Repeating objects not repeating?

[Chris M]

Do you have Scale To Fit Width turned on? Utilities > Web Properties > Export (tab).

I have an itch that says this happened to me, and it was STFW that was the culprit. I could also be miles off target.

[WideEyedLife]

Do you have Scale To Fit Width turned on? Utilities > Web Properties > Export (tab).

I have an itch that says this happened to me, and it was STFW that was the culprit. I could also be miles off target.

Hi Chris!

I just checked, and "scale to fit" is not set in the location that you mentioned. "Don't scale" is what is set.

However, this brings to mind something I read somewhere about setting different text styles across variants. I'm sure that over the past few days I messed with the text styles across variants. Clicking in the text of the buttons (both the original buttons, and the duplicated versions), some are text style "button" and some are the text style "button+". To complicate it, both variants have the inconsistent styling (both "button" and "button+" text styles existing in both pages on buttons that look the same), rather than having all one text style (I would expect, for example, that all the "main" (original) buttons would have just "button" as the text style)

But, still, would this inconsistency make it so that all of the buttons would replicate incorrectly?

I'll go fool around some more....

[Initiostar]

WEL, the issue occurs AFAICT when you resize a 'shared' button by dragging its corner. This changes the font size from its preset style and distorts the 'shared' button in other variants.

You immediate solution, for each of your three variants and any offending buttons, is for each variant, to remove the button's soft-grouping, readjust the MouseOver and MouseOff layers for that button, making sure you use a text style (e.g. 'button' in your XAR), then reapply a soft group.

The button style font size can be adjusted for each variant (but should not be "name +").

The template has three variants when in practise two with scale-to-fit-width would be more than adequate; if you are happy for me to post what it could look like I'll do so.

Gary

[WideEyedLife]

Gary,

I'm SURE that prior to "sharing to variants" I resized the buttons using the handles of the buttons. AFTER resizing the original buttons, I most likely also highlighted the newly-changed text and clicked "Update Button to match" and/or "Update Button in this variant" -- no doubt overriding the presets for the current style. Then I shared the buttons. And, on top of that, I probably did something equally troubling in each variant in turn, as, after the buttons had been shared across variants I grabbed their handles as a group and shrunk them on each variant, then attempted to save the styles.

Based on what I've done, I'm wondering if I've killed anything that originally controlled the button text in the template file. Ie., have I killed the presets? (If I have, no matter; my next steps will be to do as you have suggested above and play around with that particular fix.)

And, yes, please do share "what it could look like!" lol

[Initiostar]

Gary,

I'm SURE that prior to "sharing to variants" I resized the buttons using the handles of the buttons. AFTER resizing the original buttons, I most likely also highlighted the newly-changed text and clicked "Update Button to match" and/or "Update Button in this variant" -- no doubt overriding the presets for the current style. Then I shared the buttons. And, on top of that, I probably did something equally troubling in each variant in turn, as, after the buttons had been shared across variants I grabbed their handles as a group and shrunk them on each variant, then attempted to save the styles.

Based on what I've done, I'm wondering if I've killed anything that originally controlled the button text in the template file. Ie., have I killed the pre-sets? (If I have, no matter; my next steps will be to do as you have suggested above and play around with that particular fix.)

And, yes, please do share "what it could look like!" lol

The font pre-sets were an issue; would not have been a problem had the buttons not been shared. I've reset them them in the demo and they should work OK on desktop, tablet and mobile. There are just two variants here desktop 1120px, but you could extend this upwards; I use 1200px. The mobile variant is 540px. These though are just my preferences, others will use different values.

https://initiostar.co.uk/demo/wel/

Where you have links to Spoonflower, these would be better opened in a new window, the home page filename is 'index' with whatever description you want to give it.

The XAR demo is too large to load here, but I could provide you with a public or private link.

I've reset the main menu and in this example, just copied it across for the mobile; it does though take a bit too much space and a simple popup menu would suffice.

Hope the helps,

Gary

[WideEyedLife]

Gary, thanks so much for your help!

Where you have links to Spoonflower, these would be better opened in a new window

I agree! I appreciate the feedback.

the home page filename is 'index' with whatever description you want to give it.

I'm hoping it's easy to make adjustments to all the pages' identifying information later in the game! I've definitely got things going on there that aren't correct yet!

The font pre-sets were an issue; would not have been a problem had the buttons not been shared. I've reset them them in the demo and they should work OK on desktop, tablet and mobile.

Is there a way for me to quickly reset the font presets in the .xar file I'm currently working on?

I've reset the main menu and in this example, just copied it across for the mobile; it does though take a bit too much space and a simple popup menu would suffice.

The main menu needs resetting too? Alas.



Okay, so, certain things about the font styles need to be reset in the version I'm working on, it would seem, before I proceed further. What is the best way to do this? Would it involve having access to the demo .xar fall you created and cutting and pasting from one file to the other?

(Gosh, I'm not making things easy, am I!)

[Initiostar]

WEL, there is not too much you have to do to get this up and working; you could persevere with sorting out the links in the variants and (hopefully) all will be well.

You could however (as I did) delete the mobile and tablet variants, sort out the main variant first, then add a mobile variant thereafter and use Scale-to-fit-Width across both variants. The layout breaks down into two photo blocks and some ancillary bits around them. In the main variant, you have two types of photo blocks. each horizontally aligned in groups of three; these can be transformed into two blocks wide for the mobile variant, or one if your prefer. What you cannot do with this template construction is to squeeze the shared soft-groups without resetting the font styles, normal text, button, button text, large text etc., in the two variants.

There are numerous improvements you could make to the template, but my modification was simply to show something working. You should be able to download the XAR here: https://www.dropbox.com/t/XYQvhoZYSdZAIAP7.

Hopefully, if gives you some ideas.

Gary

[WideEyedLife]

Gary,

Your suggestions are helpful and give me a track to run on. I especially appreciate the multiple different suggestions in your most recent post about various approaches to getting my website up and running, giving me ideas about various approaches I hadn't considered, as well as your demo showing the Scale-to-fit-option that I had yet to explore, and certainly hadn't seen in action. Thanks so much for sharing the demo .xar file!

I feel confident I can successfully make some progress now. Thanks so much for all your help!

[Initiostar]

WEL, happy to have helped - sometimes these templates are a bit tricky. For the future you could try building a vanilla template; just a menu structure desktop/ mobile e.g. https://initiostar.co.uk/demo/simpleHeader/

With this approach as you build your content, it is not automatically shared across other variants, until when and if you chose to share it.

Gary

[bwood]

WEL, happy to have helped - sometimes these templates are a bit tricky. For the future you could try building a vanilla template; just a menu structure desktop/ mobile e.g. https://initiostar.co.uk/demo/simpleHeader/

With this approach as you build your content, it is not automatically shared across other variants, until when and if you chose to share it.

Gary

Great tip for WEL and others new to Xara. I’m still learning, but started with a very simple site and added things on. WEL you can also go back to the intro web site in catalogue. I quite often do.