Tony Thomas' Techtrends: Xara Designer Pro 11

Sunday, October 25, 2015

Xara Designer Pro 11

by Tony Thomas

Xara Designer Pro 11 combines all the features of its other design programs into one, easy-to-use package for the professional graphics designer.

It is one program that can really do it all including page layout and design, photo editing, website design, and vector-based graphics illustration. Its simple WYSIWYG interface makes it easy for you to turn your ideas into beautiful graphics in just a few minutes.

Taking a look around the program, I found that it has a full range of features to accomplish almost any graphics or web-design task. It has an impressive array of import and export options as well as full print support including the ability to do four-color separations.
If you have ever used any Xara product before, you will have no problem getting around its interface. It is a beautifully designed and very easy to navigate.

New features include:

Functionality that allows you to stretch the background to fill the entire web page, either horizontally or vertically.
The ability to sync documents with Dropbox or Google Drive.
New brush options including "art brushes" and "scatter brushes".
"Sticky objects" that remain in place while the page scrolls underneath.
A variety of new text enhancements including a background color option, font replacement throughout a document, "an update style to match" function, a hyphenation tool, auto-correct/abbreviation expansion, updated Google fonts, and more.
New animation options that allow you to animate on mouse over, on click and the ability to slide or fade objects as you scroll down a page.
New Blend modes and transparency types.
Liquify shape editing tools.
Secure FTP publishing options with support for both SFTP and FTPS.

As someone who has depended Xara tools for almost 20 years, I can tell you that they offer some of the most powerful graphic tools you can find at a reasonable cost. Xara Designer Pro 11 is no exception. If you are a graphic design professional, it may be the only tool that you ever need. Take it for a test drive!

For more information:

http://www.xara.com/us/designer-pro/

http://www.xara.com/us/designer-pro/download/

Thanks to Xara for providing a review copy of this program.

What is Techtrends?

A better question might be, who is Tony Thomas and why did he create this web site? Well, I have been a professional writer for more than 30 years. In 1978, I started as audio editor for SCENE Magazine in Cleveland, OH, a post I held at two different times over a two decade period. In the 80s and 90s, my articles and reviews appeared in numerous publications including Scene, Recording, Mix, AV/Video, Roland Users Group, Millimeter, Recording Engineer and Producer, Transoniq Hacker and others. I was also the Technology Expert on the WERE morning show in the early 90s.

In the world of technology, something new is happening every nanosecond. As a writer, one of my biggest frustrations is the length of time it takes for my articles to see the light of day. By the time my work hits the stands, it is often weeks or months out of date. With the emergence of the Internet, there is a unique opportunity to promulgate information instantaneously to a worldwide audience. Because of that, I feel that it is a wonderful forum to impart news, views and reviews of new and emerging technologies with the immediacy that print can never duplicate.

Some of my interests include music, computers, digital audio, photography, graphic design and electronics. Here, I'll attempt to give you the freshest scoop on products and trends that I find enlightening and revolutionary. I hope you enjoy it and welcome your feedback!

Tony Thomas
Publisher and Editor-in-Chief
Tony Thomas' TechTrends