The challenge of mobile images - discussion

[Acorn]

Acorn said …… What you set up in Main for a fantastic Transition website may not be effective for a Variant where a Scrolling website would be better.
Xara does not allow a mixing of Conventional/Scrolling/Presentation/Transition.
I far prefer Conventical as each page is its own HTML page with its own Background.
Yet, Mobile rarely needs fancy transitions or Backgrounds so v. Scrolling is good enough.

So you can have a joint design for both Main and Mobile Variant as Transition.
When happy, clone off and delete Main and change it to Scrolling and you have a mobile site.
Clone off the Mobile variant and you have a main site.”

I like the above idea Acorn. But I don’t understand “as transition” and clone off and delete. I’m certainly not an expert, but a one page mobile site might also be achieved by putting everything on the index page. The other pages remain in the design but no linkage in phones. Correct?

Bill, it is a method to ensure both site designs have the identical URLs to each page. You then have a one-to-one relationship so you could manfully force a change to either path to toggle between the main and the mobile site.

It is more of a problem for a conventional main to a scrolling mobile of just one page; you would have to juggle main pages with different URLs to a mobile one-page site that had targets instead.

I reckon I'll have to build a few examples...

Acorn

[bwood]

Acorn … clarification on your chunk of code ….

Here comes the sleight of hand.
For each resized and placed image in your design, open its Placeholder Body and insert:
<img id="unique image identifier" src="<source path>/<A nice image filename>.jpg" alt="describe the image" loading="lazy" width=100% height=100% />
Change the id, set the src to 'index_html_files/<master-image>.<ext>, describe the image in alt.

The image <a nice image filename> is the name of my file. No changes to the image id correct? Alt is my description of pic.

This is a fascinating solution.

Thanks
W

[Acorn]

Acorn … clarification on your chunk of code ….

Here comes the sleight of hand.
For each resized and placed image in your design, open its Placeholder Body and insert:
<img id="unique image identifier" src="<source path>/<A nice image filename>.jpg" alt="describe the image" loading="lazy" width=100% height=100% />
Change the id, set the src to 'index_html_files/<master-image>.<ext>, describe the image in alt.

The image <a nice image filename> is the name of my file. No changes to the image id correct? Alt is my description of pic.

This is a fascinating solution.

Thanks
W

Bill, say you have a design file, A.xar.
When you publish, you render as .html so you publish your resources to index_html_files. Else we are looking at an index_htm_files folder.
Your image is B.png and you have used the Placeholder > Replace with graphic file option.
When you save your design, B.png is copied into an A_xar_files folder.
When you render, B.png is included in the index_html_files folder.

The <img> Tag should be made with an id value that is solely associated with A.png; the alt text can have a duplicate elsewhere.
The src is then just the render path and filename: index_html_files/A.png.
A and B can be any legal strings for a filename.
png could be jpg, webp, gif or any format a modern browser can handle even is Xara cannot.

Acorn

[bwood]

Got it. Very cool. Its a great tool. I'm messing with it. I'm making the hero image first -- THEN creating a thumbnail. The placeholder alone will stretch and deform the original image. Then draw a rectangular shape and replace with the thumb. Image quality is retained.

[bwood]

@acorn - furthering this discussion with a questions.

You can make a thumbnail with the process that you mentioned. But don't you have to have the correct dimensions of the photo before placing into the placeholder? Lets say you want an larger image on a mobile page. You find the dimensions of the placeholder you want - then fit a photo to those particular dimensions. Then 'replace with photo' in placeholder, and throw that saved photo into the placeholder. Of course you do not regenerate image.

If you make a thumbnail - then bring the thumbnail into the placeholder, the thumb that you made must be the correct dimensions of the placeholder. Anyway that's what I'm find after following your instructions. It certainly does save a lot of space - but I'm finding that master photo > thumbnail has to be the correct dimensions of the placeholder, especially if its a hero image. Make sense ?

[Acorn]

@acorn - furthering this discussion with a questions.

You can make a thumbnail with the process that you mentioned. But don't you have to have the correct dimensions of the photo before placing into the placeholder? Lets say you want an larger image on a mobile page. You find the dimensions of the placeholder you want - then fit a photo to those particular dimensions. Then 'replace with photo' in placeholder, and throw that saved photo into the placeholder. Of course you do not regenerate image.

If you make a thumbnail - then bring the thumbnail into the placeholder, the thumb that you made must be the correct dimensions of the placeholder. Anyway that's what I'm find after following your instructions. It certainly does save a lot of space - but I'm finding that master photo > thumbnail has to be the correct dimensions of the placeholder, especially if its a hero image. Make sense ?

Bill, yes all sensible.

I said:

You can use Xara to create the thumbnail.
Drop a master image onto the design. Yes, mega size alert.
Clone it and make the clone very small.
Create a Bitmap Copy of this small clone. try 64px for its longest side.
Resize and fit to fully cover the original.
Delete the original.
When you save and re-open the design file, the original image will have disappeared from the Bitmap gallery, as any unused bitmaps (nowhere on any page or layer) will be deleted from the file.

The "Delete the original" is really two-fold. From the Bitmap gallery and the design page. When you do this, the image on the design page reverts to the Xara Default. You then delete that. The other way round also works. What you are doing is removing the large image from being stored inside your design file.

Apologies for the lack of clarity.

Acorn

[bwood]

Certainly getting the hang of this now Acorn. It’s been parsing the mobile size considerably. On the pasteboard I’m using arrow indicators where placeholder images are used (for my benefit only). Certainly can be used on the larger variants as well.
My work flow - I bring the image in and size it. Note the size, and export the photo and save. Now delete the photo from the design. Draw a rectangle the size of the photo, in placeholder replace with photo, generate image unchecked.

Very handy tool. I’m still a bit foggy on the thumbnail idea, but the replace photo option is very handy.