Web Variants - text settings and changes across variants

[Frolin]

With the web Variant option, when a site has two or more variants setup...
. . is there a overall project setting, you can set 'once' and save, that would let you edit the text wording only, across variants, and would leave the font, pitch and position changes alone when you tweak on variant ?

Today, when you type a paragraph on the main variant, it is added to all other variants. If you go edit the wording, add a word here, tweak a sentence there, it updates the text on all variants.

But if you change the font or pitch or position of that text on one page, it alters on all pages.

Have found older posts saying to manually select the text then select an option to only change the text in this variant this time. This can get tedious, if you need to edit various pages and separate text boxes.



Am migrating from W D Premium 19, to the W D Plus v23, and was hoping they would have added this feature. Searched Help and did not find an answer. Searched this forum and all past answers are a couple years old. So thought would ask for fresh answer, with hopes...

[Egg Bramhill]

Florin, if the text is shared across variants adding or deleting text to the main will also add/delete text to the mobile.

However you can move the text boxes around on one and it won't change the position of the text on the other.

You can however change the font, style, colour, bold, italic, spacing etc between variants by selecting a section of the text in the mobile say, adjust as required, then "Update ***** in this Variant" This will change all the text that uses this style throughout the variant whilst not effecting the other.

[Frolin]

Thanks gEg,

Key question is/was, is there a way to turn off the cross variant update/change for editing the font or pitch, not the words in general ?
. . when I say turn off, I mean for the entire site / project not for the text box you are editing at that moment, using the 'Update this variant' option.

Wondering if a way to turn it off for all font and pitch updates until you turn it back on. Not just one off in the one text box that moment, but in general until further notice.


If you create a new site with several pages and multiple text boxes, would nice if could add the variants afterwards (say one for Mobile, one for Tablet), and go edit the pitch in various text boxes in each variant without also having to manually select the 'this variant' option with every update. So asking if that option was added in newer versions and I had not seen yet.

[Egg Bramhill]

Florin,
'Update Normal Text in this variant' will update all the Normal Text in that variant on every instance of it on every page but it wont effect the Normal text on the other variant.

[Frolin]

Guess maybe confusion on the question and answer...

A- is the setting you mention, "Update Normal Text in this variant", a one time, click and stays on days / weeks later, so that any changes to fonts and pitch of any text box on a variant page, only change on that variant ?
. . . do mean, click once and feature stays on until you turn off weeks or months later, for all text fields on the select page / variant

B- unable to find this setting, based on your sample picture. Some special step to get to it or enable ?
. . . fyi: just installed WDP v20 Nov 2023 release. Also searching 'Help' does not find




...what seems so simple has been days of annoying efforts in Xara

[Acorn]

Frolin, your image shows the current selected text, if you have any selected, has '(No style)' set.
When you have some text selected and set as 'Normal text' then the menu option will change the inactive 'Update style in this variant' to "Update 'Normal text' in this variant".
The change in the menu detail will occur for whatever paragraph style you are currently on.

'(No style)' does exactly what it says on the tin; a change of nothing is still nothing.

Acorn

[Egg Bramhill]

Thanks for spotting that Acorn.

[Frolin]

Well... (update) I got the feature to work it seems when tested in a new site template. Not sure why issues in the existing site, that used an Zara template to start from. Another quirk with using existing templates maybe, and or defaults. So more to test there...

[Acorn]

Frolin, it's always useful to nail everything down so there is no guessing.

What was the original WDPv19 Xara template you designed the site with?

Acorn

[Frolin]

Can not say for sure which template used. Was two weeks ago, after downloading the trial version W D Plus v23, as can no longer upgrade W D Premium from Magix, and opt'd to proceed and purchase, which dropped me back to W D Plus v20.

Appears this feature, "Update 'normal text' in this variant" will do in part what I need.
Thanks to Egg and Acorn for pointing out this feature option.


Would like to circle back to my original question above, to clarify...
" is there a overall project setting, you can set 'once' and save, that would let you edit the text wording only, across variants, "

As the 'Update normal text...' feature is a manual step will have to do over and over again, with every edit in the project. This will mean LOTS of manual selection of the feature, over and over, in building a site or major text edits along the way. It is nice that re-wording a sentence will carry over but...


So maybe to clarify the question and re-ask...

: Is there an option or setting that will stay 'ON' when you go to edit text,
: that will update the words but not the font or pitch, in other variants ?
: So that editing other text fields today, and next week also, the feature is still 'on' ?