Xara Menu Maker 1.0

Reviewed by: Jeff Matthews, send e-mail
Published by: Xara, go to the web site
Requires: Windows 95/98/2000/Me/XP/NT4, Pentium MX or better, 64MB Ram. Some features may not work without Internet Explorer 5.5 or later
MSRP: $19.00

Xara's newest addition to its line of products is Xara MenuMaker. A user can now create stunning menus to add to his site without having any graphic design skills. Xara MenuMaker includes ready-made, eye catching Menus. These Menus can be edited to include the text you want for each section. No programming skills are necessary to use this program. This program automatically creates the Dynamic HTML (DHTML) and javascript required for these types of menus, making it a no-brainer for you.

The product comes with 250 top-quality graphical navbar designs. These are easily customizable. You can type the text into the fields and see them updated right away. If you use either Macromedia Dreamweaver or Microsoft Frontpage then Xara MenuMaker can integrate seemlessly so you can add Menus directly inside these editors. I've always been a fan of Xara's since Xara released Webstyle 1.0 which lets you create banners, buttons and more.

Pros: Not expensive. If you had an in house designer do the menus for you, any project would be much more costly, running as much as a few hundred dollars per menu. Xara's professional designers created the menu content in the software and are providing them to you for much less. The program automatically creates the code.

At only $19.00 this piece of software is a bargain. It shouldn't get too confusing because there is no programming involved. As quoted from the Xara site, "Menu Maker makes it so easy to add your NavBars to your web page - even your granny could do it." If you would like another product that will create buttons and banners as well, then try Xara's Webstyle 3.0*. Both of these products may be purchased online at the Xara web site. If you would like to evaluate the software before purchasing then you should know that Xara provides a 15 day free trial of this product.

* (Ed. Note: Menu Maker only allows you to create graphical navigation bars and DHTML menus. Webstyle has many more features and lets you create a number of different graphic types, such as 2D and 3D headings, buttons, banner ads, dividers and bullets - as well as graphical NavBars and DHTML menus.)

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