Page 174 - Xara Web Designer Premium

174 Shape Handling

These text panels are smart in that they grow to accommodate whatever text you put in
them - drag the bottom centre or top centre handles to change the vertical panel height. If
you ever add more text than can fit into the panel at that height, the panel will grow to
accommodate the additional text. But if you later remove text, the panel will shrink back
no further than the height you last set using the height adjustment handles. This helps to
keep panel sizes consistent, which is useful where you have a panel occupying a defined
space or aligned vertically with other panels or objects of the same height.

Text Alignment
You can align text vertically within the panels, so it’s TOP, CENTER or BOTTOM aligned.
This is useful where you have text that you want to edit regularly so the number of lines
varies. To change the vertical alignment, place the text caret in the text and select the
VERTICAL TEXT ALIGNMENT button on the text InfoBar.

Then choose an option from the menu. The last option - AUTO-FIT TO CONTAINER, allows
you to fit any text into any restricted area on a page, so it’s great for text that needs to
change often where there is restricted space.

If the panel is full of text with no empty vertical space, then it will look the same no matter
which of the three alignment options are selected. But the alignment setting also
determines how the panel grows and shrinks, as text is added or deleted, so the setting
is still relevant even for ‘full’ panels. Top aligned panels will always grow and shrink from
the bottom, with the top edge staying fixed. Bottom aligned panels are the other way
around - they grow upwards with the bottom edge fixed, so these are commonly used at
the bottom of pages. And centered panels will grow and shrink equally at the top and
bottom, so the center of the panel is fixed.
For more info on text area alignment see Vertically aligned text (on page 214) and Auto-
fit to text areas (on page 215).

Many of the panels will allow you to change the width or style of lines or outlines included
in the panel. For example the Ribbon Panel shown above allows you to change the width
or style of the dashed circle inside the panel. Just select the whole panel and then use
the line width control to change the line width. Or with the mouse pointer over the line,
hold down Ctrl+Shift and use your mouse wheel to adjust the line width. Use the Line
Gallery (on page 152) to change the line style, corner style, or end cap.