How do I know what page I'm working with in XWD 6

[pauland]

If I see the whole of the box with text all arranged perfectly inside it on my layout, why doesn't it look like that when I preview it?

Possibly your browser default settings are for enlarged text, not the standard size. So when a browser gets hold of it it's making the text bigger.

[bjornkn]

Possibly your browser default settings are for enlarged text, not the standard size. So when a browser gets hold of it it's making the text bigger.

That sounds like a very plausible reason. As Xara nrmally writes each line with absolute position within a <span> tag there's no room for line-wrap.
I've never seen text lines extending past the right edge (with normal browser text size).

[zaphodeist]

Was the text created within a text area? If so it will wrap

[bjornkn]

Was the text created within a text area? If so it will wrap

Then XWD must behave differently from XDP? Here the same <span> lines are output whether I'm using text area or text column.
If I add the name 'HTMLblocktext' to either of the two text types it will output <p> blocks instead of <span>, and thus will wrap.

[gemznbeadz]

> Make sure you are resizing the text area with the text tool, not the Selector Tool.

Yep. Which brings up a sub-question: If I'm using the text tool, why does it allow me to put text outside of a green-outlined text area? Shouldn't all the text automatically be inside a text frame? See my attached screen shot and you can see the text area with text outside of it. (NOTE: I did try deleting all of that text and then pasting it inside a text area, but it didn't change the output result.)

"Why is there such a huge area above the actual beginning of the page? That area doesn't show up in the preview, so what is its purpose?"

> It's the 'pasteboard' area and not part of the 'page area'

What is it used for?

>Possibly your browser default settings are for enlarged text, not the standard size. So when a browser gets hold of it it's >making the text bigger.

When I do a page preview in XWD, it opens in a Xara display window, not a browser window, so my browser settings don't seem to have a bearing on what I see in that preview window. See my attached screen shot of that window. And notice how much more of the background is visible on the edges in the XWD window versus how little is visible in the preview window.

[zaphodeist]

@ bjornkin - Yes you are right, it's just that text wraps in an area and doesn't if you merely click on the page and enter text

@gemznbeadz - I use the pasteboard area for storing bits and pieces - stages - of a design perhaps, notes to myself etc. Some bits of JS in placeholders can go on there. Nothing on there will appear in the final design EXCEPT you can have a colour or images appear as background. In other words, the page area is the fixed size of the webpage online.

[bjornkn]

>
When I do a page preview in XWD, it opens in a Xara display window, not a browser window, so my browser settings don't seem to have a bearing on what I see in that preview window. See my attached screen shot of that window. And notice how much more of the background is visible on the edges in the XWD window versus how little is visible in the preview window.

Those images explain a lot. It seems quite apparent that you have scaled the text area horizontally. It works inside Xara, but looks like condensed font. But in Preview (or export) it will expand into normal font width, and get cut off (or overlapping objects to the right). I just did a test to confirm it.
Strangely enough it works differently if you scale a text column using the scale handles. It will still look like condensed font while inside Xara. But when previewed/exported it will expand the font ("normalize" it), but at the same time it will wrap the lines instead of just expanding each line sideways.

Take a look at this images, which also shows the aspect ratio for the text inside that (text area) red rectangle. It should show 100 for non-scaled text.

[gemznbeadz]

neodeist said:

@gemznbeadz - I use the pasteboard area for storing bits and pieces - stages - of a design perhaps, notes to myself etc. Some bits of JS in placeholders can go on there. Nothing on there will appear in the final design EXCEPT you can have a colour or images appear as background. In other words, the page area is the fixed size of the webpage online.

neodeist, please tell me how I make color and/or images appear as the background.

As far as the "fixed size of the webpage online:" When I first opened a new project, I was prompted to choose a page size. The choices were SVGA, VGA, or XGA. There was no guidance about the difference between the three. I did some googling which appeared to reveal that XGA was the most common, so I chose that. Is it possible to change from one to the other to see how they differ? And, do you agree that XGA is the one that most people use?

bjorn says:

>It seems quite apparent that you have scaled the text area horizontally.

When I first started this, I used a template. I highlighted the text that was already there, and attempted to replace it with the text I wanted. This caused text to flow down the page, way outside of where I wanted the text area to be. The text area did not change to contain the text. Also, I wanted the text to start further left on the page than the template had it. But I couldn't figure out how to do that. After the brief mention earlier in this discussion of how to scale horizontally and vertically independently, I used that to move the text further to the left so it would go where I wanted it, so that's evidently how it got stretched horizontally.

So, what's the difference between a text column and a text area? And, what's the right way to do it, so that the font and the text appear where I want them and how I want them? Does the preview image accurately represent what the final exported page will look like? XWD isn't WYSIWYG, I gather?

Another thing I noticed. I wanted to move the word Welcome, which came from the template, but I can't move it any further to the left than what you see on the images I posted. What's going on there?

[zaphodeist]

... neodeist, please tell me how I make color and/or images appear as the background...

Hold down CTRL and drag from the colour line to the paste board or from the colour gallery. Same for images but from the bitmap gallery You can do this for the page itself as well

...So, what's the difference between a text column and a text area? And, what's the right way to do it, so that the font and the text appear where I want them and how I want them? Does the preview image accurately represent what the final exported page will look like? XWD isn't WYSIWYG, I gather? ...

It is WYSIWYG - that's the whole point of it And yes, it does show how the uploaded/published page will look. You can enter text by clicking with the text tool and typing or - again using the text tool - you can click and drag down and to one side to form a box [the text area] into which you can paste or type text. This area can be resized but only with the text tool. The Selector tool can be used only to move these blocks of text around on the page.

[bjornkn]

There are 3 types of text in Xara:
Select Text tool
Click and start typing. This gives you a line of text, with no line-wrapping. All line-wraps are done manually by using Enter/Return.
Text column:
Click and drag to the right. A red line shows the width of the column. For changing the width you drag the red dot in either end.
This will give you an "endless" column of text. Add more text and it just flows/wraps lines.
Text area:
Drag from left, down to the right. A rectangle shows the text area (green while empty, and red when it contains any text).
Changing width/height of the area can be changed by dragging one of the corner dots.
When it is full it will show an overflow arrow, which can be used for linking the text area to another text area, letting the text flow into the other textArea when the first one is full.

All scaling with the normal scale tools will cause problems like "condensed" text.
If you really want the text to be condensed you should make the text into a group, which will then be exported as an image instead of text.

You can't move the "Welcome" further left because the image above it has a setting for repelling all text below it.
You could move it to the front of the image, or even to a layer in front of the layer with the image(s) if they are on different layers.