How to resize images using the Fade Slideshow 1 Widget?

Hello everybody, this is my first actual post although I've been actively lurking for about 10 years, at least.

I've never before used the slideshow widgets, specifically "Fade Slideshow 1 Widget", but a particular job calls for it, as the customer wants such a thing.

It seemed simple enough, according to the Widget instructions, it's all just drag 'n' drop from Explorer. Try as I might, I have come up against a seemingly impenetrable bug, or "feature". Namely, any attempt to resize images, particularly Portrait-shaped images, results in a weird reduction in presentation size, no matter what size settings are applied within the Widget.

I've copied an example page (not with all its CSS and other bits, I'm afraid) but enough to demonstrate the problem.

LINKS:

At this page you can see the expected results of this Widget. Works OK, just following the preset sizes and not changing them.

At this page you can see the exact same thing, except I've resized and reoriented the two PORTRAIT PHOTOS slightly, causing disaster.

But instead of rendering as intended, at the same vertical height of all the other images (i.e. all the landscape images), they are both weirdly resized to be smaller.

I've searched the Forum as thoroughly as I can, but I've failed to find anything specifically relating to this; my apologies if I've missed anything ... it's hard to believe nobody has ever brought up this issue before. But I couldn't find a reference to it.

My question, therefore is this:

how can one successfully modify the aspect ratio / size of images, particularly Portrait-shaped images, using Xara slideshow Widgets, specifically the "Fade Slideshow 1 Widget" and all of its family members (they all behave the same, as far as I can tell)?

Or is this a case of one having to stick to precisely the aspect ratio and size of the defaults? If so, why does the Widget permit resizing?

I'm very fond of this Forum, and wish to say "thanks" to all the helpful participants here, particularly Egg, Acorn and so many others, especially Gary Priester who manually fixed my tricky TalkGraphics login issues; thanks for that, Gary. It's been months since you did that for me, but here I am at last.

For all its flaws, and dubious corporate directions, I think Xara Designer Pro is still a marvelous program, filling a need that no other program really even gets close to. I know they've neglected vector drawing upgrades; I too pine for vector meshes, but I'm sure they'll get there eventually. And now we have Vector Magic which solves Xara's woeful bitmap tracer's problems, and SVG exports work great now, so what's to complain about, really?

If anyone can shed any light on the mysterious ways of taming "Fade Slideshow 1 Widget" I would be very grateful.

Thanks, everybody, and Happy Christmas.

(1st post from Columbus, Fremantle, Western Australia)

Columbus - Your post was moderated because new members are not permitted links. But considering the circumstances your post is approved.

Oops. I forgot about the links rule for newbies. Because of all that lurking, I didn't feel like one!

Perhaps I should've attached JPGs instead? But much better to see the problem in a real-world context, I thought.

Thanks yet again, Gary.

Columbus, you've gone a bit adrift if you are in Oz and not India!

Open the widget.
Change the pages holding portrait images portrait aspect (Options > Page Size: Portrait.
Add your image.
Save.

There are other tweaks possible in the Names but avoid those at present.

Acorn