Xara Web Designer+ is a Windows desktop application for building websites without writing HTML, CSS or JavaScript. It is aimed at business owners, designers and anyone who needs a company site, portfolio, online shop or landing page. Xara Web Designer+ is commercial software sold mainly as a monthly or annual subscription. It runs offline once the account has been activated.
Page layout instead of code
Xara Web Designer+ treats a web page much like a print layout. Users can drag text, photos, shapes and buttons anywhere on the page, either freely or with snapping to neighbouring objects. The editing view shows the page as it will appear once published.
A side panel lists the site’s pages, which can be added, deleted and reordered. The same panel also lists layers and design elements, which can be reordered and organized. Users edit text in place with the Text tool. Text panels expand automatically and can flow around other objects.
Templates, blocks and site-wide styles
Most projects start from one of the hundreds of website templates, although a blank page is also possible. Users can combine smaller predesigned sections called Web Blocks to assemble pages. They can save the blocks for reuse in other projects and drag them into place while the layout updates live. Templates, blocks, icons, vector graphics, backgrounds and stock photos come from Xara Elements. This online content catalog is downloaded into the program when needed.
Global styles change colours, fonts and other styling across the whole site in one step. A web theme from the catalog can recolour an entire template. Users can pull a palette from a photo so the site’s colours match a chosen image. When users drop a new photo onto an existing one, the program replaces the old photo and tints the new one to fit the site’s colour scheme.
Mobile and widescreen variants
Instead of a single fluid layout, Xara Web Designer+ lets the user create separate variants of a site for phones, tablets and ultra-wide screens. The user can then adjust how each one looks and responds. On sites built from Web Blocks, the mobile variants are resized automatically. Sticky objects stay put while the page scrolls, and stretching backgrounds fill the browser window.
Built-in graphics and photo editing
Xara Web Designer+ includes its own drawing and photo tools. The illustration tools cover freehand drawing, quick shapes, bevels and 3D extrusion. On-page photo editing adjusts brightness, contrast, saturation, tint, sharpness and blur, removes red-eye and crops to an exact pixel size or aspect ratio. These edits are non-destructive, so the original image keeps its quality. Users can undo changes even after saving and reopening the file.
The program exports anything that cannot be expressed in plain HTML as an optimised web graphic. This includes a drawn heading or a 3D shape. The program compresses photos automatically and can convert them to WebP. Graphics can also be exported separately as GIF, PNG or JPEG files.
Animation and pop-ups
Any object can react to a mouse-over, a click or a touch. Reactions can include wobbling, playing an animation or showing pop-up text, with speeds from very fast to very slow. A mouse-over or click can also open a pop-up layer, which can itself be animated. Reveal animations play when an object scrolls into view, either once or every time it appears. Scroll animations move in step with the page as the visitor scrolls. The program also offers parallax scrolling, animated transitions between pages and website sliders for compact slideshows.
Shops, forms and embedded services
Xara Web Designer+ adds shop, form and other features by embedding third-party services as widgets dragged onto the page. Payments and product sales use PayPal, Stripe, Cartloom or Gumroad. Forms come from services such as Google Forms, JotForm and Typeform, while appointment booking uses Appointlet, Calendly or SetMore. Mailing-list sign-ups connect to Mailchimp, HubSpot, Sendinblue or Mailjet. Users can embed YouTube videos, maps and review feeds the same way. Pages can also carry event sign-ups, calendars and countdowns.
Search settings and publishing
Each page can have its own meta title and description, and the user controls image file names and canonical tags for duplicate pages. Open Graph images set the preview that appears when a page is shared on social media. Users can host fonts with the site rather than load them from an outside font service. This speeds up loading and avoids sending visitor data to a third party.
Xara Web Designer+ uploads the finished site over FTP to any hosting provider. Users enter the FTP details once in the Web Properties dialog, then upload later changes with a single click. Project files can also be stored in Google Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive. A subscription allows an unlimited number of websites and two activated computers per user. An older Web Designer edition is still sold as a one-time purchase for personal and casual use.
