Support for text styles
Update an element of your Text Style eg font, color, line spacing etc, and all text with that Style applied throughout your document is instantly updated – headings, titles or body text. Consistent text styles help you create professional looking documents, and now it couldn’t be easier.
Styles are created, updated and applied via a new Styles drop-down menu on the Text Tool InfoBar.
Live Style preview
Simply select some text and then traverse the Style menu - the selection will change to show your text in each Style. It’s a quick and easy way to try out your Styles without having to actually select and undo each in turn.
Support for inline graphics
New re-sizeable JavaScript Widgets
Unlike Flash Widgets they are compatible with all modern devices including iPhone, iPads and Windows Phone 7, and do not require a Flash plug-in.
Click here to see the Widgets.
This is an example image effect Widget in mid-transition from one photo to the next. You can now resize this Widget to any size you require, and Web Designer automatically optimizes any images to be right for the website. It’s also possible to overlay any objects, text or graphics on top of Widgets, as shown here.
Enhancements to Widget handling
- You can now preview a Widget in the Widget document directly (you do not need to Close & Save it back to the original).
- When linking to other pages of your website from within a Widget editor, you’ll now see a list of all pages, making it very easy to link to any page in your website from within a Widget.
Graphical bullet & number lists
You can use any of the in-built drawing and text tools to create your own bullet and number graphics and we also supply a collection of ready-made examples in the Designs Gallery.
Advanced users can also create stretchy backgrounds that grow to accommodate longer number strings (e.g. if you have more than 10 items on your list).
Designs Gallery, new templates and UI improvements
- 3 new web themes (usually sold for \$10 each) and new web graphic templates (see the previews).
- Existing themes have been updated to support new features, such as the smart page resizing and graphical bullets. Also in the updated templates many background items have been moved to the page background layer, which makes it much easier to move items around the page without accidentally moving background items.
- The Designs Gallery has been completely re-arranged and re-ordered to be more easily navigable.
- Live Designs Gallery. The Designs Gallery is now completely server linked, so we can update and add more templates, clipart, Widgets etc.
- 3000+ new items of traditional clipart and a collection of photo clipart (see examples).
Automatic object positioning & smart page resizing
No longer! Web Designer now has the ability to make growing text areas automatically push other objects down the page, and also lengthen the page automatically to accommodate the enlarged text areas. Creating websites based on templates will now be considerably easier and faster.
Embedded fonts
Web Designer MX’s font embedding technology overcomes the serious design limitation of having to stick to the very small selection of so called ‘web safe’ fonts. Our technique is compatible with the vast majority of modern web browsers and works by embedding a special version of the font on your website which the web browser can download and display.The main benefit of using an embedded font (as opposed to turning text to graphics), is that search engines can see and index this text. Plus visitors to your page can also select and copy this text, like any normal text.
This feature provides a considerably enhanced degree of design freedom for web designers.
New Chart & QR Code Widgets
There is a new chart drawing Widget included which lets you create interactive charts and graphs for your website.
The Charts use interactive DHTML and SVG to render the chart in the browser, which responds to mouse-over to highlight particular chart values. You can also click on the key names (in this case John, etc) to redraw the chart with those values excluded.
The new QR Code widget allows you to communicate text or the web address of the page that it is inserted on.
Click here to see the chart & graph Widgets.
Enhanced presentations
We've enhanced presentations in Web Designer MX Premium in a number of ways.
- Slide navigation
Move your mouse to the lower left corner of the browser window in any page of your presentation and you’ll now see a pop-up page navigation control that includes a menu of all slides, allowing you to jump directly to any slide. Plus there’s handy Previous, Home and Next controls. - Layer-less bullet lists
The new graphical bullet and numbered list feature (see below for more info on this feature) creates automatic presentation steps (each bullet or numbered item is treated as a separate step in the presentation). This makes a huge improvement to usability and productivity when creating lists. - Page & Layer Gallery - Change page transition
You can now select multiple pages in the Page & Layer Gallery – this is handy for presentations because you can then use the right-click menu ‘Web page properties’ to alter the page animation transition for all the selected pages.
Pop-Up Layer 'click to close' option
You can now choose whether you want your pop-up layers to close automatically, or only when a viewer clicks a close box.
In document pop-up link checker
When you click on any item with a web link in Web Designer (not on the web page), a small pop-up appears giving you the option to follow the link, change it, or remove it - very useful if you want to test a link or view the linked page while you’re working on the document.
Media Exchange via the Share Menu
The new Share Menu puts the MX (Media Exchange) into Web Designer! All titles in the MAGIX/Xara range can share media files with each other and with some important third party services.Using the new Share menu, the current selection (whether it’s a photo, or any other object) can be passed as a JPEG to other installed MAGIX MX applications (eg Movie Edit Pro MX), to MAGIX Online Album, and to Flickr and Facebook.
Page & Layer Gallery improvements
It’s now possible to select more than one page in the Page & Layer Gallery and re-position them with drag & drop. Plus there’s right click access to menu options to Delete, Cut or Copy the selection of pages to the clipboard. You can go into another document and paste whole pages.
You can now also drag objects into and out of ordinary groups in the Gallery (note this is not supported for special groups like anchored groups, repeating groups, etc).
Resizable Color Editor
Live Effects Tool and Photoshop Plug-ins
The Live Effects tool allows Photoshop plug-in effects to be applied to both photos and vector graphics, opening up a huge range of special graphical effects. What’s more we have included more than 40 plug-ins from MAGIX and Xara, from bumpmap and emboss to painting and blur.Import & export (import from the web, SVG, .pptx and .odp)
- 'Import graphics from the Web' has been improved and now imports graphics and text from a web page, and places them in the right position on the page. Note that since most websites use scripts, mouse-over effects and hidden objects and text, this will rarely produce a WYSIWYG result, but it is very useful for importing all graphics and text from an existing website.
- Improved Copy / Paste of HTML items from other applications such as web browsers (Note the same restrictions apply as above).
- SVG Import. It's now possible to import most SVG files (we say ‘most’ because there is no industry agreement for SVG format - for example different web browsers support different sets of features).
- Beta import of OpenOffice Impress (.odp) and PowerPoint (.pptx).
- Improved PDF import.
- Update of camera RAW import.
Optimize all images
An updated 'Optimize all images' function will scan all graphics and images in your document - now including PNGs as well as JPEGs - and convert them to the optimum size and optimum image type. This can substantially reduce memory use and .web file sizes. (NB this is a destructive operation).You are also given the option to optimize images to JPEG when importing, if Web Designer recommends it.
NavBar button ordering
The button order in the NavBar now matches that of the Page Gallery. If you re-order pages your NavBar buttons will reflect this change.Hue adjustment for photos
Photo Enhance Tool now includes a tool for adjusting the hue on a photo. Any color can be selected and the strength of the hue adjustment controlled.Fly-out galleries
A new option to turn off the fly-out galleries.Easy access previewing
The 'Preview Page' and 'Preview Website' buttons have been placed beside each other on the top bar, for easier, quicker access and provided with new F5 and Shift+F5 key short cuts.Auto showing of guides
Page Guides are now turned on and 'snap to guides' enabled automatically if you attempt to drag a guideline onto a page when the guides are turned off.Enhanced Photo Panorama tool
The integrated photo stitcher now takes up to 8 photos, and performance has been improved.AVI animation frame rate control
You can now set the AVI frame rate of exported animations, and the animation preview window now has thumb track control on a timeline.Create Bitmap Copy
You can now create a bitmap copy of any selection directly, without the need to export it and import it. Arrange > Create Bitmap Copy.Incremental Publishing
Improved Incremental Publishing, making it smarter about publishing updates.Free domain name
One year's free top level domain name included with the free MAGIX Online World hosting.Character based languages
Improved formatting support for character based languages such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.Right click options
Right clicking over any empty area of the button bars on the Web Designer window will show a context menu to quickly enable or disable any tool bar.Lock page size option
A new 'Lock page size' option has been added in the 'Page Options' dialog. This can prevent accidental drag resize of the lower or right page edge.New keyboard shortcuts
| Delete Page: | Delete |
| Move Page Up: | PageUp |
| Move Page Down: | PageDown |
| Push margins dialog: | Ctrl+Shift+H |
| Toggle Push attribute on selection: | Ctrl+H |
| Preview Website: | F5 |
| Preview current web page: | Shift + F5 |