XARA
DESIGNER
PRO X10
First Look
By Gary W. Priester
Xara Designer Pro X10 — First Look - Page 5
The Content Catalog is resizable, has big thumbnails of all the
contents and is easier for viewing and selecting. When you
have a website or presentation theme open, moving the
cursor over the blue listings on the left side produces a small
pop-up thumbnail to help quickly preview the different
styles and colors in each folder.
If you are using the trial version, the templates displayed in
blue on the the list are available for you to try now. The
items shown in red are available for free, but only after you
purchase Designer Pro X10. There is also a large set of
Business Specific Website Themes. These are available for an
additional price. (My photo of the balloons below is
displayed in the Web Pack 2 > Hover Widgets folder, one of several dozen photo widgets).
SmartShapes are common vector shapes that
have extra controls that let you modify them in
ways that would take a lot longer if you had to
start from scratch. The arrow shown below is a
good example. On the next page we’ll see some
more examples of SmartShapes that can be
modified at any time. Tomorrow or next year. Any
time. That’s what I call smart.
The pie chart shown here was created using a Pie Segment SmartShape.
Cloning this shape allows you to quickly create a pie chart. The small cyan
circles are the control points and let you extend the diameter of the slice,
scale the slice, and rotate the slice from the center of the pie circle. Each slice
can be edited at any time.
On the left is an elliptical SmartShape. OK you ask, how smart can a
simple ellipse be? Try doing this with a normal (dumb?)
ellipse! If you’re bored and don’t have a tight
deadline, as I do with this review, you can spend
hours playing with all these smart shapes and
you’ll marvel and how these things that are so
simple can also be so smart! There are quite a
lot of SmartShapes including expanding text
bubbles, stickers, and a variety of geometric shapes. All with the same
kind ease of use and flexibility.
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FIRST PAGE