4) Customize your photos

An add a photo to any page, simply drag and drop a photo file from the Windows File Explorer. If you drop the photo on the page or on top of some text, it is added as a new photo (which you can move and resize as described previously). If you drop the photo on top of an existing photo, it will replace that photo. Try it on the photo at the top of the first page. That photo is set to be an automatic expanding thumbnail on the website. When you can click the small thumbnail version on the web page, it pops-up a larger version.  This is easy to do for any of your photos. This is a special photo slideshow Widget. If you preview the page you will see the slideshow operating. Web Designer Premium includes a range of different photo Widgets available from Insert->From Content Catalogue under category Components/Image Resources/Photo Slideshows & Galleries. An edit this widget, and replace the photos, captions or change the transitions, just double click it. This opens the Widget editor in a new document. This peacock photo is another example of the flexible and powerful photo handling in Web Designer.  Try some of these things with this ‘Polaroid’ style picture. • Using the Selector Tool drag it, rotate or resize it. Note how everything repels around it. • Drag and drop a replacement photo from Windows File Explorer to replace the peacock with your own. Note how it’s automatically tinted to match the website colors. • Preview this web page and move the mouse over this picture to see the mouse-over effect. • Using the Text Tool, click in the ‘I’m rather dull’ picture caption and edit it. • Web Designer Premium includes powerful photo-editing tools. You can adjust the brightness, color, sharpness, and more, as well as crop any picture. Try the Photo Tool to enhance your photos. Select the Camera tool from the left tool bar.   Now click on any photo and, using the controls at the top, adjust the various settings such as brightness, color, etc. The last slider control alters the blur / sharpen. Try it on the peacock picture on the left. Also when you have a photo selected in the Photo Tool, you will see two handles on the photo that allow you to rotate, resize and move the image inside its frame. This ‘Polaroid’ style picture is one of many photo object designs included with the full version of Web Designer. You can find it in the Content Catalogue in the section Components/Image Resources/Photo Panels.

5) Edit your NavBars

Web Designer includes what is probably the most advanced navigation bar (NavBar) building feature of any web authoring program. Along the top of these pages is a simple example, and here’s another, that has sub-menus (preview this page to try them out). Building high-class graphical NavBars like this has previously been the preserve of skilled graphic artists. What makes these so special is that you can just edit the button labels and all the graphic design is adjusted to accommodate the label automatically. You can of course have them any color, and we include dozens of alternate designs in the Designs Gallery. You can drag ‘n’ drop a replacement NavBar design from the Designs Gallery onto an existing bar to replace the design. You can also incorporate drop-down menus with various animation and transparency effects. The next pages provides a few pointers to some more advanced features such as embedding videos, making items repeat across all pages, and other features.

6) Save & Publish

When you select File -> Save this saves a Web Designer .web file. This is the working format for Web Designer. To save the HTML files for viewing in a browser you must choose the File -> Export Website  menu option.  This creates one HTML file for each page of your website and puts all the associated files into a folder next to this. Publishing With this version of Web Designer we make it even easier to get your website online. We bundle 500Mbytes of web hosting space (which is enough for a very large website, or multiple websites) thanks to Xara Hosting. If you’ve bought or registered any Xara product on the Xara website you will already have an account and can start publishing straight away. Otherwise it’s quick and easy to create a new Xara account. An publish your website simply select File -> Publish Website.., or just click this icon on the top bar:   If you wish, instead of using Xara hosting you can publish your website to any other hosting company. There are hundreds of companies that offer ‘web space’. The process of transferring your website from your hard disk to the web server at your hosting company is called FTP upload (file transfer protocol). You need three pieces of information from your web hosting company: Your FTP host name, your username and password.  Once you’ve set up the details, use the same Publish option. Congratulations - you now have a live website that the whole world can see. Finally you’ll notice that once you’ve published your website, subsequent changes are much quicker to publish thanks to Web Designer’s smart publishing. It only publishes the changed parts, rather than all the files that make up your website. --- End --- In the next few pages we take a look at some of the other things that you could add to your pages to make them more dynamic and interactive.