background image entire screen

I know there was no way to do this in the last version but I've got the new one and I'm still exploring it.

Is there any way to do a background with a whole image or graphic like this or this?

I'm sort of hoping there's some way to do something like that. It would be great.

I´m afraid it´s not. You can apply a tile to the background by default and with the tweaks provided by covoxer you can make an image tile in jut one direction. But nothing as much sophisticated as what we see in your examples.
Nice ones by the way!

This is an area where Xara could improve a lot more..

Bitmap images can be set as a background via the bitmap gallery (The background colour needs to be set to transparent if I remember correctly).

See also http://www.talkgraphics.com/showpost...9&postcount=10

It works as long as there is a MouseOver layer.

Actually this is quite simple to do.

Please see:
► http://www.talkgraphics.com/showpost...8&postcount=17

Demo site and file to dowload

WOW! Thanks for these replies. I'm going to give this a try today.
:D

The examples Mpaige posted don´t make use of a tiled background.. I mean the left part of the background is different from the right part. I think it´s more complicated than the solutions you are pointing out. But i may be wrong.

The only trick on the first of the two is if you want the navigation to stick to the right side of the window the way it does. Otherwise, this is just a left-aligned (tweakset) site with a really wide background bitmap with no tiling, as it appears to me.

The second site has the site centered in the browser (normal for Xara) and is using a rather large graphic as the background of the body, which is then "repeat-x" (also do-able in Xara). The trick here was creating a graphic that could tile AND matched up with the background behind the banner graphic of the cartoon characters. That graphic ends right where the people do and the rest is the x-tile.

Both creative - both well-done, neither a problem for Xara. :)

Sorry to disagree but there´s much more going there that it may look at first sight. Xara doesn´t have enought funcionality to create sites of that complexity. We can achieve a similar look at much.

For example:
In the first, there´s a ton on stuff hard to get done exactly in Xara starting from the not tiled background to the position where the page loads (have you seen the page loads to it´s middle area -you can scroll down as usual, but you can scroll up too!). It´s simply too much for what´s possible in Xara, as far as i know and tried until now. Overall the background alignement is the complicated part. It suffers from the same troubles as the ones i will describe for the second example (see below).

In the second example (the simplest) it´s not possible to get a sticky footer exactly aligned with the pasteboard background (in xara terminology). This is more tricky than it looks (aligning the three and ground on the page with the same ground height on the Xara pasteboard). And this breaks all the flow of the page background/pasteboard background. The floating menus at right are easy with covoxer´s tweaks.


The sample provided by Steve is pretty close in look but it hasn´t a sticky footer (which we can easily add too) but again the it´s not possible to match it with the pasteboard background. Besides the background used in Steve´s sample is tiled (repeated). That not happens in the samples given.

I believe the tiling is unavoidable due to the absolute positioning used by the export filter.

This background stuff i talked in the posts above was one of the first things i´ve tried to get in Xara Designer PRO. I´ve done everything i could think of and didn´t get it to work. The examples posted in the first post show very well some of the limitations that Xara still have when dealing with backgounds.
If someone has found a way to overcome those problems please post here. Maybe John (covoxer) knows a way to overcome those problems trough some tweaks...
I for sure would love to know how to solve them...

Absolute positioning can be a pain, a neccessary evil for WYSIWYG.

Mpaige, was this the backgound/content effect you were looking for in your second example ? (working version)

Interesting - didn't even notice that it scrolled up,

However, couldn't you accomplish that with an anchor in the middle of the page that is jumped to from the start?

I know there are some extra things in these sites, but what I thought the OP was asking about was specifically how to get similar background effects - which I think you can see is possible at least.

It probably is slavelle with a lot of trickery. It´s certainly not achievable with the default tools.
That´s why i was asking for people to post solutions or stuff that may help to overcome the problems.

I´m trying to understand what´s going on with Drwyd example. I still don´t get why he has given the name/attribute head to the tweak. Is it really needed?
But it works in terms of look. The problem is that we have to use a very big image for the background to work.

There´s no synchronization between page background and pasteboard background while using a sticky footer for example. That´s what i think it´s not achievable in terms of functionality.

Thanks for posting Drwyd :)

The <head> name due to Covoxer's tweak, not me :D

Agreed on the image size. Some serious optimizing would need to be done :eek:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Miguel B.

Maybe John (covoxer) knows a way to overcome those problems trough some tweaks...

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What exactly problems?

Thanks everyone for your input.

miguel: i agree that those sites are far too complex for xara. tons of stuff going on there.

sledger: thanks for the example. I think that this is useful for situations where I could use a background that was tiled, for example a strong texture or something with some repetition across the top of even the whole page as your example demonstrates. It won;t be applicable for every application but this certainly gives from design flexibility and opens up things for me quite considerably. thanks.

Drwyd: actually the effect I am after is probably smpler than that even. I'm just sort of tired of all my backgrounds having to be a solid clor. I'd like to play around with images or graphic backgrounds. I've "mastered" the solid background ;)) and also doing a background with a strip across the top or whatever (you know, the whole create a sliver>export> import>set as background thing). I want to try to create a website with a background that maybe looks like parchment paper or tire tracks or retro wallpaper or a deep forest. I don't want to open dreamweaver. Unless I have to. :)