Page 42 - Xara Web Designer Premium

42 Getting Started

Live font size pop-up
Fonts used in the current document
Web safe fonts
Style variants available for the selected font. Not all fonts have such variants
Google fonts
All fonts installed
Font type - usually either OpenType or TrueType as designated by the
accompanying symbol.
The ‘Add’ option in the Google fonts section lets you browse, download and install from
hundreds of open source fonts that you can use in your website.

The font menu offers live font selection. As you traverse the menu, the selected text
changes font allowing you to immediately preview what the font will look like in the
document.

Font Size
The font size field shows the font size in pixels, as this is the most reliable method of
setting the text size for use in a web browser. But you can enter any size in points (or any
other unit for that matter), by entering a value with pt after it (for point) e.g. 72pt or 1in
and this will get converted to the correct pixel size.

Using fonts in your website

Fonts in the web safe section are safe to use in websites because the vast majority of
computers and other devices will have these fonts. You can also use any of the hundreds
of Google fonts, because these are automatically downloaded by the web browser when
someone views your site. You can use other fonts you have installed and have them
automatically embedded in your website if the font license permits it – see the Text
Handling chapter for details

If you turn any text object into a graphic, you are free to use any font. See the Groups
section (on page 45) below for details about this.

Creating New Text Objects

There are three types of text object - a single line of text, a column of text or a
rectangular text area. To create a simple line of text, select the TEXT TOOL and then you
can click anywhere on the background and start typing. To create a column click and
drag horizontally on the background, and then start typing. You can adjust the column
width at any time. To create a text area, click and drag diagonally. You can adjust the
width and height of a text area by clicking and dragging on it in the TEXT TOOL.

Rotated Text

Unusually (uniquely for a web authoring tool) you can rotate any text object, even
columns of text, using the usual rotate feature of the Selector tool. But because web
browsers do not support native rotated text Web Designer Premium converts any rotated
text into a graphic when the page is exported as a website.