Styles in Variants

[DanFelix]

My Mobile variant needs a larger font size for legibility. The text in the Mobile variant is Not Shared with the Main since any attempt to increase Mobile font size is shared to the Main. The Style listed in the Mobile variant shows a ‘+’ after the equivalent Style name in the Main. The site works perfectly. Is there any advantage to creating Styles exclusive to the Mobile variant? I’m not sure what the ‘+’ suffix means and/or if it is a self-standing Style created by Xara.

Thanks.

[Acorn]

Dan, the '+' simply says you have changed the base Style in some fashion.
Say you embolden one word in Normal, that would then show as Normal+. Ditto for a font size change.

Styles usually need to be larger in variants as the screen view is much smaller.

You can always unlink the text and then you can do what you like (without changing the Styles). That does require keeping two copies of the text aligned.
This is actually better in many cases as who wants to read War and Peace on a phone when you could just write (spoiler ahead - highlight between the quotes), 'They all died!'

Acorn

[bwood]

My Mobile variant needs a larger font size for legibility. The text in the Mobile variant is Not Shared with the Main since any attempt to increase Mobile font size is shared to the Main. The Style listed in the Mobile variant shows a ‘+’ after the equivalent Style name in the Main. The site works perfectly. Is there any advantage to creating Styles exclusive to the Mobile variant? I’m not sure what the ‘+’ suffix means and/or if it is a self-standing Style created by Xara.

Thanks.

Dan … I use styles in my mobile variant. Because of the high rate of mobile viewing sometimes I start with the mobile variant then work up to smaller fonts on a wider variant.

My workflow with … Open Sans font. On the larger variant I’ll name my OpenSans as OpenSans-14. That’s my start for the larger variant. I can make that larger or smaller, but each time I’ll create the style and name it. I don’t use anymore than 2 fonts per design.

Then I’ll move to the mobile variant. I’ll label OpenSansM-18 for standard text. I designate the mobile variant font with an “m”. I might go up to 20 points.

You may want to play with the Header text as well. As Acorn mentioned The + beside the font indicates a base style change.

The above is overly simplified, but that’s my workflow. My sites have an accompanying newsletter, thus my labels are handy.

Client assumptions on laptop viewing vrs smartphone viewing is a challenge when it comes to the amount of text used. On smartphone variants I try for branding with pictures rather than a lot of text. Alas I cannot convince them entirely.

Styles

[DanFelix]

Thank you, everyone. Upon closer inspection, the option 'Update [Style Name] in this variant' solved the problem. Two style definitions with the same name. The Main version and the Mobile. It works perfectly. Thank you all.

[Egg Bramhill]

The text in the Mobile variant is Not Shared with the Main since any attempt to increase Mobile font size is shared to the Main.

You can share styled text across variants with different fonts, sizes, colours etc by using the "update 'style name' in this variant".

[bwood]

@egg. I did have a question regarding fonts and set ups. Can one transfer a font setting from one site to another ? Or does Xara carry over every font used to other sites and projects.

Also I have a decorative font in project that is not used anywhere, but still shows up. I’d think I can simply delete that font from the set up for that project.

Thanks
-Bill