Finished My First Xara Site - feedback please and some probllems still

**doane** · 01 May 2018, 01:37 AM

Okay.. I've pretty much finished this website, see here: http://lochrie.doanehoag.com/index.htm

I've found that Xara Web Designer is quite buggy when it tries to handle multiple actions. I think that was the main problem I was running into, besides the earlier bug problem with shadows on the thumbnails causing popup problems when viewing the images.. that was in a separate thread here: https://www.talkgraphics.com/showthr...red-of-Shadows and it has been reported to Xara.. I hope they get back to me with a solution and an update to fix it.

This web software is pretty amazing, but when you get into customizing any sites it gets really involved, or at least, that's my opinion. Am slowly absorbing all of this and hope the next site is easier, now that I know some of the conflicts to watch out for.

Thanks again for everyone's help here, really appreciate it.

**Egg Bramhill** · 01 May 2018, 02:18 AM

Hi again Doane,

... besides the earlier bug problem with shadows on the thumbnails causing popup problems when viewing the images..

These tiny thumbnails (with a small X are replacements by the browser indicating an image can't be found) Again can you supply your web file?

**doane** · 01 May 2018, 04:06 PM

Egg: Am not sure what you're referring to? The published site is working fine now, are you looking at that and finding some problem? I ended up NOT using shadows on the thumbs and the popups are fine now. http://lochrie.doanehoag.com

**doane** · 01 May 2018, 04:56 PM

Here's a Vista template with some images on it with shadows and the resulting popup problem with back control only and double film strip images. If you remove the shadows effects from the thumbs the pop ups work fine.

**Egg Bramhill** · 01 May 2018, 07:15 PM

Your problem is that you are adding shadows via the shadow tool. Further explanation in the web file attached:

**doane** · 01 May 2018, 08:25 PM

Thanks, Egg, you said, "If you want shadows below your images use black rectangles below with feathering and 25% transparency. Xara stores the large image and it resizes the same image to a thumbnail size without creating a separate thumnail image. What you are encountering is by adding a shadow to the smaller versions of the photos it’s creating new thumbnail images and these thumbnails are also added to the slide photo-strip below. An alternative to using rectangles would be to apply a shadow and creating a bitmap before importing the image into the page.

Thank you, I had actually done the shadow outside of Xara, using the same background color as the page background, then flattening it and using that as the image that gets turned into a thumbnail, but that's a lot of extra work and I didn't like the way it looks blown up in the popup. I hadn't thought of creating the seperate shadows in Xara as you did. I guess those would also have to be done one at a time, or one done, then copied and pasted and resized for each thumb, and located under where it is decided the thumb will be, then soft grouped to it? Again, a lot of extra work. These are both ways of getting around the problem, the bug, but hopefully the techs at Xara can solve this problem, or prevent it from happening, or least give some warning not to use the shadow tool with popups? These are the types of bugs that can drive a user crazy.. I spent several days trying to figure out what was wrong and forum members time as well.

Your script for centering the images is way beyond me, but I appreciate it also. I'm glad you figured out what was causing the problem, I'll post it over on the Magix forum for others with your name listed and I'll send it into the techs.

**doane** · 01 May 2018, 08:47 PM

Egg: I think you are probably the one who can figure this out based on your solving the shadow/popup problem. Have you had a chance to look at these web files? I finally gave up and the only thing that seemed to sove the problem was to disable the parallax effect of the Main Title text that moved down and make it into a simple fade in movement instead. Somehow the anchor link movement seemed to have thrown off the top of the page coordinates.. but it also did it even when I didn't use that link, so I have no idea what was going on.

**Egg Bramhill** · 01 May 2018, 09:00 PM

Hi Doane, glad to of helped.

These are both ways of getting around the problem, the bug, but hopefully the techs at Xara can solve this problem, or prevent it from happening, or least give some warning not to use the shadow tool with popups?

I don't see it as a bug in Xara, it's more a highslide issue which is out of Xara's control.

... or least give some warning not to use the shadow tool with popups

That would help but I doubt Xara will do it.

**Egg Bramhill** · 01 May 2018, 09:09 PM

Have you had a chance to look at these web files?

Which files are these Doane?

**doane** · 01 May 2018, 09:40 PM

The web files that have the anchor link problem where it won't scroll to the top after following the anchor link from the Bio or Gallery page to the Data page anchor texts . I attached them in post #40 above https://www.talkgraphics.com/showthr...484#post592484