Like the themes, the supplied widgets are generally up to date and nicely designed, although there’s limited scope for customising more complex elements such as photo frames or interactive slideshows. Rather than use a theme, those with more confidence can start with a blank document and choose whether or not to add any supplied content. Where an element repeats on every page in a site, updates made on any page will automatically apply elsewhere. Replacing a stock photo is as simple as dragging across your own. You can customise photos and graphical elements used in headers and other on-page elements, too. Where relevant, the program will change the colours and style of other elements you add subsequently so that they fit with the overall design, so that a speech bubble uses the correct colours and fonts for your theme, for example.Įven starting with a blank document, a new site begins to take shape pretty quickly Tools built into the program mean that you’re not stuck with just an off-the-shelf look, either it’s the work of moments to change a theme’s colours. While not all of the 60-plus themes are entirely to our tastes, there are plenty of modern, clean designs that could form the basis of an excellent website. Over the years, we’ve learned not to expect much from the samples and designs bundled with various creative programs, but Web Designer is a happy exception. Plus, scrolling would be less necessary if you could use a search box to find items such as the Flickr slideshow widget instead of locating it manually. We also found ourselves dragging an element onto the page just to see what it would look like.Ī further frustration was that, despite testing the software on a fast computer, design and widget thumbnails often hadn’t finished loading as we scrolled down through the gallery. On a small or medium screen you’ll often find yourself resizing windows, and we were frustrated that the thumbnail previews weren’t bigger. To the right are galleries for the various designs, fills, lines and elements available, along with a page and layer navigator. Web Designer’s interface is simple and modern, with a large workspace that supports tabs for working on multiple projects at once. Web Designer’s Read Me document provides a superb interactive introduction to using the program It’s a great introduction, and there’s more guidance available in a comprehensive and well-written help file. The document’s descriptive text guides you through changing the software’s features and properties, encouraging you to use the preview feature to understand how the changes you make affect the results. The program starts with a sample project that doubles as an interactive introduction to its key features it covers basics such as loading one of the supplied web themes and adding text, headings, photos and other graphical elements, but also more advanced features such as pop-ups. There’s a good range of customisable design elements, but the previews are sometimes too small to illustrate them properlyīuilding a web page can be complex, but it’s astonishingly easy to get started in Web Designer 9. We’re reviewing the Premium version, which adds some extra options to the features found in the £40 standard edition, along with extra tools, widgets and Flash animation support. Through its friendly DTP-like interface and wealth of free buttons, widgets and other design elements, it aims to make the design of professional looking websites easy. Xara’s Web Designer 9 is aimed at web design novices for whom a full web-development package can be a pretty intimidating environment.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |