Version 23.0 Updates

Date: 13th March 2023

Version Number: 23.0

Release notes:

http://releasenotes.xara.hosting/designer-pro-plus/

http://releasenotes.xara.hosting/photo-graphic-designer-plus/

http://releasenotes.xara.hosting/web-designer-plus/

We have just released an update for Designer Pro+, Web Designer and Photo & Graphic Designer, available direct from Xara.

What's New

Modular Websites (Web Designer+ and Designer Pro+)

Welcome our new concept of Modular Websites. Whether you need a simple landing page or a full featured e-commerce website, we guarantee that you won’t find a quicker and easier way to create that showstopper website that you’ve always imagined.

A Modular Website page is very simple; it’s just a vertical stack of ready-designed Web Blocks, one above another, with navigation controls at the top. Websites can be built very rapidly by just adding as many different Web Blocks as required to build up a web page. What’s more a mobile-friendly variant of the website is created automatically.

To get started with your Modular Website, you can choose one of the pre-built modular website templates, and add/remove Web Blocks to customize it. Or you can begin with a Start Page which has just the navigation, and then drag and drop Web Blocks from the Designs Gallery one by one to build up your website.

All the capabilities for building websites without Web Blocks (now called ‘Freeform Websites’) are still available for more advanced users, but you will find that using Web Blocks is the simplest, quickest way to build your new dream site - from Xara or anyone else!

Find out more:

Check out our intro movies in the Web Blocks Playlist on YouTube.

Read the article Modular Websites & Web Blocks

Designs Gallery - Now Online

The Designs Gallery now automatically connects and updates online, so it has the same content as Elements (except for the stock photo & illustration library, and Symbols which are still available in Elements). The Designs Gallery now offers are really quick and convenient way to work with our massive library of content; simply drag and drop the component your require from the Gallery to your document.

Widgets & Widget Editing (Web Designer+ and Designer Pro+)

We've added a big selection of new widgets, both to existing categories such as e-commerce and forms, and in completely new categories such as chat and appointment managers. You can find them in the Elements/Designs Gallery in Print & Web Components, and embedded in web blocks for modular websites in Modular Websites > Web Blocks.

What's more the third party widgets will now be easier to edit since we now open the third party site in your local web browser.

Table Improvements

We've added a new Table Properties dialog to make it easier to edit table background color and cell spacing. Plus there's a host of other minor table improvements:

Improved support for dotted/dashed table borders.
Serious error right-click dragging a table from one page to another. Fixed.
Table border widths wrong at some zooms in Chrome and Edge. Fixed.
Text links not underlined inside tables. Fixed.
Drag-selecting table cells could cause serious error. Fixed.

Web Improvements (Web Designer+ & Designer Pro+)

New documents/websites will export to .html files instead of .htm. An option to change this for existing documents/websites is coming soon.
NavBar sub-menu displayed without its background. Fixed.
Alt text for background images.

Other Minor Fixes & Improvements

Auto-bleed objects now created at full print resolution (Photo & Graphic Designer+ and Designer Pro+)
Accounts menu now has options to jump to Team Profile and Downloads page
Bring to front / Put to back / Move forwards / Move backwards operations now work on objects inside groups. Objects are moved relative to other objects in the same group.
Text copied and pasted from PDF reader has incorrect case. Fixed.
Can’t move text caret between consecutive embedded objects with arrow keys. Fixed.