Saving & Exporting Your Work.

Use the Save or Save As menu options to save your work in progress. This saves a file with the .xar extension, which is the native file format for Xara products. You are recommended to regularly save your work as you go along, particularly if you don't have the automatic backup facility turned on (see below). If you want to edit or update your document in future, you must save a .xar file this way and use it to do further updates, even if you've also exported it to different standard file formats.

To export your document, right click and choose Export or use "File" > "Export" and choose the file format you want to export to from the list of formats shown. Use JPEG for exporting photos for web use, PNG for web graphics, HTML to create a website, and usually PDF is best if you want to print or distribute print work. You can also export to a Word file or export a print document as a web viewable HTML document or "Web document".

See the importing & Exporting chapter for information on these and many other export formats supported.

Automatic backups

The Backups tab of the "Utilities" > "Options" dialog allows you to turn the automatic backup facility on and off. This facility saves a copy of all your modified open documents at regular intervals. It's recommended that you work with this backup option turned on, so your work is saved regularly. You can also choose whether you are prompted about unsaved documents when closing the program, or if instead all open documents should be backed up and restored for you when you next start up.

See the Document Handling chapter for full details about these facilities.

Saving Your Work. Creating A Website

Use the Save or Save As menu options to save your work in progress. This saves a file with the .web extension, which is the native file format for Web Designer (this is not a website). You are recommended to regularly save your work as you go along. If you want to edit or update your website in future, you must save a .web file this way and use to do further updates.

It's also recommended that you work with the automatic backup facility turned on. This is controlled from the Backups tab of the "Utilities" > "Options" dialog. When on, a backup of your modified open documents is taken regularly. Here you can also choose how the program should behave when you close it. You can either be prompted about saving or discarding each open modified document, or have all documents automatically saved to the backup location and restored the next time you start.

To save your website, that is the HTML and associated files for publishing to the web, use the "File" > "Export Website" menu option or click this button on the top bar.

This saves a .htm file for each page and a folder alongside these which contains all the graphic files that make up your website.

When you export a website, all the pages are exported together, and each page unnamed has _1, _2 ... appended to the end of the name you give when you export. The _files folder contains all the graphics and other files that go to make up your website. You can name each page individually if you wish using the Page tab of the Web Properties dialog or using the Page and Layer Gallery.

Automatic backups

The Backups tab of the "Utilities" > "Options" dialog allows you to turn the automatic backup facility on and off. This facility saves a copy of all your modified open documents at regular intervals. It's recommended that you work with this backup option turned on, so your work is saved regularly. You can also choose whether you are prompted about unsaved documents when closing the program, or if instead all open documents should be backed up and restored for you when you next start up.

See the Document Handling chapter for full details about these facilities.