It�s now much easier to import photos or replace photos in existing designs � just drag the photo from your file explorer onto the page. If you drop it on top of an existing photo � even one inside a group or used as a bitmap fill - it will replace it. Drop it on the background and it just imports it as a new photo.

When you drop a photo to replace an existing photo, it�s smartly resized to fill the shape. New direct drag tools allow the image to be rotated, resized and re-positioned just by dragging. So it�s now easier than ever to use texture and photo fills.

The old template based selection of primary colors has gone and been replaced by a 'Standard Palette' of 46 pre-defined colors (5 shades of 7 standard hues and 10 shades of grey, black and white). Standard Palette colors, like PANTONE Colors or other library colors are not editable and are designed as a simple, limited selection of colors to apply to objects (either by dragging on to the object or clicking).

In older versions of Xara Xtreme, a new Named Color was created and added to the color line whenever you created a new color. This typically resulted in dozens of Named Colors appearing in the line, even though most of them weren't actually used. This no longer happens. When you create any color (e.g. click one of the Standard Palette colors) it just applies that as a local color to the object. You can of course edit this color using the Color Editor as always (Ctrl+E). Only if you select the 'New Named Color' icon in the color editor is a new Named Color created.

When you save and load files, all unused Named Colors are now removed from the color line. This results in a much, sometimes very much, simpler and cleaner color line.

Linked colors (that is ones tied to a parent) are now represented differently on the color line (smaller rounded rectangles), so it's much easier to distinguish which are normal independent Named Colors and which are linked to a parent.

There is now a context sensitive menu that gives access to the most common color operations.



Right clicking on the 'no color' patch produces a slightly altered menu; with 'clear line color' and 'clear fill color'.

You can now just drag a Named Color on the color line to re-position it.

If you've ever drawn a line and then clicked a color and wondered why the line color didn't change, then you'll appreciate the new smart object coloring. Xtreme now detects whether the shape is open or closed and a left click will now set the line and fill color of an open path (i.e of an unfilled shape).

If a bitmap or a bitmap filled shape is selected, then the right click context menu on the color line allows you to set the contone colors as well as the line color.

If a shape is filled with a bitmap (photo) then clicking on color line will contone a shape filled with a bitmap (instead of converting it to a flat filled shape as it used to in older versions). So this is now consistent with the behaviour of real bitmap objects.

In the fill tool we've made a significant change in that it now automatically selects shapes inside groups. This means it's significantly easier to view and edit the fill style of shapes.

Combined with the new push fill feature, this means it's now significantly easier to manipulate fills of shapes.

See above (copy/paste to Word): you can now import and export text in RTF format so it includes style information such as font, font size, color, margins, special and foreign characters (Unicode supported).

There is now support for EMF import, a vector graphic format supported by many modern Windows applications. WMF import has also been enhanced.

You can now import RAW digital camera files (either using the Import menu option or just drag n drop the file onto the Xtreme window).

Supported cameras

A new SVG export option is available. This is not complete, but can be used to export basic vector graphics into SVG format. This plug-in will continue to be enhanced.

This is an entirely new �page description� file format invented by Microsoft. The benefit of XPS format is that it�s vector based, and so is ideal as a resolution-independent portable document format. Fonts are embedded into the document and so you are assured of a very high quality WYSIWYG document. If you�re using Windows Vista you can view and print these document directly. If you�re using older versions of Windows you can obtain a free XPS Viewer download from the Microsoft web site to provide viewing and printing of these files.

It should be noted that the Xara XPS export does not use the Microsoft standard XPS print system, but writes XPS files directly which ensures a far higher fidelity, and far smaller XPS files.

XPS supports advanced vector features such as transparency, CMYK colors and embedded fonts.

When you type a quote ' or double quote " character Xtreme will automatically convert these into the more appropriate and aesthetically accurate opening or closing quotes. So Xtreme changes 'this' into �this� and "quotes" into �quotes�. It's smart enough to understand the use of single quotes within words to signify missing characters, so that 'don't' becomes �don�t�.

In the Text Tool when you drag the margins or tabs on the ruler, you now get a temporary vertical guide to make it easier to align the tabs or margins to objects elsewhere on the page.



In addition when dragging tabs or margins, if you have magnetic snap switched on, these will snap to each other making it easier to position tabs and margins.

Soft and hard hyphens are essential for professional looking text. Soft hyphens (which are hyphens that only appear if the word can wrap at the end of a line) are particularly useful for narrow columns of text where, to avoid rivers of white, you might need to hyphenate some words like this:



Now if you type Ctrl + - after the word 'hyphen' it will break the word at this point and produce a more satisfactory word spacing:



A hard hyphen can be inserted by typing Ctrl+Shift+ - (minus). A hard hyphen is one that will not cause a wrap at all. This is useful in situations where you have dashes in words that you do not want split at the end of lines.

Two new fields on the end of the Text tool Infobar allow you to set the spacing above and / or below paragraphs. This is particularly useful where you want half line spaces between paragraphs.

A quad click - that is four rapid clicks in a row - will now select a complete paragraph.

The status line now reports how many characters and words are within the selection, or, if there's no selection, how many are within the whole of the current text story. This updates as you type.

If you just click and type, the position of the type is adjusted very slightly, by fractions of a pixel, to ensure that the baseline of the text exactly sits on a pixel boundary. This results in sharper, more readable text at small point sizes and 100% zoom view.

When creating page layouts, it's common practice to use a type of pseudo-Latin dummy text which has the overall appearance of typical English text (or other similar Latin-based languages). The text starts 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet...'

You can now insert a paragraph of the Lorum Ipsum text by typing Ctrl+Shift+L (L for Lorum) when in the text tool. To insert a larger block of text just press the key combination a few times.

Pressing Ctrl+W will swap the case of the character after the cursor, and move the cursor on. So if you find you've accidentally typed a section of text with the Caps lock key on, just place the cursor at the start and press and hold Ctrl+W. This has now been enhanced so that you can swap the case of a selected region of text in the same way.

New short cuts of Ctrl+Shift+> and Ctrl+Shift+< will increase or decrease the point size of the selected text or selected text story.

The kerning key short cuts have changed. To move two characters closer together now press Alt+ < and to move them further apart press Alt + >. Each key press moves the character 50/1000 ems. These short cuts are now compatible with Adobe Illustrator.

A number of useful short-cuts have been added to allow insertion of special characters.

Hard space		Ctrl+Space (words with hard spaces between will not wrap at the end of a line)
EN dash	�	Ctrl+NumPad � (An EN dash is longer than a minus, and is a more correct �dash�)
EM dash	�	Ctrl+Alt+NumPad - (An EM dash is a long dash)
Ellipsis	�	Ctrl+Alt+. (That�s with a full stop or period character. An Ellipsis is three dots �)
Copyright	�	Ctrl+Alt+C
Registered	�	Ctrl+Alt+R
Trademark	�	Ctrl+Alt+T
Bullet	�	Ctrl+Alt+B

All the above short cuts (with the exception of the hard space) are compatible with Microsoft Word.