Resize web page without moving content

[Rocketman]

Hello

Is there any way I can change the width of my web site (utilities>options>page size) whilst at the same time keeping the content in the same place relative to where it was originally?

What I mean by this is... my web pages are designed around a square in the centre of each page. The page width is currently set to 800 pixels, just because when I started designing that gave me enough space to play around with. The square in the centre of the page is 400 pixels wide. So there is a good chunk of white space around the edges of the square. The top and bottom 'borders' I am not too bothered about. But I would like to reduce the page width to 400 pixels so that it is exactly the same width as the square. (Hope that makes some kind of sense!?)

Currently, when I reduce the page width using the utilities>options>page size facility, Xara will keep the square and all the other web page content at it's current x,y location on the page. Which, for the x location is about 200 pixels indented from the left hand margin. Which means it is no longer centered on the page.

I guess that the default for Xara when reducing page width is to shave the excess pixels from the right hand margin, rather than reduce each margin equally (which would then leave the square and all the contents effectively still centered on the page).

So is there any way to force Xara to do this, or otherwise keep everything centred whilst reducing page width?

I can obviously reduce the page width first, and then move all of the content manually to fit the new page size afterwards, but this would be very cumbersome for a 30+ page website and each page has at least a dozen 'elements' that would individually need to be moved so that they stay in the same location relative to all the other elements on the page.

Many thanks
Tom

[gwpriester]

You can drag the right side and bottom side of the page with the cursor to expand and contract the page size.

[Egg Bramhill]

Hi Tom,

I don't think there's any easy way to do it (apart from pre-planning to avoid the need for such steps )

I believe your going to have to bite the bullet and do the following:

1: Reduce the page size from 800px to 400px (If all pages are the same size on the site you'll only need to do this once, otherwise you'll need to do it for each page seperately.

2: Select all on all layers apart from pasteboard and background layers.

3: Group.

4: Alignment / Align Centrally to page centre.

5: Ungroup (Important otherwise the group will be exported as a bitmap).

Repeat 30+ times, then repeat "I must plan ahead" after each repeat.

[Rocketman]

You can drag the right side and bottom side of the page with the cursor to expand and contract the page size.

Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately this has the same effect. I drag the right hand margin to the left, to reduce the page width, but the elements on the page stay in their same location.

[Rocketman]

Hi Tom,

I don't think there's any easy way to do it (apart from pre-planning to avoid the need for such steps )

I believe your going to have to bite the bullet and do the following:

1: Reduce the page size from 800px to 400px (If all pages are the same size on the site you'll only need to do this once, otherwise you'll need to do it for each page seperately.

2: Select all on all layers apart from pasteboard and background layers.

3: Group.

4: Alignment / Align Centrally to page centre.

5: Ungroup (Important otherwise the group will be exported as a bitmap).

Repeat 30+ times, then repeat "I must plan ahead" after each repeat.

Thanks. This will actually help quite a bit - I had not thought about the grouping idea and so this will save me having to re-align all the seperate elements each time.

I definitely need to plan ahead more! But my style of working is very much based around trial and error (this is actually version 9.2 of the website I am developing, so there are many other variations now in the bin with all kinds of different widths and styles!)

[Egg Bramhill]

Join the Clan. I only said planning ahead was a good idea, I didn't say I followed my own advise .

That's how I learned to overcome such errors.

[pauland]

Rocketman, 400 pixels is a very unusual width for a website. It's wider than will fit on many portrait mode smartphones, way smaller than fits on other orientations on just about any device.

Why 400 pixels?