietary format, in small .web files (sound familiar?  ;))
- TEXT: Text is not forgotten. Images can repel text if you check that option. You can use indents, tabs, hanging indents.  When you combine features that are not supported by HTML or when you use non web-safe fonts, the program automatically converts it to PICTURES! (great for buttons, headers, etc).
- LEARNING CURVE:  Takes an hour maybe two to get the BASICS.  :TUP:  Takes years to get the full use of the program!  :clapping:  Some features WILL take some time to learn. There are many little videos demonstrating techniques and even while learning, the program has that FUN factor that makes it feel like play time rather than work.
- INCLUDES:  Navigation bars with drop downs, drop shadows are simple
- PRICE: $50 and comes in different languages...

- CONS: No tables. Sorry. No tables. I know that many people will no longer need them because we over-use them in CSB to hold design in place and that is not necessary in XWD. There are work-arounds for this when a table is the best option (data in a table). Hopefully they give us basic tables in the future....  :luck:   No frames. You can use iframes, but not frames. Since frames are not used much anymore, this shouldn't be an issue for most sites.


With release of version 6, they moved this program into another class entirely!  
I really think this product is special.  
Not Dreamweaver. Not for Corporate type sites. It has it's limitations.
Having said that, I would STRONGLY recommend you give this Xara Web Designer program a try!  30 day free trial, forums, price, abilities, support, FUN FACTOR, EASE OF USE make this my favorite replacement so far.

Ed:
Great review!  :TUP:

I will certainly take a look at it.
Thanks Sami.

rickasaurus:
Very good review Sami. As you know, I have been using XWD for a while. I rarely use DW these days. With the release of XWD6, they have really made a huge leap to address most of the feedback, and it is now a well-featured program.

I just tested the publish feature, and now it really works - publishes the updates only!

As you said, so similar to CSB (at least from a user perspective), but a totally modern version!

Rick

Samrc:
Glad you found it helpful.  Hopefully a few more people will try it and like it too.
Yes Rick, I know you have used it and liked even the v5, despite its shortcomings.
I was so VERY disappointed with the v5. Could not use it, could not recommend it. v6 is so far superior it is a totally new program!

I will add to this thread and start a feature chart to compare to CSB as I continue to use/learn the program and as I try out Site Spinner too.
With XWD, I want to address how tables can be inserted because I do NEED them for some things.

There are other things I want too, but I expect they will show up in a future version of XXP6 instead.  :D
I find I use PSP less and less, turning to XXP5 for my vector AND bitmap graphics work. The included Magix Xtreme Photo Designer (linked program) adds much needed bitmap features like cloning and other functions I used to always handle in Paint Shop Pro.  XXP5 has the ability to see and edit each ITEM on a layer. I LOVE THIS and found that I missed that function in XWD6.  As I said, I expect we will get that in XXP6, or in a pro version of XWD.

Ed:
Sami, do you know if XWD creates the home page with a .htm or .html extension?

I'm asking because the first page in a URL picked up by a browser is the index file, when it is not included in the URL, and don't know why CSB creates both or if there is an order priority between the two.

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