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  3. Version 16

Version 16.3 Release

Date: 30th October 2019

We've just released an update for Designer Pro and Web Designer bringing them up to version 16.3.0.57723

Designer Pro

Release notes: http://releasenotes.xara.hosting/designer-pro-x16/
Download link: http://www.xara.com/designer-pro/download/
What's new: https://www.xara.com/designer-pro/whats-new/


Web Designer & Premium
Release notes: http://releasenotes.xara.hosting/web-designer-16/
Download link: http://www.xara.com/web-designer/download/
What's new: http://www.xara.com/web-designer/whats-new/


Photo & Graphic Designer
Release notes: http://releasenotes.xara.hosting/photo-graphic-designer-16/
Download link: https://www.xara.com/us/photo-graphic-designer/download/
What's new: https://www.xara.com/us/photo-graphic-designer/whats-new/


All updates are free if your update service is active. Xara should ask you to update on startup, if not you can manually check by going to Help > Check for Updates.


New Features

Link to SmartField URL

As an ongoing improvement to our SmartFields feature, you can now create links to SmartField URL's, allowing you to enter custom text for either email addresses or hyperlinks. For example, you could have the text "Contact Me" and link it to your email address. Changing your email address would then update all the links

Please see the SmartFields article here.

Paragraph Background Colors

You can now apply a color to a paragraph background, a feature is found often in Microsoft Office templates. Unlike the text background color option, which will apply a color to just the background of the text, this will apply it to the whole paragraph width. For example:

Simply place your caret within a text area, and then right-click on a color at the bottom bar > Apply Paragraph Background Color

You can also apply it within the color editor. Please see the full article here.

Line Charts

As well as Bar Charts, we've now added Line Charts which can be found within the Content Catalogue under Components > Print and Web Components > Charts

Feature Improvements

Panorama Maker (Designer Pro)

The Panorama Maker has been updated with many new features, fixes and improvements. These include:

  • Improved exposure correction. The adjustment of individual images as well as the global exposure correction have been improved.
  • Improved and optimized Render procedure.
  • The performance of the static blending is now about 10 to 20 percent faster and the adaptive blending (“Anti-ghost”) is about twice as fast as before.
  • A new method to interpolate missing image content fills gaps or undefined areas around the panorama with blurred content of the nearby image areas.
  • Studio only: New interpolation methods allow advanced users more sophisticated render settings.
  • Studio only: Improved preview in the single-row mode.
  • Studio only: Added 75 new cameras to the camera database which contains now more than 2480 cameras.


Improved chart handles and performance

Charts now have some additional nodes to improve their functionality, including an option to hide or show the values of the columns or bars, show / hide Y axis grid lines and also an option to rotate the column or bar labels.


Object angle of rotation

Objects will now remember their angle of rotation, instead of showing 0 on the top toolbar. The angle is absolute, so typing 30 in the rotation angle field will rotate the object to 30 degrees, not add 30 degrees. To add or take away from the current angle, type:

#30 to add 30 degrees
#-30 to subtract 30 degrees

Or however many degrees and press enter to calculate.


SVG filter improved

Added support for gzipped SVG images and support for embedded fonts (WOFF & TFF). Circles, ellipses and rectangles now export as native SVG objects instead of paths.


PDF Auto Bleed

When exporting documents to PDF/X with a bleed margin active, the margin is automatically filled by replicating the edge pixels all around the page edge. This means it’s no longer necessary to manually extend objects beyond the page edges, they can be snapped to the page edge. This improves the print quality after the document has been trimmed by reducing gaps at the page edge.


Post-import color and style processing

This option affects what happens when you open a PDF, DOCX or PPTX file that was created in another application. When the option is on, Xara will analyse the document to try to identify and apply text styles and named colors where it can, without changing the appearance of the document. This can make the document easier to edit in Designer. You can find the option under Utilities > Options > General > Improve editability of imported documents


Double/triple/quadruple click and drag within text

Another quality of life improvement - you can now double-click to select a word, and drag afterward to select whole words at a time. Triple-click to select whole lines at a time and quadruple-click to select whole paragraphs at a time.

Fixes and Minor Improvements

  • GRACoL2006_Coated1v2.icc Profile added to output intent profile list
  • Fixed an issue where table tooltip showed incorrect values when adding or removing rows
  • Fixed an issue where removing and re-adding table rows did not show background colors
  • Fixed an issue where numbered list does not update when cutting from the list
  • Fixed an issue where overrides were not preserved when list ended
  • Fixed an internal error when updating lists to match another style
  • Fixed an issue which caused files to take a very long time to load
  • Fixed an issue where the color line was not cleaned up after undoing a pick color from photo operation
  • Fixed an object selection export issue when exporting to PPTX
  • Fixed an issue when importing tables from word files resulted in an inactive table
  • Fixed an access violation crash when optimizing an image as PNG with alpha channels
  • Fixed an access violation crash caused by incorrect brush definitions
  • Fixed a crash when auto detecting lists inside a document
  • Fixed an issue where PPTX docs imported with locked and selected background layers
  • Fixed an access violation crash when importing a PDF
  • Fixed an issue where selection of fonts showed the wrong variants in the Names Gallery
  • Fixed text bounds issue in Navigation Bars
  • Fixed an object clipping issue when importing DOCX documents
  • Improved performance when updating styles
  • Improved performance when replacing fonts
  • Improved PDF text import reconstruction
  • Fixed a ligature error when importing a PDF document without the used font installed
  • Fixed a permissions issue with bold and italic embedded fonts
  • Fixed a thumbnail preview caused by empty clipping paths
  • Fixed an issue where grouping tables would delete them
  • Symbol and logo rotation will be preserved on replacement
  • Fixed a crash when changing the width of a SmartLayout
  • Fixed an issue where rotated charts would flip
  • Fixed an issue where rounding of bars would increase as chart width was increased
  • Fixed an issue where clipped rectangles in PDF docs would add empty pages
  • Fixed an access violation when importing a PDF after adding colours to a document
  • Fixed an issue where hyperlinks would not work within tables
  • Fixed an issue where open link dialog only selected 1 state of a soft group
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  1. Robert Turner

  2. Posted
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