What’s new in Xara Designer Pro+

Another huge update to the Designer Pro+ Content Catalog.

We’ve added nearly 1300 new photo filter overlays in 4 new categories in Image Resources > Photo Filter Presets > Overlays (Bokeh, Color Gradient, Light Leak and Snow).

Why not explore the new overlays this autumn and give your photos a little bit of love; with effects from the subtle to the full on, you can ensure your photos get noticed.

Christmas has come early with this massive update to the Online Content Catalog of Xara Designer Pro+:

• 2 website themes (in addition to the 20 added last month in Websites > Creative Websites)
• 57 extra tables, so you can make the most of our brand new table tool
• 42 social media buttons to help you maximize the potential of your social media
• 125 ‘fancy’ buttons with creative outlines
• 3 restaurant menus
• 1 invoice

Why not check them out right now in the Online Content Catalog.

Our great new table tool gets even better. So whether you need a table for presenting data, comparing products or even creating an invoice, it’ll be quick and easy in Xara:

• you can now re-order rows & columns with a simple click & drag
• an automatic way to convert old Smart tables to the new tables
• a host of other minor improvements & fixes, listed in full in the Release Notes, including an interim 22.1.1 release.

A major boost to your web design choices with 20 all-new website templates for Designer Pro+ only. All fully customizable, and all with ready-made mobile variants.

Check out the new themes in the Designer Pro+ Online Content Catalog > Websites > Creative Websites.

If you want to make your business documents or websites stand out from the crowd, then try adding some really slick tables. Whatever data you need to present, we’ve now got the table tool to make that easy!

You’ll find the new tool at the bottom of the left hand toolbar, full instructions in our Release Notes and more than 20 new professional table templates in the Online Content Catalog (all old ones are revised to work with the new tool too so that makes almost 50 – and you can easily create your own tables from scratch).

To mark the release of our new standalone version, Designer Pro+ has a new, clean and modern appearance that will enhance your everyday usage:

• The new darker background puts more focus on your design, with less user interface distractions
• There are new, clearer icon designs throughout
• All icons and mouse pointers are now High DPI, so they look sharp and clear on high resolution displays
• And other minor tweaks and improvements – for example in the Page & Layer Gallery, the Page names are now separated from the page thumbnails, so both are clearly visible.

There are several tools that open a web browser window within Designer Pro to display content, namely the Widget Editor, Symbol Picker, Google Font Finder and Erase Tool Guide.

We previously used Microsoft Explorer for this, but with support for Explorer falling off (including among Widget providers), we have switched to the latest Microsoft Edge technology, ensuring a smooth workflow and support for the widest range of widgets.

A fast turnaround on this new version in response to the latest legal developments in Europe, which cast doubt on whether calling Google to display Google Fonts complies with GDPR.

No-one wants to give up their Google Fonts, so Designer Pro+ will now automatically publish the fonts to your own web space and no longer reference Google, offering instant compliance. You don’t need to do anything other than re-publish your website.

What’s more, with the great font support in modern browsers the balance of advantage has been moving in favor of self hosting, so you could also benefit from speed improvements for your web page, with all the SEO benefits that brings. Double win!

Modern web browsers offer great support for SVG, so since 21.6 we’ve been steadily building the types of graphical object that Xara automatically exports to the web as SVG. In 21.7 we add elliptical fills, wall shadows, mix and multiply transparency. We’ve also improved support for exporting groups as SVG.

Bottom line: It’s now possible to build graphically rich websites and web documents that have no bitmap images to download at all, and that means your pages load faster. That’s great news for usability and for SEO, since faster pages bring better page rank. Bonus: your content will look a lot sharper as SVG.

Live Copies allow you to create multiple copies of any image that can be updated simultaneously with a single edit (similar to Repeating Objects, but more flexible since you can have multiple Live Copies on a single page and they don’t have to be in the same position). It’s a valuable time-saving feature for illustration and document creation.

We’ve made numerous improvements, which will make working with Live Copies easier and more flexible, you can find full information in the Release Notes.

When it comes to SEO a great position is built on a mountain of small improvements – and here’s a few more that are worth working on!

• You can now set Canonical tags to deal with the problem of duplicate content
• There’s a new option to quickly set the original photo filename as the Image Name
• noopener and noreferrer attributes are now added to any target=”_blank” links

Present the best possible image for your site on social media by adding an Open Graph image, title and description. They’ll be displayed when sharing your link on social media, so you can be sure that viewers will see an image, title and description of your choosing, rather than an automatically generated one that might not do you any favors!

Don’t forget to include your keywords in the title and description to help your page rank!

We’ve introduced some flexible new locking options, perfect for situations where you are creating documents in Designer Pro+ that are edited by other members of your team in Xara Cloud. Now you can avoid any accidental brand breakages by restricting editing rights!

With the addition of WebP import we’ve completed support for this interesting new high-quality, small-size web image format from Google (WebP export arrived in 21.1, see below).

The new WebP image format developed by Google promises both top quality images and small file sizes. And with page load speed being an important factor in page rank (especially with the imminent release of Core Web Vitals) that’s just what you need!

Designer Pro+ can now export WebP images, either individually or for the whole site.

A quick and easy way to create multiple copies of objects or components, horizontally or vertically, with a single click-drag, and a really simple way to handle object spacing.

The new Smart Duplicate feature will help you cut down tedious repetition in your design work, and make experimentation easy!

With this update we’re giving you much greater control over the profiles used to display CMYK colors on screen and for PDF export, to ensure you get exactly the color you’re aiming for.

Now you can either choose from one of the bundled industry standard profiles (refreshed for this update) or upload and select your own custom profile.

A small surprise Christmas present – a much requested improvement to the display of CMYK colors on screen, and in any export formats that require the conversion of CMYK to RGB. A change to the default color profile means you will see a more accurate representation of CMYK colors on screen.

We’ve made a significant improvement to the way that missing fonts are handled in imported PDF documents, plus a host of more minor accuracy improvements. It’s another step up in Designer Pro’s already great PDF editing capability!

The Web Export options have been moved into the Web Properties dialog, alongside all other web settings – a more logical arrangement that will improve your workflow – and we’ve added some new controls:

• Firstly you now have a finer level of control over transition effects, with separate controls for transition effect and transition direction, giving you scope for all sorts of new and interesting transition effects.
• We’ve also added greater control over the new features introduced to Supersites in the past few releases, so you can choose separately whether you want to display the PDF download option, page navigation panel and Xara logo next to your presentations or print Supersites.
• When you preview a website it now opens in your default local browser instead of the internal preview window, for a faster and more reliable preview.

We’ve introduced several UI improvements requested by frequent users that will enhance your working experience:

• We’ve made rotating objects around a center point much more intuitive. Simply select the Show Rotation Handles icon on the InfoBar, and then drag the center marker to reposition the center point around which all objects will rotate. The marker will now remain visible, even when you change tools or select other objects.
• The QuickShape handles have been updated to match the new Selector Tool and SmartShape handles introduced in September.
• The size and offset of the selection bounding box now automatically increase in size on very small objects, making them much easier to select. No more zooming in, just to select small objects!

We’ve updated the text and object handles to give a more modern and less cluttered look to the workspace:

• Handles on SmartShapes (tables, charts, shapes, text panels, etc.) are now more consistent and match those used in Xara Cloud.
• The selection handles in the Selector Tool have also been updated.

For table of contents with page numbers you now have finer control over the tab leaders (the character between the tab stops) with fully customizable characters and spacing, for a more professional looking table of contents. Make sure your first page creates a good impression!

Get the most from your screens with the new high DPI support. Pin sharp resolution for 4K monitors and devices like Surface Pro tablets, but a bonus even for lower resolution screens.

Designer Pro+ Web Documents (such as presentations and print supersites) now have the same cool options that were recently added to Xara Cloud ‘Share to Web’ documents.

So for example you can add an option for viewers to download a PDF version of your presentation. They’ll also see some handy new ways to step between the pages of your document, zoom in or out, or set it to full screen view.