xara

7/26/2019 Xara

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/xara 1/4

An introduction

XARAPAGE & LAYOUTDESIGNER11

Document made using only Xara Page & Layout Designer and no other graphics or software tools.

Read Me FirstThis is a short tutorial, and a working document you

can experiment on.

1) The Designs Gallery

You can see all the document templates and

graphics that are available when you purchase

the product by moving your mouse pointer over

the ‘Designs Gallery’ label on the right side of thewindow.

The Designs Gallery content is separated into folders,

open a folder by clicking the folder icon or double-

clicking the folder name. Items shown in blue folders

can be opened and those in red folders are available

immediately after purchase.

2) Edit the Named Colors

Move the mouse pointer over the left end of the Colorline at the bottom of the screen and right-click on any

of the square color patches. Select ‘Edit’ to display the

color editor, and you can now edit your document’s

theme or ‘named’ colors. You might notice the header,

footer, even the text headings always remain shades of

the color you choose.

3) Edit the text

Click the big T icon on the left set of tools (the Text

Tool). Now click on any text and start editing. Try

editing this text, or the white headings at the top of this

page.

When using the Text Tool, the top bar (called the

InfoBar) allows you to change font, size, Style. The ABC

icon is a spell checker control. Text editing is like any

word processor, for example, drag to select text.

4) Re-arrange your objects

Now let’s try some object moving and resizing. Choose

the Selector Tool (the large arrow at the top) and dragon the photo on this page. See how the text flows

around it. Try dragging on the large page heading.

To resize an object drag on one of the corner handles

shown around the selected object. Try it on the pale

flower symbol at the bottom of this page. Click on it

with the Selector arrow, then drag a corner handle.

This flower and the page headings are special in one

other way - they are ‘Repeating Objects’ and appear at

the same position on every page of your document.More details on this later.

To rotate an object click on it again so you get rotate

handles in the corners. Drag on these to rotate the

object. Try it with the petal shape, or one of the text

headings, or the above photo. This way you can easily

move, resize and rotate just about anything on the

page.

This photo is set to repel text around it, as you can see

if you drag it around.

7/26/2019 Xara

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/xara 2/4Document made using only Xara Page & Layout Designer and no other graphics or software tools.

5) Customizing your photosTo add a photo to any page, simply drag and drop a

photo file from the Windows File Explorer. If you drop

the photo on the page or on top of some text, it is

added as a new photo.

If you drop the photo on top of an existing photo, it will

replace that photo. Try it on one of the photos in this

document.

Try the Photo Tool to enhance your photos. Select the

Camera tool from the left tool bar. Now click on any

photo and, using the controls on the top InfoBar,

adjust the various settings such as brightness, color,

etc. The last slider control alters the blur / sharpen.

This picture frame is one of many available in the

Designs Gallery (see Page Elements > Photo Elements

> Photo Frames).

Repeating Objects

It’s common to have some items which are the same

on all pages of your document. The heading text, the

header design, and the page footer in this document

are good examples.

These are called ‘Repeating Objects’ and have a small

flower symbol, like this, shown in the top right corner

when they are selected.

It’s easy to create your own repeating object. Try

adding an object to this page, say a photo, or draw a

rectangle, or perhaps some clipart. Using the Selector

Tool select the item and the menu: Arrange Repeat

on all pages.

In the Page Gallery on the right you can see the item is

now repeated at the same position on all pages. If you

change it, all copies are updated.

If you edit the text of the footer of this page you’ll see

the edits are reflected across all pages.

Text Tool

You can create three types of text object. On a blank

area of the page you can:1. Click and just type. This creates a simple, single

line text object.

or

2. Click and drag rightwards to create a text

column, and type. You can drag the ends of the

column to adjust the width.

or

3. Click and drag diagonally to create a text area.

Text Areas & Columns

When text overflows the bottom of a text area you see

a 'flow arrow' that you can drag to any other empty text

frame to create a flowing text story. Or click on the

overflow arrow and turn on the option to create new

pages automatically. Now when your text area

overflows, a new page is added for your text to flow

onto. The text areas in this document are set to

automatic, so if you overflow page 4 with text you will

see page 5 get created.

Your caption here

Just click and type

XARAPAGE & LAYOUTDESIGNER11 An introduction

7/26/2019 Xara


You can ask Page & Layout Designer to arrange yourtext areas for you, to quickly make a 1, 2, 3 or more

column page. Right click in the text and choose

Columns... Enter the number of columns you want and

the gap between them. Press Convert and the text

areas on the page are reformatted. If other pages in

the document have exactly the same layout, you’ll be

asked if you want to make the same formatting change

to those other pages.

Text flow aroundTo make any object repel text, right-click on it with the

Selector Tool and select Repel

text under. Now, as you

move the object around

the page, it repels

text.

You can also

anchor graphics to

text. This meansthat the graphic can

move with the text.

The small flower graphic

on the left is an example -

add a few empty lines into the

paragraph above to see it move down.

Embedded Graphics

You can also embed any object into text as if it were a

character. Here’s that same flower symbol , but this

time it’s embedded inline. To embed an object just

select and copy it (Ctrl+C), place the text caret where

you want it and paste (Ctrl+V).

Once an object is embedded, you can select it and

choose Arrange->Embedded Graphic Options to

change how the text flows around the object. The

inline option described above is the default. But you

can choose to have the text flow to the right or left of

the object instead. In this dialog you can also give your

embedded object a margin and choose how the objectshould change its size if it flows into a text column or

text area of a different width.

Text Styles

When using the Text Tool there is a Style drop-down

menu on the InfoBar, that shows a list of Text Styles

used in this document. ‘Normal text’ is the main body

text of this document, and there are several heading

styles. The ‘Heading 2’ style is the one used on top of

this paragraph and others. To update the appearance

of all such headings, just select one heading, make the

required changes, such as font, size, color, etc. and

then in the Style drop-down select Update style.

Page selection and view

The Page & Layer Gallery is shown on

the right side of the window. Just click a

thumbnail to move to the required page.

Click the small triangle next to each page

thumbnail to expand the Gallery to show

the layers on the page.

Re-ordering and renaming

pages

Just drag the page thumbnail in the

Page & Layer Gallery to re-order. To

name a page, first select the page by

clicking on it, and then perform a second

click on the small page name shown on

the bottom of each page thumbnail.

Adding or removing pages

If you want to create a new page similar to the

current one, just click this icon on the top bar.

(Or the Edit > Pages menu.) If you want to add a new

page from the templates in the Designs Gallery, just

drag the page design onto the current document.


7/26/2019 Xara


Adding a page numberTo add a page number (as shown in the footer), place

the text cursor, right click and select Insert -> Page

number.

Google fonts

To access any of the 600+ Google Fonts, in the Text Tool

click the font drop-down list and then in the Google

fonts section click the Add link to show the Google font

picker (this will take a few seconds the first time it’s

opened).

The Google font picker allows you to filter by style,

weight etc. You can preview the fonts on the right, and

use the size slider at the top to adjust the preview size.

The best quality Google fonts are hand-tuned to look

good at small sizes (e.g. body text). Select the ‘High

Quality Body’ check box to list those.

Other ToolsLet’s explore some of the other tools and features of

Designer. You can try these things on the ‘speech

bubble’ graphic below. Remember for most operations

you must select the item first (click on it using the

Selector Tool).

Change its color: Drag a

color from the Color Line

below onto the shape. Or try

the Color Editor (Ctrl+E).

Change its size, position, angle: Using the

Selector Tool just drag on the 4 control points around

the shape.

Give it a soft shadow: Select the Shadow Tool,

and drag on the bubble shape. Adjust the

controls using its InfoBar.

Give it a graduated color fill: Select the FillTool (paint tin icon), and drag across your

shape. Drag the ends of the arrows to adjust. Trydropping a color on the ends of the fill arrow. Or select

an arrow end and try the Color Editor (Ctrl+E).

Make it semi-transparent: Select the

Transparency Tool (wine glass) and adjust the

transparency value using the slider at the top. Better

still: In the Transparency Tool, drag across the object.

You’ve just given it a graduated transparency.

Edit Shape: This is a little more advanced.Select the shape, go into the Shape Editor Tool

(on the flyout menu of the fifth tool down). Then drag

on one edge of the shape, or on one of the small

control points. If you’ve used vector ‘bezier’ editing

tools you’ll be familiar with this.

Publish your document for all to see

The final stage is to print or publish your document.

You can create a PDF to send to people (see below) oruse the unique ‘Web Document’ publishing feature of

Page & Layout Designer. This creates an exactly

accurate web version of your document, and publishes

it on the web. You can use your own web space, or use

the free web space included.

To preview your web document, Select File > Preview

web document. Select File > Publish web document

to put this document on the web and get a link you can

share.

PDF Export

If you want to send your document to someone

else, or get it commercially printed, you can save

it as a PDF by selecting File > Export.. and then

set the Save As Type to be PDF.

For commercial printing use the PDF/X option.


xara

Documents