Lost Handles ??

[BQ]

Is there a reason that the handles are lost when copy/paste from Xtreme to Web Designer?

[BQ]

Is there a reason that they aren't used in this case? If you create a rectangle (or square) in Web Designer or copy/paste from Xtreme all the handles are present.

[steve.ledger]

Sorry BQ, I wasn't paying attention obviously.

If you recreate the same shape natively in WD, the additional handles are also removed.
I think it has something to do with WD assuming that you would only want to resize a special shape and not squish/squash it.

Photos are the same in WD. Only the four corner handles are present.
Of course, you can override the aspect locking by un checking the padlock icon on the info bar, the corner handles will then distort the shape (if that's what you need)

[BQ]

Thanks Steve, but I think Web Designer is "assuming" wrong.

edit: but it's really not a very big deal. I can sure live with it.

[covoxer]

The assumption actually is that unexperienced users can unintentionally break the proportions of their images and get the badly looking sites as a result. Remember, this program was designed as a replacement for Webstyle, positioned for users who not only have no web designing experience, but no experience working in graphic software as well. So we had to sand some sharp edges, you know.

[Charles Moir]

John is right -one of the most common mistakes made by new users and sometimes experienced users alike, is incorrectly squashed, and screwed-up aspect ratio, of graphics, photos and text. It's one of the main things that shouts 'amateur' to a professional designer when they see this.

There are very few cases where you get acceptable results from squashing anything. It looks bad for text, photos, and most graphics look poor - in fact the example you illustrate of a squashed rounded rectangle is one of the most common errors. In the past it has been way too easy to make these mistakes.

That plus the fact that HTML does not support text aspect ratio changes.

So all in we decided we should remove the the easy ways of messing up your drawings, page, photos and HTML.

You still can however change the aspect ratio, just un-check the padlock icon on the Selector Tool Infobar and you you can stretch with the corner handles. So it's still possible, just not so easy, to stretch things.

[BQ]

Charles and John,
Thank you both for the explanation. Now that you've explained it to me, it makes perfectly good sense.
BQ

[cursor]

Some items, from a very logical standpoint, I should be able to expand longitudinallly or vertically, at will, without constraints (independent of aspect ratio).

Case in point ...

I've defined a created a horiz navbar on a page that is 900 pix wide. The actual navbar extends, perhaps, 600 pix from the left margin (with perhaps 2 pix between each button). It would be extemely convenient to be able to 1) clone the button (sans text), 2) move it to the extreme right of the navbar, and 3) horizontally drag+snap the the width of the graphic (gradient colored, or whatever) to the right-most edge of the defined webpage (snapping into position). As its currently setup, I can't do that ... unless I misunderstand (which would not be the first time).

[covoxer]

horizontally drag+snap the the width of the graphic (gradient colored, or whatever) to the right-most edge of the defined webpage

To snap anything you drag to the page border enable "Snap to Objects" (the red magnet button near the view quality handle).

[cursor]

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough.

Yes, snapping to anything is simple with Web Designer (or Extreme). The problem that I'm trying to describe is that I cannot dynamically lengthen a non-text item without affecting it's height. Not having all the stretch handles precludes that. Sure, I can unlock the aspect ratio, then explicitly enter width values within the info bar (then I have to re-position, because any stretching happens about the object's center) ... but that seems out of touch with the Xara's simple, dynamic user interface.

Leaving the horiz/vert stretch handles off of text components might make some sense (so that text doesn't get distorted, and so that standard web fonts display properly), but making all other graphic elements suffer the restriction seems unnecessary.