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This page provides descriptions of, and download links for, the best shareware and freeware produced by Xara users for Xara users. These mini-applications and plug-in filters vastly enhance Xara’s capabilities

If you have created a plug-in filter or a mini-application that you would like to share with the Xara community contact us and provide a description of your Xara helper.

SLEDGER’S REGISTRY HACKS Steve Ledger has provided a series of executable files that turn various Xtreme 4.0 features on and off. In addition, Steve has a mini-tutorial here for adding a folder with these files available on your taskbar (XP and Vista). Click here to download the Zipped file.

These mini-utilities let you have different sized pages in a multipage document, turn the font list off and on, and make backup files (.bak) and more.

Bill Taylor’s Photo Drag and Drop the Old Way FIX: One of the dubious workflow improvements in Xtreme and Xtreme Pro versions 3.2 + is a change in the behavior when a photo is applied as a bitmap to a shape or another photo. In the good old days, when you applied a photo as a fill or dragged and dropped a photo onto another photo to change it, the fill or dropped image retained the proportions of the previous photo. Now any time you apply a bitmap as a fill or drag and drop it onto a photo or shape, the photo automatically resizes to the maximum height or width.

There is a Registry fix suggested in this recent Xtreme Conference thread by Phil from Xara. It involves resetting certain settings in the mysterious Registry, something that should not be done unless you know what you are doing. This is where Bill Taylor (Soquili) comes in to save us all.

For those that would prefer not to personally edit the registry the attached ResetFillBehavior.zip file contains a .reg file.

Unzip the .reg to a folder on your hard drive. Using Windows Explorer or My Computer double click on the file's icon.

You will be asked if you want to add the information to the Registry.

Answer YES and the changes will be made for you.

Answer NO and the changes will not be made.

Simple enough. Click here to download the file. Thanks Bill. We owe you!

Ron Muncy has created a screen saver from the Flash Animation July 2007 Xara Xtreme Tutorial. Download the Zip file, then follow the instructions in the Read me text file. Click here to download the file. (!.07MB)

Back by Popular Demand - A Utility to Restore the Spacebar = Selector Tool/Last Selected Tool Function! From version 3.2 onwards, holding down the space bar in Xara Xtreme and Xara Xtreme Pro causes a temporary switch to the Push Tool. Releasing the Space bar returns to the previously selected tool or pressing it once will switch to the push tool and pressing it again will return to the previous tool.

You can restore the old use of the space bar as a shortcut to the Selector tool.

Xara Xtreme 3.2

Download CopyHotkeysIni
Extract the contents of the zip file
Double click the copyHotkkeysIni.bat

Xara Xtreme Pro 3.2

Use the Xtreme Pro 3.2 Shortcuts Utility This has been covered in some detail on Page 5 (near the bottom of the page) in Workbook 60.

ALL IS NOT LOST!!! Many of us has experienced the frustration of not being able to open a XAR file that for some mysterious reason has become corrupted. Well, all may not be lost. Gerry I from the Xara Ltd. Development Group has come up with something that might recover part or all of your corrupted file. It is called Expander.XAR. Here’s how it works.

Extract the ExpanderXar.exe program from the archive (the ZIP file) to the same folder as the bad *.xar file.

Select Start\Run and type cmd and hit Return (Enter).

Change directory to the correct folder, for example cd C:\MyXarFiles (cd is the command to change the directory to the folder (path name) where your corrupt file is languishing.

Run the utility by keying in: expandxar mybadfile.xar output.xar

If an output file is generated (output.xar in the above case) then try loading it into Xtreme, ignoring warnings about unrecognized tags.
If it loads and you want to keep the recovered data then re-save the document where ever you like. Click here to download the ZIPped archive expander.xar (69K).

Dmitry Malutin has done it again. He has updated his popular X Tune utility to support Xara Xtreme Pro (and Xtreme + versions X and X1). It’s easy to use. Just download the ZIP file, extract the program and place it where you can find it. No install is necessary. Just double click and you’re ready to go. XX Tube makes changes to Xara’s registry settings so you don’t have to.

Xara XX Tune can save a BAK backup file every time you save your file. Blob size refers to the size of the control handles. A big thank you to Dmitry for this invaluable contribution. Click here to download the file. (24K)
 

German Keyboard Shortcuts - Tomcat has created a chart of all the Xara keyboard shortcuts in German with instructions for making a 3-sided stand up card for easy viewing. Click here to download 1 ZIP file of 2 Flash SWF files (68K). If you need to download the latest Flash Player, click here.

Frantisek Grebenicek has created a Java based utility SpiroJ that creates circular patterns like the one shown above. To run this you need Java Runtime Environment (JRE) version 1.4.x or later (Sun Microsystems JRE 1.4.2 is recommended) which you can download here. Unzip the contents to a new folder. Open the folder, find the SpiroJ.jar file and double click the icon. Click the New Default Design icon to start and press the Calc button to apply your changes. Click Export to export the design. Ignore the error message when you import the file into Xara. There is an HTML file in the DOC folder if you need documentation. Click here to download SpiroJ (184K)

(January 07) Dmitry Malutin had added more refinements for his Font Seeker a utility that lists all the installed fonts on your computer. Key in some sample text, then every font you select is shown with your text. JUST ADDED You can drag and drop a font sample onto the page. Then copy and paste the attributes to any selected text. You can also select fonts by Character Sets, Font Type and Style in the expanded menu. Because this utility changes frequently, and because there are many more terrific free utilities at Dmitry’s website, this link will take you directly to Dmitry’s site. Click here to download (186K).

SPRAY is yet another really cool utility created by Dmitry Malutin. Use it to generate a wide variety of objects, shapes, and line patterns. Then copy your creation and paste it into Xara where you can modify it. The image of the bubbles represents the latest version which in this case creates hundreds of different size circles, none of which touch. The bubbles on the left were created in Xara simply by copying attributes from one circle and then pasting attributes to all the other circles. Click here to download (376K).

Xeus Bitmap Corrector created by John Horn (covoxer) is a Photoshop® filter plug-in. It is bitmap editing addon to Xara X. Xeus (pronounced Zeus) lets you do raster painting right in you favorite vector drawing software! If you are tired having to leave Xara to use bitmap editors everytime you want to alter an image try Xeus and you'll see the difference.
Xeus can be used with any other graphic application that supports Photoshop compatible plug-ins.

UPDATE: John Horn has generously decided to make Xeus Bitmap Corrector a freeware product. If you download the utility, and you find it useful, send John an e-mail and let him know. Creating Xeus is a LOT of work!

Click here to go to the Xeus home page where you can get more information and download your free 7-day trial version. (710K) Click here for tutorials.
 

John W. Horn (covoxer in the Xara Conference) has created a handy utility, XetupX and lets users edit a variety of Xara’s default registry settings in a simple, easy to use interface. Included are options to change: Handle size and color, arrowhead size, the font size on the screen rulers, the raster size of generated fractals, color settings, mouse settings, create backup file, PostScript level default, and more. Xetup works with Xara X1, Xara X, and CorelXara 2.0. There is no Apply button but changes are applied as you make them. The default settings are displayed in a Tool Tip in case you want to revert back to Xara’s default settings.

NEW VERSION 1.2 - 27 Sept 04 Now XetupX does periodic backups of your Xara files. For this to happen, Xara must be the active window and XetupX must remain open (you can minimize the utility). Click here to download XetupX (230K). Bug fix - autosave feature corrected.

Rubem Pechansky's HV Tahoma Bitmap Font - Freeware Rubem has created an 8 pt bitmap version of Microsoft Tahoma, pictured here. This font is good for it is most useful for simulating Windows interfaces. A readme.txt file is included to help you get the best results. Rubem has also included some bitmap examples. Click here to download (32K).

SPX Spiral Generator

Dmitry Malutin has created a very simple and effective utility to help Xara X users generate spirals in two formats: Linear and Exponential. It is free to all Xara X users.

Click here for a tutorial and to go to the download page.

Minimiro’s CMYK Color Model Template

The CMYK Color Model Template is configured to work in CMYK color space and will display colors using the CMYK Color Model. If you are exporting CMYK colors for printing you need this template.

Click here to go to Templates page.

This terrific HTML document displays in your browser and can convert any RGB color to it’s Hexadecimal equivilant (and vice versa). Most website creation software requires Hexadecimal values for color specification and this is the perfect way to get these values. In addition, each time you select a color, the background color changes to display that color giving you a better idea how that color will look on an entire web page. Click here to download (5K)

Sedsoft System Fonts from Sean Sedwards.

Sedsoft System Fonts are a collection of shareware Truetype fonts that simulate Windows and DOS raster (bitmap) fonts that would normally be unavailable in XARA or other vector based drawing packages. They have been designed to behave like bitmap fonts, forming non anti-aliased characters regardless of Xara's quality setting. This has the advantages of increased legibility and accurate reproduction of system fonts in pseudo screen shots. Although primarily designed to be used in the manner described below, they can be used just like any other Truetype font in any application that supports them. Shareware. Click here to go to the download page.

XAR Thumbnail Viewer 1.2 (Updated version) Jonathan Payne puts back the missing XAR viewer that let you see thumbnail images of your XAR file when you look in Windows Explorer. Just download this file and run it. It will automatically install the viewer on your computer. Click here to download (328K)

No grass grows under Brian Etherington’s mouse! Color Mixer is his latest freeware utility that provides a new and improved way to mix colors. Click Here to go to Brian’s Free Stuff page. Click here to visit the XPal page where you will find an explanation and screen shots of Color Mixer.

From Brian Etherington. Rgb2Cmyk version 1.3 is a freeware utility program for converting Xara X Pantone CMYK images exported as RGB TIFF files back to accurate Pantone CMYK format Tiff files. Click Here to go to Brian’s Free Stuff page.

New and Improved! XPal 3.3 from Brian Etherington. XPal is a freeware utility that can edit and create PAL format palette files used by Xara X. 3.3 incorporates several user requests including an improved color harmony function, a new Gradient palette (from 16-256 colors) and a fix for Paint Shop Pro compatibility. CLICK HERE to go to the XPal page for more info about XPal and to download your free copy.

Xara to Flash same size template by Egg Bramhill lets you export from Xara to Flash and have your image the same size in Flash as it was in Xara. Click here to go to the Templates Page.

Son of XPal. Well that’s not altogether accurate. But Brian Etherington has come up with another splendid utility that you can use with Xara to allow all parts of an image to have names and named colours. It’s called XColor.

I could take up a few pages and fumble around trying to explain what XColor does. But that would be foolish when Egg Bramhill has already done it for you. Click here to see Egg’s tutorial, then Click here to download your own free copy of XColor. (Zipped file size is around 600K).

SHAREWARE II   ORMENTE I   ORMENTE II   SL-BLUR   SL-SLICE   SS_BLUR   SS-EMBOSS   SS_MOULD   SS_SEARCH   SEANS 24-BIT MASK   SEANS FILTERS   TEMPLATES   TONY ROBERTS MOLDS   IVAN LOUETTE'S ART   XPAL   SPX-E   FILLS AND BRUSHES