Xara Designer Pro X11 First Look — By Gary W. Priester

Fun New Web Animation Effects

Shown above are some of the hot new Mouse-Over, Click/Touch effects. These animations can be applied to groups or just to text as shown with the top row of buttons. These Web Animation effects also can be hyper-linked to pages, layers, and to outside sites. Plus, they work on all mobile devices. And, these effects can be used with Navigation Bars. You can use any of the effects shown above. I created my own Navigation buttons for this review. Navigation bars with mouse over effects now have a default Web Animation, Fade. But you can change the default to any of the effects you want. But please, please, show some self control. Just because you can have navigation buttons like the ones shown below, does mean you should! But if your heart is set on it, what can I do?

Mouse Over the Buttons if you Dare! [I would Not Do This. But You Are Your Own Designer.]

Revealing Website Magic

Web Animation Reveal lets you animate objects on your page. There are nine different Reveal options. In my example above I have used two Reveal effects. The black and white version of the photo slides in from the bottom first, while the color version fades in a few seconds later giving the effect of the black and white photo coming to life. Reveal Animations happen as soon as the object is revealed in the browser. But you can delay the animation by adding a “Delay” (0-10 seconds). You can also use a “Trigger object”. A Trigger object is any shape that you have named Trigger, Trigger 1, Trigger 2, etc. In this case the animation will not start until the trigger object is visible in the browser. The red rectangle above triggers the fade into color. Reveal animation have two settings: Time, the time it takes for the animation to happen, and Delay, how long it takes before a Reveal animation occurs. Both can be from 0 to 10 seconds.

Trigger Object

Stretchy and Sticky Objects

Sticky Objects remain fixed in place on the page even if the page is scrolled. My headers and footers are Sticky Objects as are the Download Free Trial Copy icon on the left of the screen and the three website link icons on the right side of the screen. You can also have sticky objects on the page itself. Mouse over the icons on the right side of the screen and you can see that now sticky objects can have mouse over states as well. You can specify an object or a photo (such as the beautiful New Mexico sunset above) to stretch to fit the screen. This can be done vertically or horizontally. A rectangle or a line can also be Stretchy. The header at the top of the page is both Sticky and Stretchy. It expands to fill the width of the browser. Even if the width of the browser is very, very wide. Photos that are set to stretch should be of sufficient resolution to look right even on very wide or tall screens.

[This image Stretches or Shrinks Horizontally to fit the Browser Window]

Awesome New Web Design Features

I do all my website design in Designer Pro X. Why not Web Designer Premium? I love the fact that with Designer Pro X11 (and all previous versions), I can do it all in one program, web design, graphics, photo editing and text editing. This first look was done in Designer Pro X11 and you should be able to tell from all the fun things that are happening that I really had a ball putting the pages and effects together. Among the new web design features are Sticky Objects, objects that stay fixed on the screen such as the headers, footers, and icons on the sides of the screen. Stretchy Objects that can stretch to fill the page such as the rainbow banner behind the navigation buttons. Plus really cool new Web Animations that let you slide content onto the page. And some really fun Mouse Over effects.

BULGE SKEW FLASH BOUNCE SWING

Mouse Over the icons and buttons to see some of the cool Web Animation effects.

Text Only Animations

Text & Button Animations

Mouse over effects [Mouse Over]

Click/Touch effects [Click/Touch]

Reveal Effects

17 Mouse Over and Click/Touch Effects — All can be adjusted for speed 9 Reveal Effects — All can be adjusted for Delay and Time

Secure Publishing

In addition to Designer Pro X11’s built in FTP publishing capability, Designer Pro X11 now offers two secure publishing options: SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol), and FTPS (File Transport Layer Security). Check with your web hosting company to see which method they prefer and for information on how to configure your Web Designer settings.

Xara Web Hosting

Xara Designer Pro X11 comes with a free Xara Web Hosting offer that includes a free top level domain name (for 12 months) such as myexcellentwebsite.com, a free one year upgrade to ‘M’ version with 2GB of server space. And for added security, all publishing to Xara Web Hosting is done via SFTP. You can’t beat that.

Password Protection with Xara Web Hosting

This is big—really big, you can password protect your page or site with one click! It is as easy can be. For more information, click the lock below.

Give it a try. Tap the padlock. When prompted for a password use dpx11rocks

Fun New Web Animation Effects Shown above are some of the hot new Mouse- Over, Click/Touch effects. These animations can be applied to groups or just to text. These Web Animation effects also can be hyper-linked to pages, layers, and to outside sites. Plus, they work on all mobile devices. And, these effects can be used with Navigation Bars. Navigation bars with mouse over effects now have a default Web Animation, Fade. But you can change the default to any of the effects you want. But please, please, show some self control. Just because you can have navigation buttons like the ones shown below, does not mean you should! But if your heart is set on it, what can I do?

Mouse Over the Buttons if you Dare! [I would Not Do This. But You Are Your Own Designer.]

Revealing Website Magic Web Animation Reveal lets you animate objects on your page. There are nine different Reveal options. In my example above I have used two Reveal effects. The black and white photo slides in from the bottom first, then the color version fades in a few seconds later giving the effect of the black and white photo coming to life. Reveal Animations happen as soon as the object is revealed in the browser. But you can delay the animation by adding a “Delay” (0-10 seconds). You can also use a “Trigger object”. A Trigger object is any shape that you have named Trigger, Trigger 1, Trigger 2, etc. In this case the animation will not start until the trigger object is visible in the browser. The red rectangle above triggers the fade into color. (Triggers should be invisible).Reveal animation have two settings: Time, the time it takes for the animation to happen, and Delay, how long it takes before a Reveal animation occurs. Both can be from 0 to 10 seconds.

Trigger Object

Stretchy and Sticky Objects Sticky Objects remain fixed in place on the page even if the page is scrolled. My headers and footers are Sticky Objects as are the Download Free Trial Copy icon on the left of the screen and the three website link icons on the right side of the screen. You can also have sticky objects on the page itself. Mouse over the icons on the right side of the screen and you can see that now sticky objects can have mouse over states as well. You can specify an object or a photo (such as the beautiful New Mexico sunset above) to stretch to fit the screen. This can be done vertically or horizontally. A rectangle or a line can also be Stretchy. The header at the top of the page is both Sticky and Stretchy. It expands to fill the width of the browser. Even if the width of the browser is very, very wide. Photos that are set to stretch should be of sufficient resolution to look right even on very wide or tall screens.

[This image Stretches or Shrinks Horizontally to fit the Browser Window]

Awesome New Web Design Features I do all my website design in Designer Pro X. Why not Web Designer Premium? I love the fact that with Designer Pro X11 (and all previous versions), I can do it all in one program, web design, graphics, photo editing and text editing. This First Look was done in Designer Pro X11 and you should be able to tell from all the fun things that are happening that I really had a ball putting the pages and effects together. Among the new web design features are Sticky Objects, objects that stay fixed on the screen such as the headers, footers, even icons on the sides of the screen. Stretchy Objects that can stretch to fill the page such as a photo or banner behind the navigation buttons. Plus there are some cool new Web Animations that let you slide content onto the page. And some fun Mouse Over effects too.

Tap the icons and buttons to see some of the cool Click/Touch Web Animation effects.

Xara Web Animation

Mouse Over Click/Touch Effects

Reveal Effects

17 Mouse Over and Click/Touch Effects All can be adjusted for speed 9 Reveal Effects All can be adjusted for Delay and Time

Secure Publishing In addition to Designer Pro X11’s built in FTP publishing capability, Designer Pro X11 now offers two secure publishing options: SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol), and FTPS (File Transport Layer Security). Check with your web hosting provider to see which method they prefer and for to learn how to configure your Web Designer settings. Xara Web Hosting Xara Designer Pro X11 comes with a free Xara Web Hosting offer that includes a free top level domain name (for 12 months) such as myexcellentwebsite.com, a free one year upgrade to ‘M’ version with 2GB of server space. And for added security, all publishing to Xara Web Hosting is done via SFTP. You can’t beat that.

Password Protection with Xara Web Hosting This is big—really big, you can password protect your page or site with one click! It is as easy can be. For more information, click the padlock below.

Give it a try. Tap the padlock. When prompted for a password use dpx11rocks

Xara Designer Pro X11