7.0

Converting Text To Be A Graphic
As mentioned above only a very limited number of fonts are available in web browsers. If you want to
use a different font on a button or, say, as a heading, you can do this by ensuring it is converted to a
graphic, and all you need to do is group the object to make this happen automatically. You can still edit
the text inside the group, but groups are automatically converted into a graphic when the website is
exported.
So all you need to do to include a font like this is to group it. It doesn't have to be grouped with anything
- you can group it with itself, by just selecting Group from the Arrange
menu or pressing "Ctrl + G".
Soft Groups
There is another type of group, called a 'Soft Group', which is a more loosely connected set of objects.
The difference between Groups and Soft Groups is:

When you group items they must all be on a single layer (if they are not they are moved to a
single layer when you group the items). Soft groups retain their layers, so you can tie together
items across multiple layers.

Groups are usually converted into a single graphic when exported as HTML for a website. Soft
Groups are not and each object is exported as a separate item. Text inside a soft group is kept
as text in the HTML, whereas text in Groups is converted into a graphic (with some exceptions).

You can nest groups inside other groups. For complex drawings consisting of many, sometimes
thousands of shapes, creating a hierarchy of nested groups is a good organizational technique,
just like having folder inside other folders. Soft Groups however cannot be nested and are
designed primarily a way of tying multiple objects on different layers together.
Because Soft Groups can contain items on different layers, when you select a Soft Grouped item on one
layer it will automatically select the corresponding 'soft grouped' item/s on other layers, often a layer that
is not even visible. See the section on Layers below to understand more about this.
Most buttons are Soft Groups, that is when you select, move or resize a button you are in fact performing
these operations on two copies of the button, one called the 'MouseOff' version and another
'MouseOver' version.
Some of the more complex panel objects in the Designs Gallery
are Soft Groups. This is so that you can move it around as a single object, but the component parts, the
photos, background shapes, are all exported into the HTML as separate items for maximum efficiency.
Synchronized Text
There is another useful feature of Soft Groups. If you have the same text on two or more objects within
a Soft Group, the text will be synchronized when you edit it. This is the mechanism used to keep the
button text the same on both the normal and MouseOver buttons - see below.
Anchored Groups
When you make an object anchored to text, it gets put inside an Anchored Group. See Anchored
Graphics
for more information on anchored objects.
Repeating Groups
When you make an object repeating, it is placed inside a Repeating Group. See the Repeating Objects
section of the Object Handling chapter for details.
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