Confusing and quirky layers gallery

[alanstancliff]

I'm trying to work with Xara Designer Pro 7, and I find, smack dab in the middle of a project, that I suddenly cannot find a "create new layer" button on the layers/pages gallery. Moreover, I cannot find the little eye so I can hid or unhide layers, nor can I find the locks so I can lock and unlock. It's late here and I'm under pressure to finish this project.

Can anyone make a suggestion? I never had this problem with Xara 4, but I'm finding Xara 7 to be quirky and puzzling at times, in fact at the most inconvenient of times.

Regards,

Alan

[jclements]

You probably haven't expanded the layers for the active page. Click on the tick-mark to the left of the Page Thumbnail.

This will put you in the Layers mode and the buttons specific to layers now should be visible.

[alanstancliff]

You probably haven't expanded the layers for the active page. Click on the tick-mark to the left of the Page Thumbnail.

This will put you in the Layers mode and the buttons specific to layers now should be visible.

Sometimes that tick-mark does not appear. Sometimes it appears and the locks and eye goodies don't work. That's the thing about my experience: It seems to be unreliable and inconsistent in its behavior for me. Right now, some pages show the tick-mark to the left, others don't, and the locks and eyes are not functioning.

[steve.ledger]

Yes, this appears from your screen-shot to be another case of not having Windows screen scaling at the default 100% (96dpi)
Whenever the screen scaling is changed to greater than 96dpi, most software will not scale it's UI consistently and the result will be display anomalies.
You probably have yours set to 125% (120dpi)
My eyes aren't what they used to be (long sighted) but I really find it is best to keep to native resolutions and Windows 96dpi screen scaling, especially for graphics and graphic applications (oh, and good specs )

[alanstancliff]

Mine was set for 125%. I'm in my 70s, and I still have to work. My job involves a lot of working with text. After working a few hours, my vision becomes quite blurry, and it's hard to see text in menus, and so on. I have real good specs, prescription glasses I had made especially for the computer.

With respect, I'm not completely sure you've nailed my problem's cause. This problem started rather suddenly over the last week.

After I posted my last statement and before I changed the screen resolution back to 100%, I noticed that on one Xara page (it's a multi-page document), some of the layers had tick boxes, whereas other didn't. I also noted that some of the little eye goodies would hide the contents on their layers when I clicked on them and others wouldn't. I'll play with this at 100% resolution for a while and see if it makes a difference.

Thanks for the feedback. I hope this works because I've been getting quite frustrated and ill-tempered at this sudden change in Xara's behavior.

Regards,

Alan

[handrawn]

Hi Alan

its worth checking options page size tab - at the bottom there is a 'document' section with two options which if set incorrectly might make your layers behave unexpectedly [the default is to have both ticked]

also is this a website or document project?

[alanstancliff]

Thanks for the reply, HandDrawn. I'm not sure what you're referring to, but I'm putting a screen shot at the bottom of the message.

To answer your question, it's a document I'm working on. It is a series of still frames to be included in a video of a speech someone called Alan OldStudent gave at a rally in Tacoma for International Workers' Day. I hope no one is offended at that.

I've noticed that if I select a layer, I cannot lock or unlock it, nor can I hide or unhide it. I have to select another layer, and then I can perform these on the unselected layer. Moreover, at times, if I unlock a layer, a bunch of other layers will toggle to locked and vice versa. The same holds true for hiding and unhiding.

Regards,

Alan

[steve.ledger]

With respect, I'm not completely sure you've nailed my problem's cause.

Quite possible, however others have had UI issues when using 120dpi (125% scaling) so it was a good place to start.
I assume you've lodged a ticket with Xara in the mean time, Alan?

[handrawn]

that screen shot looks ok

there is another option on the general tab 'document is intended to be a website' which should not be ticked in this case then

having to click on another layer first is a known issue [and I think it goes back to when the 'layer gallery' first started to include objects as well] - not really experienced it much myself, but others have and mentioned it [Gary P for one], guess this is a bug?

you can now lock objects individually within a layer and this is not overuled by locking unlocking the layer itself, this might be confusing until you get used to it if you come from a version where objects did not appear listed in the gallery - just wondering if this is a factor here?

EDIT: eg if you have a layer and half of the objects listed under it are individually locked and half are not: if you then lock the layer itself all the objects will suddenly toggle locked, and when you unlock the layer they will toggle back as they were before - the objects that were individually locked stay locked

in your post #3 : 'Text', Silhouette' and 'BG' are layers; 'Live Effect' is an object...

[PhilM]

Hi Alan,

What Handrawn says is very important. The new "Page and Layer Gallery" does more than the old Layer gallery used to. It shows not just the layers but also the things inside the layers.

Have you noticed the triangles on the left hand side and the different indenting of some of the items? When a triangle is solid and pointing "southeast" that means that the items below it are "inside" and to further indicate that they are indented a bit.

So in your example above the Live Effect is inside the layer called "Silhouette".

The way the objects can be inside other objects like this means that when you hide an outer object all the things inside it are also hidden and then they are greyed out because you can't have a visible thing inside a hidden thing.

Hopefully this explains some of what you've been seeing.

Phil