Site background

[gwpriester]

Graham -

This is not that hard. Really.

Look at the attached XAR document and see if you can recreate the steps. If you are still having problems, e-mail me gary@gwpriester.com and add Xara Background image for the subject. Holding down the Ctrl key when you drag the Fill Tool upwards just constrains the direction to vertical.

Please don't give up. We'll get through this. Honest.

[Theo]

I have just been through a most entertaining voyage of discovery. Here are the results:

I wanted a graduated background on all of my pages. This was a late decision or I would have duplicated it as I added pages. I had already been given the idea of creating a tall thin bitmap and using the "set as page background" on the bitmap in the bitmap gallery. This had achieved the effect that I wanted.

My requirements changed. In the village web site that I was producing (www.sproxton.org.uk That link will get the old easyweb editor site for the next week or so while I update the site with Xara) I wanted to be able to change the colour scheme according to the season of the year. This meant changing the background colour too.

Here is what I did using Designer MX Premium.

1. Open the Page & Layer Gallery and select any page.
2. Click the little triangle to the left of the page to open the layer display.
3. Hide all the layers except the Page background layer.
4. Unlock this layer by clicking on the little red padlock (The Page background layer defaults to 'locked')
5. Now select the rectangle which makes up the Page background, go to the fill tool and apply whatever fill you want giving system colours to the fill. In my case I had dedicated two system (named) colours to the graduated file and called them 'Background' light and 'background dark'
6. When you are satisfied select the background and 'Repeat on all pages'.
7. Lock the background again by clicking on the little padlock and reset the visiblity of the other layers to whatever is appropriate. This will change the background of all the pages and leave them all locked
8. At this point all will appear to be well at this point and the background will show fine in WD MX Premium. However, when you preview the page the background will not show. In order to make everything work you need to set a pasteboard colour for each page. This is a bit repetetive but is speedily done by dragging the colour of your choice from the colour bar to the pasteboard.

Now you can edit the named colours to change the appearence of the whole site.

Good. Innit!

HTH

Nick

[runedog]

Thank you Nick, I appreciate that

I would publically like to thank Gary also for working through this all day, very much appreciated
Graham

[Theo]

Click on both ends, one end at a time, and change the color by pressing on any of the colored squares on the screen palette. You have to do this with the Fill Tool.

Select the center color and change that color as well.

Now create a bitmap copy (Arrange menu).

I find it difficult to select the ends of the gradient fill line so I use the TAB key instead. Just press tab and it selects one end. Pressing TAB again selects the other end

Nick