7.0
Table Of Contents
- Purchasing and unlocking Xara Web Designer 7 Premium
- Support
- What is new in Xara Web Designer 7 Premium?
- Introduction
- Getting Help
- Getting Started
- Program Layout
- Objects On The Page
- Object Based Web Design
- The Selector Tool
- Website Toolbar
- Creating a website
- Previewing Your Website
- Using Templates, Clipart & Widgets
- Website Colors
- Photos
- Text
- Page Size
- Saving Your Work. Creating A Website
- Stretchy Objects
- Groups
- Repeating Objects
- Links, Buttons & Navigation Bars
- Drawing Tools
- Right-click menus
- Layers, Mouseover (Rollover) & Pop-ups
- Creating Buttons, Banners And Other Web Graphics
- Publishing Your Website
- Document handling
- Starting Xara Web Designer 7 Premium
- Starting a new document
- Opening an existing document
- The Xara Web Designer 7 Premium window
- Opening a second window
- Changing the zoom value
- Sliding the document within the window
- Changing the page size
- Multiple pages in the document
- Saving the document
- Support folders
- Closing the document
- Automatic Backups
- On-screen grid
- Rulers
- View quality
- Galleries
- Displaying a gallery
- Moving and docking a gallery
- Grouping galleries
- Using galleries
- Selecting items
- Re-ordering items in the gallery
- Searching for an item name
- Adding to a gallery
- Deleting sections from a gallery
- Closing a gallery
- Removing a gallery from the workspace
- Restoring the default control bars/galleries
- Undo and Redo
- Object Handling
- The Selector Tool
- Moving objects
- Removing objects from the document
- Duplicating and cloning
- Moving objects forward and backwards
- Rotating objects
- Scaling (resizing) objects
- Flipping objects
- Stretching and squashing objects
- Skewing objects
- The Mold tool
- Snapping
- Guide Objects and Guidelines
- Summary of shortcuts on the numeric keypad
- Grouping and ungrouping objects
- Soft Groups
- Alignment
- Copying Styles: Paste Attributes
- Naming objects
- Repeating Objects
- Drawing Lines and Shapes
- Drawing a line or shape
- The Freehand & Brush Tool
- Editing lines/shapes with the Freehand & Brush Tool
- The Straight Line & Arrow tool
- The Shape Editor tool
- Extending the line
- Finishing the line
- Adding a new point handle
- Selecting multiple point handles
- Deleting points
- Moving point handles—Shape Editor Tool
- Smoothing a line
- Constraining the line
- Changing curves
- Changing a straight line to a curve (and vice versa)
- Joining lines
- Splitting a shape
- Changing the line width (thickness)
- Line Gallery
- Shape Handling
- Color Handling
- The color line
- Applying fill & line colors by drag & drop
- Editing an object’s color
- The Color Editor
- Local colors and Theme colors
- Theme color schemes
- Creating your own color schemes
- Creating new named colors
- Editing named colors
- Normal colors, Tints, Shades and Linked colors
- Creating a Tint, Shade or Linked color
- Text Handling
- Introduction
- Terminology
- The Text Tool
- The Font Menu
- Simple text
- Text in a column
- Text areas
- Text along a curve
- Editing text
- Spell checker
- Find & Replace
- Synchronising Text using Soft Groups
- Tabs, Margins and Indents
- Repelling text objects
- Anchored Graphics
- Applying text styles
- Text links
- Text inside groups for websites
- Copying text styles
- Copying/Pasting formatted text (RTF)
- Seeing fonts in use
- Font embedding
- Browser text compatibility
- The Fill Tool
- Shadows
- Transparency
- Bevels
- Masks
- Web Properties Dialog
- Photo Handling
- Introduction
- Photo Objects
- Photo Groups
- Importing Photos
- Photo resolution
- Zero-memory Copies
- The Bitmap Gallery
- Embedded JPEG files
- Lossless vs. Lossy
- Blending & Merging photos
- Photo display quality
- Saving & Exporting Photos
- Photo Edit Attributes
- Editing the outline of Photos
- Cropping photos
- Cropping photos with a mask
- Cutting objects out of photos
- Screen capture utility
- Coloring photos
- Integration with external Photo Editors
- Resize, rotate and position a photo within its frame
- Horizon Straighten
- Viewing a scaled photo at its full size
- Making a photo its full size
- Optimizing Photos and Bitmaps
- Photo Documents
- Editing Photo Files
- The Photo Tools
- 3D Extrude Tool
- Navigation Bars
- Using template Navbars
- Navigation bar properties dialog
- Site navigation bar
- Buttons & Menus
- Updating your Navbar across all pages
- On canvas editing
- Changing the font on Navbar buttons
- Importing & pasting Navbars
- Creating your own Navigation Bars
- Button margins
- Advanced - Editing a Navbar button design
- Navbars with different first or last buttons
- Website Presentations
- The Presentation toolbar
- Creating a presentation
- Managing presentation steps
- Adding new presentation pages
- Deleting presentation pages
- Linking to next/previous step
- Applying transitions to presentation step links
- Applying presentation step transitions
- Applying presentation page transitions
- Advanced presentation information
- Hosting remote presentation sessions
- Website Widgets
- Page & Layer Gallery
- Animations
- Introduction
- Core Principles
- Your First Animation
- Exporting a Flash File
- Exporting animations as AVI
- The Animation Frame Gallery
- Photos
- Animation Frame Rate and Tween Steps
- Cropping, Clipping and Animation Size
- Animation Speed
- Animation smoothness
- Rotation
- Groups
- What Xara Web Designer 7 Premium features does Flash support?
- Color Transforms—Animating Color Changes
- Transparency
- URLs in Flash
- Advanced Flash Commands
- Xara Web Designer 7 Premium Flash Animation Summary
- Creating animated GIFs
- Animation properties
- Printing
- Importing and Exporting
- Customizing Web Designer Premium
- Changing the blank template document
- Displaying your own icons in browser tabs: favicons
- Options in the Utilities menu
- General tab
- Recent file list size
- Current layer always visible and editable
- Ask before setting current attribute
- Make groups be transparent as a whole.
- Maintain imported layer names
- Marquee Object Selection
- Angle constraint
- Document is intended to be a website
- Show Windows compatible text lengths
- Nudge size
- Duplication distance
- Grid and Ruler tab
- Mouse tab
- Page Size tab
- Backups Tab
- Control bars
- Menus and Keyboard Shortcuts
- Introduction
- File menu
- New (Standard control bar or Ctrl+N)
- New from Designs Gallery
- Open (Standard control bar or Ctrl+O)
- Open recent
- Close (Ctrl+W)
- Save (Standard control bar or Ctrl+S)
- Save As
- Save All
- Save Template
- Import (Ctrl+Alt+I)
- Export (Ctrl+Shift+E)
- Export JPEG
- Export PNG
- Preview web page (F12)
- Preview Website
- Export Website
- Publish Website
- Preview Flash
- Export Animation
- Document Info
- Page Options
- Printer Setup
- Print Options
- Print (Ctrl+P)
- Exit
- Edit menu
- Undo (Standard control bar or Ctrl+Z)
- Redo (Standard control bar or Ctrl+Y)
- Cut (Edit control bar or Ctrl+X)
- Copy (Edit control bar or Ctrl+C)
- Paste (Edit control bar or Ctrl+V)
- Delete (Edit & Standard control bars or Delete)
- Select All (Ctrl+A)
- Clear Selection / Reset current attributes (Esc)
- Duplicate (Edit control bar or Ctrl+Alt+D)
- Clone (Ctrl+K)
- Pages
- Arrange menu
- Move to Layer in Front (Arrange control bar or Ctrl+Shift+U)
- Bring to Front (Arrange control bar or Ctrl+F)
- Move Forwards (Arrange control bar or Ctrl+Shift+F)
- Move Backwards (Arrange control bar or Ctrl+Shift+B)
- Put to Back (Arrange control bar or Ctrl+B)
- Move To Layer Behind (Arrange control bar or Ctrl+Shift+D)
- Group (Arrange control bar or Ctrl+G)
- Ungroup (Arrange control bar or Ctrl+U)
- Apply soft group (Ctrl+Alt+G)
- Remove soft group (Ctrl+Alt+U)
- Alignment (Ctrl+Shift+L)
- Fit Text to Curve/Remove Text From Curve
- Repelling and Anchoring
- Create Navigation Bar
- Repeat on all pages (Shift+Ctrl+Alt+R)
- Stop updating (Shift+Ctrl+Alt+O)
- Utilities menu
- Window menu
- Clear Selection / Reset current attributes (Esc)
- Multiple Page View
- New View
- Arrange Views
- Animation
- Show Scrollbars
- Show Rulers (Ctrl + L)
- Control Bars
- Quality (Standard control bar)
- Show Document Tabs
- Full Screen (8 on numeric keypad)
- Show Grid (#)
- Show Guides (1 on numeric keypad)
- Show Print Borders
- Snap to Grid (. on numeric keypad)
- More about Xara Group
- Legal
If you open the Page & Layer Gallery
you can show or hide any layer by checking or un-checking the visibility icon (the eye symbol). This is a
way of showing what your MouseOver elements will look like on your page.
The current layer is always highlighted in the Page & Layer Gallery - the MouseOff layer in the above
diagram - and this is the layer that all new objects are drawn on. To place objects on any other layers
just click the required layer in the Page & Layer Gallery
, ensure the eye and the lock icon are open for that layer.
Note
: The MouseOver layer must always be above, that is on top of, the MouseOff layer, as shown in the
above example.
To edit the objects on a layer both the 'eye' and 'lock' icons have to be open - this means you can see
and edit the layer (as shown above in the MouseOff layer).
Mouseover (Rollover) Buttons
Almost all the ready-made buttons from the Designs Gallery
have a mouseover effect in Web Designer Premium. These are created by having two versions of each
button, the main one on the MouseOff layer and a 'highlight' one on the MouseOver layer.
Normally you do not need to know or care about this because both buttons behave as one - the changes
you make to one, such as editing the label text, are reflected on the other version. If you move, drag or
resize a button on the MouseOff layer, the other version on the MouseOver layer will change as well,
even if you can't see it. This is done using Soft Groups (Soft Groups, Soft Groups
).
Creating Your Own Mouseover Buttons
You can create your own mouseover buttons from scratch by drawing the necessary elements from
rectangles, text, etc. Just draw the main parts of the button on the MouseOff layer (remember to group it
) and place the corresponding 'highlight' version on the MouseOver layer. As long as the MouseOff
version has a web address link, then the MouseOver version will automatically be displayed as you move
the mouse over it on the web page. (The MouseOver layer must be on top of the MouseOff layer).
In other words, you give the main object a web address using the link
option, and then select the MouseOver Layer in the Page & Layer
Gallery
, and place the required mouseover versions of your button on this layer
so it overlaps the linked object.
Technical note:
Any graphic object on the MouseOver layer will be displayed as long as at least 50% overlaps with the
object on the MouseOff layer. The two versions of mouseover buttons are kept in sync by using the Soft
Groups feature. When you select the button on one layer, it automatically selects the Soft Grouped
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