[Suggestion] Implementing H1 Headings without coding

[visual-net]

...having H1 tags, this is not something we'd offer.

Why would we start complicating the product with some technical gubbins that few people will understand, especially when it has no actual benefit?

HI Charles,

i'm totally on your site, and i want it to make it easier from the users point of view:
Why not offer 6 different types of Headings wich can be preformated wich are saving time rapidly instead of:
Marking the text and click 14pix bold on every heading wich i create in my website - i do only one time the formating and save time for my whole site:

Just imagine: The Xara Web Designer Demo Page and take each Heading you used in your site:
and imagine you only have to click on the beginning of the Heding and click Heading1 and rapidly the whole line changed into bold 14 red - formating - this saves more time and you have not to argue /tell about H1, h2 and so on stuff:

Use your own preformatted Headings and save much more time as you format every Heading manually AND combine this with a much more better ranking in search-engines!

What is in this case complicated - i do lessons in NetObjects Fusion since 2000 and believe me no one of my customers understand what a H1 Heading really is they only know they are saving time with preformatted settings and beside the chances of getting a better search enging ranking rised....

So our goal together should be to offer a much more and better and faster handling of Headlines for websites and my suggestion does this and i think from a programmers point of view there should be no complicated way to implement this; isn't it???
I am the last one that say: Hey make XWD to a complete HTML Editor no that is not my point - make a easy and fast program more userfriendly and give it an additional feature to save the users time

Michael

[Xhris]

Well I really do not want to get into the argument about HTML structure (suffice to say John is completely right), but until someone can show any merit or any benefit at all in having H1 tags, this is not something we'd offer.

Why would we start complicating the product with some technical gubbins that few people will understand, especially when it has no actual benefit?

I agree that it would be nice to have more powerful text Style control in Xtreme and Web Designer, but that's really a completely separate issue, and one day we'll add it.

Yes, I've been silently dying for a powerful text Style feature for ages (the first thing I use in Word pretty much before producing a document).

I totally agree about all this h1 heading stuff. I don't see how it's essential; like you say it's just complicating things and adding nothing. I first came across this crap when trying to sell stuff on eBay, and having to learn how to make a heading bold using all stupid <h1> tags and other unintuitive techno gibberish that just makes the experience so repellent and time consuming. A simple WYSIWYG text editor was embarrassingly missing.

[pauland]

I think that while we may be talking about HTML headings, really we're talking about a way to get a consistent look and feel throughout the website. If I use word I try and get all my headings at different levels the same and I can switch the style consistently.

I guess that for heading support we'd be looking at specifying point sizes and colour attributes too. Naturally, if you can do that for headings, why not paragraphs?

It might be useful for release 2.0 since it's a nice to have, but not really essential. It would be nice to have in Xtreme too.

Technically I guess it's just a CSS setting for the header tags and paragraph styles or div styles. I suspect it's one of those things that would quickly move from 'nice to have' to 'essential' once it became a habit to use it - particularly in larger websites or documents.

[covoxer]

When we implement styles system in Xtreme/WD it will probably be more like the one used in Word than html. I don't think wi'll limit anyone to 6 levels e.t.c.

[pauland]

Perfect.

[planetsquid]

Please do introduce a style feature to WD. I have been designing a site over the weekend and have wanted to experiment with different body and heading font styles. To make the changes across the whole site requires manual editing of every page using the text tool. Ideally I would like to be able to make changes to the whole site by just editing a style list (as in Word).

When creating a new document in Word, I always use the 'outlining' view to get the structure of the document correct, then, when the document is complete I can tweak the styles so that the document looks the way I want it to. I'd like to be able to work in a similar way using WD.

To me, this is not a question about the merits of using <h1><h2> HTML tags. The way that WD decides to export the HTML code is a decision that the Xara developers need to make in order that the page renders correctly in all web browsers.

Rich

[nickydude]

When we implement styles system in Xtreme/WD it will probably be more like the one used in Word than html. I don't think wi'll limit anyone to 6 levels e.t.c.

That would save a lot of time.

[andrewvalkenburg]

With my limited knowledge of the English language (if all of the above is any English at all) I am not really sure that my feelings about having to add a text style feature to WD is shared by the major part of fellow users. To me it is so obvious and necessary to just have to select a piece of text and then give it a predefined look and not have to copy the style from another piece of text I already formatted.

Apart from this: WD is an excellent program. Good job!

[pauland]

I think WD and Xtreme are still finding their feet after moving from being single page programs to handling multiple pages. If everything is right in front of you on a single page, styles aren't as important as they would be if content is spread over multiple pages.

[planetsquid]

I think you have a valid point there Paul. For me, text styles were never an issue until XXP became multi-page. As XWD was based heavily on Xtreme's code base it has inherited this omission.

Rich