How Do You Work Xara's Absolute Positioning?

**Giannis** · 17 April 2008, 07:51 PM

I was very delighted to see that Xara now has direct export to html. While I'm sitting here trying it out I find that the positioning Xara makes is always absolute. How do you deal with that?

What I've been told is that I should try to avoid absolute positioning as much as possible. If you would want to resize on a page that's using absolute positioning things get really cluttered.

Do you leave it the way it is or do you dive into the html in order to straighten it out?

I would very much like to hear how you are doing it.

I've been using NVU Kompozer but I would be open to change software if that would help.

**ss-kalm** · 17 April 2008, 08:02 PM

I would resize your drawing, adjust the layout as necessary and re-export. It's got to be quicker than redoing all the markup.

**a4hire** · 17 April 2008, 08:30 PM

You could redo the layout and export again as Keith suggested or you could edit the html file. If you have a text editor then you can do that. I have not used Kompzer but yous hould be able to do text editing on the html file.

**Giannis** · 17 April 2008, 08:34 PM

So it would be possible to do an entire website in only Xara Xtreme 4? No need for additional coding? I knew a little html but I'm quite rusty now but also, the code Xara generates was a bit messy I thought. ( Does it generate Java script too?)

I will try to see if I can find a way to resize things.

**a4hire** · 17 April 2008, 08:52 PM

yes you can do a complete web site from Xara xtreme. it is limited to what you can do, as far as editing meta tags or inserting certain scripts. It will do mouse over functions and you can embed flash files that you made in xtreme.
Gary Priester has written a nice tutorial that will show you all of the things that you can do with the html export.

http://www.xaraxone.com/webxealot/workbook69/

**raynerj1** · 18 April 2008, 01:52 AM

The Html/css exported is set up for your page size. If your page size is 3 meters X 3 meters then your web page/site will be the same. On the other hand if you page size is the size of a postage stamp, you will have lots of empty space on the page. It is absolute positioning with no other option at the present time.

**Giannis** · 18 April 2008, 10:15 AM

I do realize there is no other option than using absolute positioning.

Do you leave it at absolute positioning or do go into the html code in order to fix it?

I'm simply wondering since I've learnt it's quite awkard to use absolute positioning.

**Raalf** · 18 April 2008, 12:25 PM

Originally Posted by Giannis

I'm simply wondering since I've learnt it's quite awkard to use absolute positioning.

Absolute positioning is great for some things, for example pages with a particular graphic design where the elements need to be in certain locations in order to achieve the proper effect. There are some things that just need to be done with absolute positioning. That's why it is a great marriage with Xtreme.

But, absolute positioning is a pain for the website viewer who has a screen resolution that is different than that used to create the website. And, when the viewer resizes their browser window, the webpage does not adjust to fit the new size if absolute positioning is used. As noted in another post, you can hardcode the page size, but, will that page size fit the setup of the person who is going to look at the website?

Also, absolute positioning makes it more difficult to quickly edit the page. A page with absolute positioning can be screwed up if text is changed or a graphic element is replaced with one a slightly different size. You are pretty much locked into using Xtreme to make any non-trivial edits.

**a4hire** · 18 April 2008, 03:56 PM

This is why it is recommended that you use a 800 x 600 layout. Then your page will fit on any screen resolution.

You can still do editing in a text editor if you know CSS/html, just open the file in a browser and test it as you go to make sure it looks right. Of course this would not be just click on what you want like doing the WYSIWYG.

**Raalf** · 18 April 2008, 09:50 PM

Originally Posted by a4hire

This is why it is recommended that you use a 800 x 600 layout. Then your page will fit on any screen resolution.

You can still do editing in a text editor if you know CSS/html, just open the file in a browser and test it as you go to make sure it looks right. Of course this would not be just click on what you want like doing the WYSIWYG.

The problem with using 800 x 600 is that it aims for the lowest common denominator. That is fine if there is a design reason for it. If the page is not a graphic intensive page, that resolution is inefficient. Just think of all the people out there with 1280 x 1024 screens, or larger! An 800x600 page looks dinky on that size monitor.

Absolute positioning has great value for certain designs, but it is a nightmare for text intensive pages.