XXV4 - website frustration

[a4hire]

I could understand your frustration. I have not used layers, but I have used xtreme many times for making web sites. But I only did a layout and then exported all of the individual graphics. Now I can use xtreme to export and do the css for , this will open up many new possibilities for web page design.

[pauland]

I have not used layers.

Check out layers. Once you have used them, you will wonder how you ever got by without them.

If you want to make an illustration from an existing photograph - perhaps making a cartoon building using a real one for the perspective - then put the photograph in a layer on it's own and make the layer uneditable. Create a new layer and draw your new image on that using the photograph for reference.

You won't accidentally select the photograph and move it or delete it.

For websites you can separate out different elements. If you have a navigation area, for example, it often has several different elements - a background which may be overlayed with other graphics upon which will sit buttons and their associated text.

Make the background on one layer. Make other background graphics sit on layers of their own above the base background. You can now manipulate the separate elements making up the background simply by changing the selection of layer and editability - this would be a PIA to do on one layer with graphics of a similar size because selection becomes awkward and it's easy to disturb elements you don't want to alter. Similarly, if something sits over those graphics, you can just make it invisible so that you can see what you're working on underneath.

In an ideal world we would make those layers as sub-layers of a navigation layer, but we can't do that in Xtreme (yet).

Buttons are usually sitting with a common theme and sizing, so I make all my button backgrounds on one layer, sitting above the navigation background. I tend not to make one button and duplicate, I build up the buttons as a whole so that I can see visually the way they look as a whole on the page.
With backgrounds in place, I use another layer for the button content, laying the content over the button backgrounds.

I think you get the idea. Probably the most important thing about layers is that they allow you to easily change parts of the drawing without upsetting anything else, even when the elements you are changing are obscured/partially obscured by elements above them (on separate layers).

Paul