XARA

PAGE &
LAYOUT
DESIGNER 11 An introduction

Read Me First
This 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 the
window.
the Selector Tool (the large arrow at the top) and drag
on 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.

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 Color
line 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 documents
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.
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.

4) Re-arrange your objects This photo is set to repel text around it, as you can see
if you drag it around.
Now lets try some object moving and resizing. Choose

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XARA
PAGE &
LAYOUT
DESIGNER 11 An introduction

5) Customizing your photos

To 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.

Your caption here

Try the Photo Tool to enhance your photos. Select the
Just click and type
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.

the edits are reflected across all pages.

This picture frame is one of many available in the
Designs Gallery (see Page Elements > Photo Elements
> Photo Frames). Text Tool
You can create three types of text object. On a blank
Repeating Objects area of the page you can:
1. Click and just type. This creates a simple, single
Its common to have some items which are the same
line text object.
on all pages of your document. The heading text, the
or
header design, and the page footer in this document
2. Click and drag rightwards to create a text
are good examples.
column, and type. You can drag the ends of the
column to adjust the width.
These are called Repeating Objects and have a small
or
flower symbol, like this, shown in the top right corner
3. Click and drag diagonally to create a text area.
when they are selected.

Its 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 youll see
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.

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XARA
PAGE &
LAYOUT
DESIGNER 11 An introduction

You can ask Page & Layout Designer to arrange your embedded object a margin and choose how the object
text areas for you, to quickly make a 1, 2, 3 or more should change its size if it flows into a text column or
column page. Right click in the text and choose text area of a different width.
Columns... Enter the number of columns you want and
the gap between them. Press Convert and the text Text Styles
areas on the page are reformatted. If other pages in
When using the Text Tool there is a Style drop-down
the document have exactly the same layout, youll be
menu on the InfoBar, that shows a list of Text Styles
asked if you want to make the same formatting change
used in this document. Normal text is the main body
to those other pages.
text of this document, and there are several heading
styles. The Heading 2 style is the one used on top of
Text flow around this paragraph and others. To update the appearance
To make any object repel text, right-click on it with the of all such headings, just select one heading, make the
Selector Tool and select Repel required changes, such as font, size, color, etc. and
text under. Now, as you then in the Style drop-down select Update style.
move the object around
the page, it repels Page selection and view
text.
The Page & Layer Gallery is shown on
the right side of the window. Just click a
You can also
thumbnail to move to the required page.
anchor graphics to
Click the small triangle next to each page
text. This means
thumbnail to expand the Gallery to show
that the graphic can
the layers on the page.
move with the text.
The small flower graphic
Re-ordering and renaming
on the left is an example -
add a few empty lines into the pages
paragraph above to see it move down. Just drag the page thumbnail in the
Page & Layer Gallery to re-order. To
Embedded Graphics name a page, first select the page by

You can also embed any object into text as if it were a
character. Heres that same flower symbol , but this
time its 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
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.

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PAGE &
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DESIGNER 11
Adding a page number
To 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 its
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 Tools
Lets 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 Fill
Tool (paint tin icon), and drag across your
Document made using only Xara Page & Layout Designer and no other graphics or software tools.
An introduction
shape. Drag the ends of the arrows to adjust. Try
dropping 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.
Youve 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 youve used vector bezier editing
tools youll be familiar with this.
Publish your document for all to see
The final stage is to print or publish your document.
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.
You can create a PDF to send to people (see below) or
use 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.
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