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To draw a rectangle, select the Rectangle Tool
and just drag across the page. You will see a solid filled shape as you
drag across the page, indicating the fill and line color and boundaries of
the shape you are drawing.
Click the 'curved corners' button on the InfoBar to make this a rounded
rectangle - and you can drag on the curved corner handle to adjust the
roundedness.
You can drag on any corner handle to resize an object.
Drag and drop a color from the Color Line onto your shape to re-color it. See Coloring Shapes. With
the Selector Tool you can drag it, resize it and rotate it as required. See Selector Tool. You can put this
rectangle behind all other objects as a background image, by pressing "Ctrl + B" for 'Put to back'.
Alternatively if it's in front of all other objects ("Ctrl + F") then you can right click on it and select Repel
text under
to make the text on your page repel around the outside of this shape (another Web Designer Premium
first for any web authoring tool.)
Fill Tool
You can easily put a graduated color fill onto a shape using this
tool (and a lot more besides). Select the tool and just drag
across your object.
The fill arrow can be adjusted by dragging the ends to alter the direction, angle and extent of the
graduation.
Rounded rectangle with a graduated fill.
Note: If you drag with the Fill Tool across a grouped item, such as a text panel, then everything in the
group takes on the same fill style. To overcome this you must first select just the item you want to fill.
You can do this several ways. A single click on the item with the Fill Tool will select just that item, as will
a click in the Selector Tool
with the "Ctrl" key pressed (this is called 'select inside' because it selects just the one item inside the
group). Now when you drag it will fill only the selected object.
To edit the start or color of the fill just drag and drop a color from the color line onto the shape, or you
can select the end of the Fill Arrow in the Fill Tool
and use the Color Editor ("Ctrl + E").
You can create a multi-stage graduated fill by making sure the fill arrow is visible (select it with the Fill
Tool
), now just drag a color from the Color Line and carefully drop it on the arrow line where you want the
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