Xara Web designer-Help : "3d page"

[Scotty]

Hi,
I have Web designer and I appreciate the program immensely. The only Draw back is the help files.
I find the help files not very helpfull pertaining to "Soft Groups", to me it just says what a soft group does. I would like to have a tutorial available for creating your own from scratch.
I tried using the a template from template gallery an scrutinizing the content then applying to my own but without success.
A step by step instruction would be nice.
Even the online movies don't cover them properly, they just refer to the capabilities.
Jim

[Teedee]

As a newbie to WD (had it about two weeks) I think soft groups are groups which span layers. This is extremely useful, for example, in co-ordinating objects & events across layers. For example, a button which has a number of states will probably have its caption maintained across those states. Using a Soft Group for the various states of the button means that, for example, changing the name on one effectively allows you to co-ordinate the captoions on the other states.

There are better x spurts than I on these matters out there & hopefully they will enlighten both of us.

I do disagree with you on the help files though. They are great. If you want bad help files try reading MS dishelp on anything. (eg Applies To: All controls this applies to.). I spent the first night reading the WD help files & watching the videos. What good resources! Wish I could have taught myself Expression Web as quickly!
td

Hi,
I have Web designer and I appreciate the program immensely. The only Draw back is the help files.
I find the help files not very helpfull pertaining to "Soft Groups", to me it just says what a soft group does. I would like to have a tutorial available for creating your own from scratch.
I tried using the a template from template gallery an scrutinizing the content then applying to my own but without success.
A step by step instruction would be nice.
Even the online movies don't cover them properly, they just refer to the capabilities.
Jim

[cursor]

Soft Groups

And, from the progam's Help:

Soft Groups

Ordinary Groups as described in "Grouping and ungrouping objects" {make sure that you read this too} sit on a single layer, they cannot span layers. Soft Groups are an alternative way of linking objects together where the objects can be across several different layers.

Selecting one member of a Soft Group also selects all other members of the same Soft Group – even members that are on invisible or locked layers. This means when you delete, move, rotate or otherwise transform one member of a Soft Group, all the other members are similarly modified.

The status line indicates when a Soft Group is selected.

Soft Groups are useful for keeping closely related objects together. For example the MouseOff and MouseOver states of a web button are Soft Grouped together, so that if one state is moved or transformed, so is the other state.

Creating Soft Groups
To create a Soft Group, select all the objects that are to be included in it and then choose "Arrange->Apply soft group" (or press "Ctrl+Alt+G"). Note that if the Soft Group is to include members on invisible or locked layers, you'll need to make those layers temporarily visible and editable using the Layer Gallery in order to select the objects and Soft Group them.

An object cannot be a member of more than one Soft Group and Soft Groups cannot be nested (soft groups as members of souft groups).

Removing Soft Groups
To disband a Soft Group, select it and choose "Arrange->Remove soft group" (or press "Ctrl+Alt+U"). The objects don't get deleted, they are just no longer linked together by a Soft Group.

Text Synchronisation
Any text objects which have the same text value and which are members of the same Soft Group are kept synchronized if any of those text objects are edited. So change the text in one object and any other text objects that had the exact same characters will also be changed to match. Only the text value itself if synchronized, so different text objects can have different sizes, fonts and text attributes.

Text sychronisation using Soft Groups is useful where a label is duplicated in several places, perhaps in different styles and you want each object to show the same label.

What else would you like to know?
What do you want a tutorial to demonstrate?

[Soquili]

Jim what would you like to know about 'soft groups'?

[Soquili]

Jim if you are wanting to use Soft Groups for creating your own buttons.

Here is a mini-tutorial and a .web file to play around with.

[Soquili]

Jim if you are wanting to create stretchy buttons or text areas from scratch you would do that using Xtreme 4.0. Or making changes to an existing stretchy item within Web Designer.

If you have a specific question it will be easier to provide a custom answer.

[Scotty]

Hi,
Well I was trying to implement the "3d page" on my website and was trying to break apart one of the templates for Photo graphs. "butterflies" I think it was called I couldn't quite grasp what was done..and how it was done...I finally managed to accomplish it...but at the beginning everytime I put one of my images in it was inserted in all image holders..if that explains it.
I just thought that for a beginner (like myself) the help files on the process kept referring to already made templates and or a description of what soft groups are.
Jim