If this review thing resolved to half-stars, I would give it three-and-a-half stars today. I can see where this may well get upgraded later to four stars, possibly more, after I get more experience with the app. I bought version 11 Premium after doing some fairly intensive research and comparison of the competing apps with a focus on responsive design. I have the main competing product, Serif's WebPlus v5, v7, and v8, and even v8 does not adequately address responsive design. The deal with Xara adding the Website Variants feature to this version (or a recent one ?) along with their claims of what else it can so is what sold me. Now, I had no problems installing this app, and when I have requested support, I have received support in what I feel has been a reasonable amount of time, so I will not give it one of those emotion-racked one-star ratings as some others have done. But very soon after I began using the app I ran into problems and had to contact support. There is a startup issue where once the main app window appears, it is followed by a couple of smaller modal windows. The predominant one is actually an iframe kinda thing and therefore loads content from some web address. At the end of the content is a 'close' button that you click to close the window. But guess what happens when that web content is not available ? No close button!! AND there is no 'x' [exit] icon in the upper right corner of the window's chrome!! AND being a modal window, you're STUCK ! You can't get the damned thing out of the way so you can use the app. Brilliant (NOT!!). Contacted support requesting their developers add the clickable exit icon to the window chrome, and asking is there a workaround until then ? They responded the workaround is to hit the 'escape' key. OK, duh, I should've thought of that, but I shouldn't have had to think about it, the window should have that clickable exit icon. They claimed they would pass the message along to the developers for a longer term fix. Interesting, the next modal window behind the first one is the 'Tips' window, typical of many apps out there, and guess what ? This window DOES have the clickable exit icon. So now it is looking as though I can see where Xara divied up the work to different developers and did not exhaustively communicate design standards to everyone. These inconsistencies make the app look amateurish and like there was not adequate app integration testing before release. Another problem early on was that when I tried to draw my first rounded rectangle, I couldn't for the life of me get the context toolbar to give me the options it should have. After hacking around a bit, trying this and that, and reading some of the help file, it occurred to me to select the polygon icon instead, and then the context toolbar suddenly woke up and worked correctly from then on, including for rectangles, so I contacted support again and carefully explained all this, that it is one of those app initialization things that you only see upon initial install of the app until you clear the problem, then the problem is never seen again (a 'pump-priming' issue in the software as I like to call it). Xara responded, claiming they could not replicate the problem. I reiterated they needed to try it on a new installed instance of the app. After one other software issue that I can't recall right now, I was then actually beginning to use the app as intended and getting familiar with it. I will confess that I have used other drawing programs in the past such as Microsoft Visio, Inkscape and others that have the flexible Layers type options available to exploit, but I always tended to shy away from creating multiple layers. Why do that when I can get everything done on one layer and not have to switch back and forth ? Yeah, I know it sounds ignorant, and it is a situation rife with the potential to hit a brick wall someday. "Just wait kid, you'll be sorry, just wait". Well, that day coincided with my using Xara Web Designer 11. Especially since I began with a pre-baked template, which is where I started in order to keep things simple for myself. Yeah, right. Not. If you don't understand how the layers thing works, you get twisted up in knots real fast and at best you might end up with a site that looks OK, but then it will be a maintenance nightmare. You know, change something, and you break something else. You really have no choice but to learn how this layers thing works, but once you get the hang of it, it is awesome ! I am not saying I am anywhere close to an expert yet, but that's OK, I figured out enough to make it really work for me. Granted, that said, once I realized what was happening I felt I had to tear down most of the design and rearrange it (moving some objects out of their original layers and into other layers, some of which I created myself - xara makes it easy to do that). Once you get pretty good at the basics, you can, for example, group all the header stuff into one layer, lock it, repeat it on all pages, and that kind of technique makes life so much easier when modifying anything else, like the main content. And the need for this is amplified when you start adding variants for responsive design. Once you add this new dimension of variants, the whole thing will unravel and culminate in hitting your head against the wall until unconscious if you don't apply layers discipline. As I learn more about it, I get more efficient at it and can create a maintainable design in a reasonable amount of time.
Xara Web Designer 11 Premium
3.1 | 17 ratings
Price:
Last update: 07-26-2024
About this item
More webpage templates & design elements
Fix items: Individual objects such as navigation bars stay still while scrolling.
Full screen objects that fit the height and width of the browser window
Improved animations for page transitions
Internet connection: Required for registering and validating the program, as well as for some program functions. Program requires registration.
Fix items: Individual objects such as navigation bars stay still while scrolling.
Full screen objects that fit the height and width of the browser window
Improved animations for page transitions
Internet connection: Required for registering and validating the program, as well as for some program functions. Program requires registration.
From the manufacturer
Create your own successful websites.
MAGIX Web Designer 11 Premium offers over 50 extra features to give you everything you need to create amazing websites: Inspirational templates, total design freedom and 12 months of web hosting with an included domain (.com, .de, .net, .org, .at, .be, .biz, .ch, .co.uk, .es, .eu, .fr, .info, .it, .name und .nl).
Drag & drop controls allow you to designed your online presence exactly the way you want. And you don't need any programming experience at all.
Premium advantages: Display optimized for smartphones/tablets, etc. | Numerous E-commerce options | Advanced search engine optimization | Web statistics | Over 600 fonts | 3D graphics | Advanced image editing | Animations & effects | Industry-specific website templates | Includes 2000 MB of web storage and a domain for 12 months.
New in this version:
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Collaborative online editingYou and others can easily make changes to your website's text and images at the same time using a web browser on any device and from anywhere in the world. |
Fixed elementsEasily prevent individual objects from moving when users scroll on your website. For example, you can fix the navigation bar so that it is always visible to visitors. |
Full screen objectsAll the objects on your website can be set to fullscreen and can automatically expand to fill the visitor's browser. |
Custom photo galleriesAdd impressive transitions to your photo collections and present them in the new, customizable photo galleries (based on HTML5 and CSS3 technology). |
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Animation triggerBring your website to life with tiny effects: Elements in your website can be provided with animations that are triggered to start as soon as they come into view on the visitor's browser. |
New mouseover effectsImpress visitors with micro animations (e.g. objects becoming bigger or turning) that are triggered when visitors mouse over elements on your website. |
Secure uploadingThanks to SFTP and FTPS support, your website will be encrypted for upload to prevent unwanted access from others. |
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Lateniteowl
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