Page Background With Left Border Transparency Positioning Problem

I am a new user of Photo & Graphic Designer 7 trying to create a new website and preserve some of the characteristics of my existing website at www.davidwindstrom.com.

I copied the jpg graphic used for the background of the old website, and imported it into the bitmap gallery, and used it for the page background in Xara. This bitmap has a fading transparency to the left to leave room for vertical navigator buttons. During page preview, when widening the browser width to the right, the central portion (darker) section of the image populates the left side, rather than preserving the actual left (transparent) portion of the graphic. As you can see if you go to the old website, this does not happen. (If you pull the browser window far enough to the right it simply duplicates the whole graphic, which is fine).

I have even tried creating filled rectangles in Xara, filled transparency on the left side of the graphic, and used that as a background page. The same thing happens. How do I get it not to do this?

I have a attached a little .xar file that has both of these bitmaps in it (the imported one and the one created in Xara). If you select either one as a page background, and then do a page preview (or export html), you will see this phenomenon.

I have looked in the documentation and done searches but can find no answer to this. Thank you for any help!

David W

JPG cannot hold fading (alpha) transparency, only PNG is capable of this.

Welcome to TalkGraphics

Will these help? since your basic page is white you do not need transparency. These will appear to become transparent.

"JPG cannot hold fading (alpha) transparency, only PNG is capable of this."
Thank you for you reply above, Sledger. I actually created a rectangle object and saved it as a PNG file, and re-imported it to a bitmap that I set to page background. The same thing happened as I described in my post.

Hello Gwpriester,

Thank you for your response. I tried the two attachments you sent and the same thing happened, except that now there are two duplicate images side by side, as your attachments were 500 px as opposed to my original ones which were 1000.
I had hoped that there was an easy way to get P&GD7 to preserve the left side of the graphic as the browser is expanded to the right (as in the original website I referred to). If there is no easy fix I may have to just crop the graphic to get rid of the left (lighter) portion so that the replication of the tile will be uniform, though what I wanted was to duplicate the effect in the current website referred to in my post.

Problem is, your original site is left aligned, all Xara produced sites are centralised by default, so you won't be able to duplicate the idea of having the menu items over the faded-to-white area without using one of Covoxer's tweaks (Left aligned page) and setting the page background to transparent. (See attached file - don't worry about how the background tiling is in the designer view, it will look like your current site when previewed and published)
Though I do think it's a good opportunity to try something little different and more attractive because your current site is quite ugly to be honest. That stripy background really detracts from the important content as well as making the page difficult to tolerate - but that's just my opinion ;)

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Originally Posted by sledger

Though I do think it's a good opportunity to try something little different and more attractive because your current site is quite ugly to be honest. That stripy background really detracts from the important content as well as making the page difficult to tolerate - but that's just my opinion ;)

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There - someone said it :D

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Originally Posted by sledger

Problem is, your original site is left aligned, all Xara produced sites are centralised by default...
Though I do think it's a good opportunity to try something little different and more attractive because your current site is quite ugly to be honest. That stripy background really detracts from the important content as well as making the page difficult to tolerate - but that's just my opinion ;)

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OK...that's the piece I was missing: centralised by default. I appreciate your feedback about the current website. If there are others that think it's "ugly" then I need to know that. In any case, I quite agree with you about time for a change. And I had already come to the conclusion that trying to duplicate the left alignment was more trouble than it's worth. Originally I was going to get Coffee Cup HTML editor...but havingI discovered XARA P&GD7, I may never get it. The next step is trying to decide if I need to upgrade to Designer PRO 7, which I understand combines the features of PGD and Web Designer MX Premium (vs waiting for version 8). The handling of navigation bars would certainly be easier. Thanks again for your input.

Not that it's 'ugly', its just hard on my eyes. It kinda makes me want to focus on the lines and takes away from the information that you want to portray.

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Originally Posted by dwindstr

I had already come to the conclusion that trying to duplicate the left alignment was more trouble than it's worth.

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Did you download my attachment?

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Originally Posted by dwindstr

The next step is trying to decide if I need to upgrade to Designer PRO 7, which I understand combines the features of PGD and Web Designer MX Premium.

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Not so, DP7 contains all the features of Web Designer 7. You will need to wait for the next release of Designer Pro to gain the features of Web Designer MX Premium.

I did download the attachment and it works. I assume you used the Covoxer tweak you referred to earlier. Thanks.

Regarding your comment about the release features, I assume it makes more sense to wait for DP8 than to acquire Wed Designer MX Premium 8 now as an add-on to PGD7.

Yes. the tweak is shown at the top of the work area.

And yes, for most people it does make more sense to wait for the next Designer Pro release.
But remember that the difference between WD MX Premium and the 'yet to be released sometime in the future' Designer Pro (MX) will be in the drawing tools, the PDF/x exporting, the print imagesetting and separations, the Pantone palettes, additional bitmap tools, Shortcut key configuration, XPS support, Multi-core CPU support and more 'Pro' features like 'Live Copies'.
Historically the webcentric tooling is the same in Designer Pro and WD Premium.

So, it makes sense only if you want the additional professional illustration features, but if you are just creating websites and don't need the pro illustration and print tools then you may not need Designer Pro at all.

I did download the attachment and it works.. Thank you.

Based on your release comments, sounds like it makes sense to wait for Designer Pro 8 as an upgrade, rather than get Web Designer 7 now, though I don't know what the upgrade pricing differences will be.

I think my point was, Web Designer is a Web Site creation application, Designer Pro is a Vector graphics / illustration application that can also output as HTML. It is first and foremost (and historically) a Vector Graphics Application.

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Originally Posted by sledger

I think my point was, Web Designer is a Web Site creation application, Designer Pro is a Vector graphics / illustration application that can also output as HTML. It is first and foremost (and historically) a Vector Graphics Application.

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From what you've said, and considering my intended use, I think I have all the graphics capabilities I need with Photo and Graphic Designer 7. My best bet may be to just go ahead and get Web Designer MX v 8 for $49, which may be some of the website building tasks easier (like navbars). Then if need be, I can use the graphics capabilities of Photo & Graphic Designer, but use WD (8) to pull it all together in creating the website.