Design your website without using code
Most websites are created in one of two ways. You can set up your own web server, install a system such as WordPress, add a template and edit the HTML code yourself to create what you want. Or you can use a ready-made free service (like Tumblr) or paid-for ones (like Squarespace) that let you quickly set up a site, with a limited range of options, but without the hassle of servers or HTML.
A third way is to use a visual web-design program and Xara’s Web Designer Premium 11 is the latest example. It makes creating a site more like laying out pages in a desktop publishing (DTP) program. You’ll need your own server, which could be the web-hosting facility included with your broadband account. Alternatively, Premium 11 comes with a free hosting account that’s simple to set up.
Getting started is a doddle - just pick a theme, choose a colour scheme and type your text into the template. If design is your thing, you can always start with a blank page and take it from there. All the elements you need are ready to drag and drop into place: buttons and navigation bars to help visitors to your site get around, forms, sliders for photo galleries and ‘accordions’ for menus. ‘Widgets’ can incorporate information from external services such as social networks, YouTube, Flickr, AdSense, Google Maps and more.
The previous version added support for responsive design, meaning your site will reformat itself so it can be viewed properly on phones and tablets. That’s even more important now that Google pushes sites that don’t work well on mobile screens further down their search results.
Version 11 now addresses another modern requirement: the ability to edit your site’s content from any web browser. This works via the cloud.xara service, which is still in beta, meaning there’s more work to be done on it. At the moment, you can only edit text, replace photos and make small adjustments, but it’s a step towards catering for sites that need regularly updating. It’s not a substitute for a full content management system (CMS) such as WordPress, and bear in mind that if you create websites that other people need to edit, it’s likely they will need to pay a subscription to do this. But the idea looks promising. You can also sync your site design via Dropbox or Google Drive, so if you use Xara Web Designer on different PCs you’ll always have the current version.
Xara has made a Stirling effort to keep up with current trends in web design. ‘Sticky’ navigation keeps buttons at the top of a page in place while the user scrolls through the text and pictures below. Social-networking icons hug the side of the browser window, encouraging your visitors to click and tell their friends about your site. A range of smooth HTML5 animations can make page elements fade or slide into view as the visitor scrolls down or hovers over them with their cursor. You can also include edge-to-edge elements like the full-width hero graphics that welcome visitors to many sites.
For quicker editing, you can now set up autocorrect abbreviations for commonly used phrases and automatically create links to web addresses in text. On the design side, there’s improved support for Google’s free web fonts, instant site-wide font replacement so you can try different typefaces, and easy access to attractive icons from Font Awesome (www.fontawesome.io).
Xara Web Designer Premium 11 is a very usable tool with more features than you might expect. If you want to start smaller, the standard version is only £35; compare Premium and standard versions at www.snipca.com/16958.
VERDICT
Substantial new features and a promising cloud service push this comprehensive web-design program ahead of its rivals.