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When you set the page background color by dropping a color onto the page as described above, this
actually adds another layer to your document, which you can see if you open the Page & Layer
Gallery. It's called the Page background layer
.
This layer is normally locked, so you can't select and edit its contents. But you can unlock it in the Page
& Layer Gallery
in order to perform some limited editing of it, to customize your page background. Just click on the lock
symbol next to the "Page background" layer to unlock it.
Now if you click on the page background, you'll see a rectangle becomes selected (see status bar). This
rectangle covers your whole page - it's used to set the page color. You can now do some limited editing
of this rectangle, such as give it a graduated fill using the Fill Tool, or give it rounded corners using the
Rectangle Tool
.
Note
: You must also set the pasteboard color too, before you can give your page anything other than a flat
color.
Offsetting the top of your page
Normally if you just set the page and pasteboard to different colors, when you preview you'll see that the
page extends right to the top of the browser window. You can't see any of the pasteboard color above
your page. However you can add an offset so that there is some space above your page in the web
browser.
To add an offset, you change the page origin. Normally the page origin is set to be the top left corner of
your page. By moving the origin up 20 pixels, for example, you add a 20 pixel margin to the top of your
page when it's viewed in a web browser.
You can change the origin in two ways. The easiest way is to open the "Utilities" > "Options" dialog
(or right click a page and choose Page Options), go to the Grid & Ruler
tab and increase the value of the Y coordinate of the origin point. This is normally set to the vertical size
of your page, so just increase it by the margin size you would like. So for example if your page is 700
pixels tall, change the Y value of the origin coordinate from 700 to 720, in order to add a 20 pixel offset.
Alternatively you can set the origin point interactively. Turn rulers on by right clicking and choosing "
Show Grid/Guides" > "Show Rulers" or by choosing Show rulers from the Window
menu ("Ctrl + L"). Then click and drag on the crosshairs button, which is located where the horizontal
and vertical rulers join, at the top left of the canvas. Now you are dragging around the origin position, so
position it the appropriate distance vertically above the top left corner of your page.
Changing the horizontal position of the origin has no effect on the horizontal positioning of your page, so
this should be left unchanged.
Advanced backgrounds
Web browsers do not allow a graduated color background over the whole visible window (i.e. as a real
HTML background), but they do support repeating, tiled, bitmaps as backgrounds. So you can use this
to create a full-window graduated background, by creating a bitmap, which is then tiled (repeated)
across the page.
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