[Request - Suggestion] Structure Info

[jclements]

Perhaps, with experience, editing and being able to analyse an existing XWD file constructed of many hard groups, soft groups, groupings of groups, etc., and links or other web properties associated with those groups will become easier more intuitive.

But, at the moment, a means to analyse a WEB file's "structure" and to select and perform changes to group properties would seem to be a useful tool.

Another application I use, SketchUp, has such a tool and is very helpful when editing complex files. Perhaps something similar could be evaluated for XWD.

See the attachment of what is called the "Outliner".

It displays the hierarchy of groups and components (hybrid groups) as indicated by the icons directly to the left of their names.

XWD's Hard and Soft Groups and their associated objects could be diagramed in this mannner.

FEATURES:
1- Can Expand or Contract the structure or change the sort order
2- You can type in text strings at the top of the dialog to filter (display) specific groups
3- You can select a subgroup or series of groups by single clicking or shift-clicking on group names, then apply/change certain common attributes.
4- You can edit a group by double-clicking on its name which automatcally expands it and displays any subgroups. You can then select any object(s) within the groups to modify their properties.


This where I think XWD would really benefit because then you could easily find, select, and edit web properties of the selected geometry and do so without any ungrouping ... simply select objects from the outliner and open the Web Properties' dialog tabs.

[Charles Moir]

Something like this has been suggested before a few times for Xtreme, a sort of Object Gallery or super Layer Gallery. I'm not sure this would be suitable for Web Designer, at least not the basic version, because the whole concept of tree structured drawings is more than most people need, or want to know about.

[jclements]

Thanks for the comments, Charles.

Perhaps I am ignorant of the various methods/"best practices" of editing objects in XWD, but what about this scenario. You have two buttons with links or some other web attributes. Then group them and assign a pop-up attribute to that group. This group, inturn, is grouped with other groups and so on.

Later on you want to edit the web attributes assigned to the buttons which are in the bottom most stack of groups. You might need to start upgrouping things to access those button links because of overlays of other objects. Once you do any ungrouping their web properties are lost and would have to be recreated wouldn't they?

The outliner could eliminate those issues or speed up the editing couldn't it? Just a thought.


Regards, John