General Tools and Usability Enhancements
ï‚·
Web Designer includes many customizable graphic templates, of course, and a good set of basic
drawing tools, but Xara Web Designer 7 Premium now includes a range of additional graphic
creation tools for those who wish to create their own graphics from scratch. These include the
Freehand and Quickshape drawing tools, Shadow, Bevel and Mold tools, 3D extrude and
feathering. Plus additional photo features such as red-eye removal and masking.
ï‚·
Brand new 'magic snap' for object alignment. Xara Web Designer 7 Premium now provides
'magic' magnetic object snapping. As you drag an object, it 'snaps' to points and lines of interest
nearby and indicates what it has snapped to by displaying dynamic snap lines and points. This
makes it easy to align objects with each other, or with guidelines or the page center or edges.
ï‚·
Enhanced ease of use. Xara Web Designer 7 Premium galleries now give faster access to the
information you need:
o
A new default Page & Layer Gallery 'pages' mode displays a narrow list of page
thumbnails ? for easy page selection and access.
o
Xara Web Designer 7 Premium initially displays an uncluttered single page view.
Use the Page & Layer Gallery to quickly move to different pages, or switch to multi-page
view by right clicking on the page and selecting the multi-page view option on the menu.
ï‚·
A hierarchical arrangement of the Designs Gallery makes it far easier to find the template
you're looking for at a glance.
ï‚·
Improved embedding of graphics into flowing text. Creating anchored objects is now a
one-click action and objects that you anchor in text can now also repel text, helping you create a
wrap-around effect easily. Repel margins can also now be defined separately for the margin
width and height. And anchored objects can be constrained to move vertically only, which is very
useful where you have objects to the right or left of the text that need to move only up and down.
ï‚·
New paste operations bring much more flexibility to pasting operations, allowing Paste
position, Paste size, Paste replacing selection, Paste in current layer and Paste in place in current
layer.
ï‚·
A new straight line / arrowhead tool. This provides a really simple way to draw
single-segment straight lines and a new way to control the arrow head and tail on any line.
ï‚·
Tabbed document windows. Tabs at the top of the Xara Web Designer 7 Premium window
show clearly which document you are currently viewing, the document type and whether there
are unsaved changes. See at a glance which documents you have currently open and gain access
to them by just clicking on the document tab.
ï‚·
New gallery system supports fly-out galleries for instant viewing and flexible docking
options. A new gallery bar gives instant access to all galleries, which now fly out as you hover
the mouse pointer over a new gallery bar. It's easy to move galleries around the workspace, and
you can pin and dock them wherever you want, either individually or in groups or 'stacks' on top
of each other.
ï‚·
Quick alignment of selected objects is made possible by the new right click menu option
'Align'. This enables you to directly align multiple objects horizontally and vertically, without
having to open the alignment dialog.
ï‚·
Solid, live shape drawing. When creating new shapes such as rectangles, ellipses and
quickshapes you'll now see a solid filled shape as you drag across the page (instead of an
outline). It's far more WYSIWYG, you'll see the correct fill and line color as you drag. This
works even if you have a fat line.
ï‚·
Easier control of graphic styles (attribute rules). There is a major change in the way that
attributes (the appearance or 'style' of an object) are applied to a newly drawn object or line.
Now a new object can take on the style of the last selected object, rather than the last drawn. It
sounds like a small change, but is more intuitive and more powerful - for example you can copy
Page 6