CREATING A WEBSITE FROM SCRATCH

Dear All,

I have looked into creating a website from scratch and Have come across the following issues.

1. Why does XARA not have a master page to work from where you can insert the nav bar and other elements of your website which then automatically show up on all
the other pages automatically.
2. Why does XARA not give you the opportunity when creating a new website from scratch to ask you how many pages are in the website your creating and from there all pages are then
shown in the page and layer gallery?
3. By not doing this when you create additional pages you have to re insert the nav bars for each new page. create the links again to each page which is all time consuming
3. Maybe its just me but this software to me is not user friendly in the way it has been set up.

Hope someone can help with these points thank you

Paul777

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by paul777

Dear All,

I have looked into creating a website from scratch and Have come across the following issues.

1. Why does XARA not have a master page to work from where you can insert the nav bar and other elements of your website which then automatically show up on all
the other pages automatically.
2. Why does XARA not give you the opportunity when creating a new website from scratch to ask you how many pages are in the website your creating and from there all pages are then
shown in the page and layer gallery?
3. By not doing this when you create additional pages you have to re insert the nav bars for each new page. create the links again to each page which is all time consuming
3. Maybe its just me but this software to me is not user friendly in the way it has been set up.

Hope someone can help with these points thank you

Paul777

---

Paul, welcome to TalkGraphics.

Create the Navbar, right-click and pick Repeating object > Repeat on all pages.
I usually do this as my final action on a site.

As you add a page, it appears automatically on it and existing pages, when applied.

I spend all my time creating the layout of my landing page: length, width, guides, fonts, etc.

When happy, this becomes my de facto master page.
I can create a New blank page at any time and it copies the current page sizes and all repeating objects. More importantly, I can Duplicate the current page ( sub-master) and add and delete and move objects to suit.

What Xara does not offer is a true Master Page concept where a change is design ripples throughout; it is more control at the object level so point 1 & 3 are covered.
For point 2, I would despair at deciding to create a 50-page site with all those semi-incomplete pages staring back.
Second point 3, yes it is you until you have discovered the workflow that is you. It is different for different people and at TG there is always more than one solution offered back to questions raised; this is the power of the product.

Acorn

Welcome to TalkGraphics Paul

Many of us have been asking for Master Pages for years and I am confident that within my lifetime, or perhaps the lifetime of my children, there will be some kind of Master Page implementation.

That said, as Acorn points out, Nav Bars will repeat on all pages. And you can have repeating objects that will repeat on all pages such as a header, logo etc. And you can stop a repeating object from repeating on a single page or all pages.

A work around for Master Pages is to create unpublished pages set up as essentially master pages. Then when you want to insert on, duplicate the page and drag it to wherever you want it. But the location does not really matter because the nav bar does not care about the position of the pages.

Any new software seldom ever works the way your last program did. Each software application has its own logic and flow. Just take a few deep breaths and dive it. Once you get the feel and flow of the program it gets easier and will seem more logical and intuitive.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by gwpriester

Welcome to TalkGraphics Paul

But the location does not really matter because the nav bar does not care about the position of the pages.

---

Unless you have told it to order the pages as in the page/layer gallery. At least that is how mine works.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by bkjohns

Unless you have told it to order the pages as in the page/layer gallery. At least that is how mine works.

---

Quite right, but this is your design choice.
The page order is also important if you include Next page and Prev page links when your site has some concept of a narrative.
Generally though, the page position and NavBar can be made agnostic.

Acorn

When you edit your nav bar, you can reorder the pages by dragging and dropping them and this effects the order of the buttons. You can also rename the buttons by highlighting the name and changing it. So instead of about_us you can have ABOUT US.

Click Help in any dialog or menu to see a context sensitive explanation of the specific feature and options.

I am unclear in what function a Master Page feature would provide that is not already available in the program. What do you see missing that Master Pages fulfill?

Master pages give the designer more than one template. So you might have a master page for each main section on your website or your print document, with nav bar and banner and other appropriate graphics in place and then another master page for your gallery or sales/product sheets. It is a feature found in most design software.

So, you create a new page, then you can use the master page to format that page the way you want it with one click.

I have been doing some book design and for this it would be helpful to have a master left page and right page because the margins are different, and a new chapter page. Right now working in page spread view, if I change the position of the text on the left hand page of the book, it changes both left and right pages the same so the text column on one half of the pages is wrong and need to be manually re-positioned. Not only that, but every time I move a block of text, there is a dialog that asks if I want to make this change for all text blocks or just this one. And for each page I change I have to answer this dialog. A master page would eliminate this.

Hi There

I have another small issue. I have created a page for my website with the page dims as Width 880px and a height of 1000px. Now I have attached a coloured bar at the top of the page and made this to stretch the full length of the page at the top. When viewing this page in google for some reason at the bottom of the page there apprears to be a width scroll bar. I am not sure why this would appear at the bottom of the page as the width of the page is 880px.
Any help in resolving this would be much apprecated.

And thank you for all your previous replies

Best Regards
Paul777

What layer is the bar placed on?

Quote:

---

..coloured bar

---

What width is the coloured bar?

Hi There,

This is just a empty coloured bar at the top of the page. I am not sure what you mean by what layer. This is on the index page and has been repeated on all pages.

The other small issue is I have inserted photo text panels on a page 4 in a row. How can I set all the nav buttons at the bottom of the text to stay in line.

Paul, can you attach your web/xar file?

how do i do this?

Here is an attachment.

Video to follow ......

Here you go .....

I cant view the video and when replying to your reply it doesn't allow me to attach files only a pic?

Try refreshing your browser Ctrl+F5. I cocked up the you tube code but it's correct now.

here is the file

Got it. Thanks. I use styles in WordPerfect for the same purpose. Edits to a style propagate to all uses of the style. There are few formatting options not in the styles feature so it is rather robust from a character up to a full multi-page document. It would be a useful tool in web design as well.

Thanks.
Dan

I don't know what was causing the horizontal scroll bar appear. I just deleted all the green rectangles, replaced it with another and shared over all pages. Seems okay now.

I looked at your file and I am not getting any horizontal scroll bars in Firefox, Internet Explorer or Edge.

Quote:

---

Got it. Thanks. I use styles in WordPerfect for the same purpose. Edits to a style propagate to all uses of the style. There are few formatting options not in the styles feature so it is rather robust from a character up to a full multi-page document. It would be a useful tool in web design as well.

---

Dan - You can set styles in Xara as well and update a style and the update changes all instances of that style. And you can have repeating objects.

Quote:

---

I looked at your file and I am not getting any horizontal scroll bars in Firefox, Internet Explorer or Edge.

---

I get them in all + chrome. I think the problem is being caused by the fact that the rectangle also has a 1px green stroke. Remove the stroke & the horizontal scroll bar disappears.

Problem solved thank you everyone