Launched today is Xara Web Designer which goes beyond the realms of other website builders. Unlike other website builders, Xara Web Designer is the only truly free-form WYSIWYG web design tool, that allows complete freedom of web page design including the the ability to draw shapes. You can position text, graphics and photos anywhere on the page, at any size or angle, overlaid or with transparency and Web Designer will produce a pixel accurate, perfect web page.

Xara Web Designer can do things that are regarded as near impossible with other web-authoring software, such as repel text around irregular shapes and photos and the ability to draw anything from simple shapes to complex company logos and graphics using its advanced vector graphic tools. Xara Web Designer includes automatic optimization of graphics that not only produce optimized resolution images, but automatically detects repeating elements across the websitethus producing faster, more optimized websites. Aimed atgraphic designers who do not want to learn HTML or scripting languages, itsalsothe perfect rapid website prototyping tool for graphic designers and webmasters. Thesimplicity of Xara Web Designer means that even the beginner can create professional looking websites with ease.

Xara Web Designer provides no programming tools, no script editing and doesnt even provide an HTML view, says Managing Director, Charles Moir, Our design philosophy is this: You dont need to know the PDF programming language in order to produce PDF files, so neither should you have to know anything about HTML or Javascript in order to create great websites

Xara Web Designer supports CSS layers with advanced features such as full or graduated transparency, mouse-over effects, animated photo pop-ups and more. It creates cross-browser, cross-platform XHTML compatible websites. With its new, modern re-designed appearance, Xara Web Designer introduces a number of new innovative web authoring software features some of which are :

- New photo slideshows and improved, more slick, photo thumbnail pop-ups. - Drag and drop multiple photos in one go to populate a gallery page.

- Easy MP4 video upload and built-in video player. - Ability to support rounded corner pages, and with drop shadows.

- Paste HTML snippets in directly with an automatic preview/placeholder created.

- Easy way to add links to (and upload) external files such as PDF and Word files etc.

- Better page color and background support so you can color the pasteboard separately from the page.

- Automatic backups and saves of open documents on application closedown.

- Incremental Publishing for faster upload so only the changed files are uploaded.

- FTP details can be stored with the document including password.