Version 3 of Xara Webstyle (Xaras Web graphics creation package) is designed to make Web design as simple as cut, copy and paste.Webstyle has a history of appealing to no-coding-skill designers looking for a quick and professional finish to their site.

Version 3 includes new image management features that will allow users to edit and insert their own photographs into Web graphics, and the new version of the program also has capabilities to be used in conjunction with Macromedia Dreamweaver and Microsoft FrontPage.

Xara Webstyle has been designed to make the creation of professional Web graphics quick and easy for anyone, regardless of skill levels in coding or design.The results are high quality in terms of on-screen appearance and the Java and HTML coding automatically generated by the program is generally clean. Save options give users broad choice to find a balance between quality, file size and download times.

The Webstyle template graphics are vector files and can be scaled, re-coloured and customised with text, and as Xaras output is anti-aliased and dithered, the results are the sharpest possible on-screen display achievable.The graphics library is made up of over 1,400 graphics, including animated banner ads, headings, buttons, icons, dividers, backgrounds and themed sets some more professional than others. Every graphic can be customised in almost every respect: wording, colours, font size and type, background, bevel, shadow and texture.

Another feature that beginners will enjoy is the display of fonts, which makes it much easier to choose the right one, rather than just fluking through the names.

The size dialog box allows users to adjust the height or width of the image and the save dialog box displays the result of different save settings on graphic quality. It also includes both a browser preview option that automatically launches a browser, and expected download time for different modem speeds.

Xaras version 3 includes new capabilities that add cascading hierarchal DHTML menus to the NavBars, either vertically or horizontally, which are then exported in JavaScript and HTML to control rollover states etc.

Another addition is the ability to import personalised photos and adjust settings such as brightness and contrast as well as rotate, crop and create expanding thumbnails. It is also now possible to enhance saturation, blur and transparency, which makes this versatile program just that little bit more interesting.

Working in Dreamweaver or Frontpage, it is possible to use the insert menu to open Webstyle and create and save a graphic, which is then automatically placed into a document. Editing a Webstyle graphic from within Dreamweaver is a simple double click to launch Webstyle and update changes in the HTML editor.This function took me by surprise a couple of times and Webstyle self-launched unnecessarily.

There is no Mac version of Xara Webstyle, but as the program was written in hand-optimised x86 assembler the problems of creating a Mac version would no doubt leave Mac users with more problems than using the program would solve.