Page 469 - Xara Web Designer Premium

Animations 469

If there is no rotate command, then the tween takes the shortest direct path between the
object on one keyframe to the next, rotating around its center. With a "rotate" command
on the object name, it calculates the actual rotation point, which in the above example is
the "large end" of the hand.

Note: It's not possible to rotate an object by a full 360° between keyframes if the rotation
point is not the center. For example, to do a full rotation of the clock hands in the above
example, you would need to create an intermediate keyframe.

Groups

Groups are treated specially when creating animations. To save you naming each
individual part of a group, you can instead name the whole group and then copy the
group to the next keyframe. Xara Web Designer Premium will animate the whole group
from one keyframe to the next. And you can apply the normal transformations to the
group (resize, rotate, squash, but not group transparency – see the next page).

If members of a group are to animate differently than the rest of the group, then those
members must be separately named ("Ctrl + click" to select an object inside a group,
then name it as usual).

Note: If you ungroup, make some changes to the group contents and then re-group the
objects:

• You must re-apply the name to the new group (select the group then double click on
the name in the NAME GALLERY).
• You must not change the stacking order of the items in the group.
• You must not add or remove items to/from the group.

Group Transparency
If you want to fade a grouped object, you need to apply transparency to each individual
object in the group. There are two ways you can do this:

• Select each object in the group in turn and adjust its transparency.
• Or un-check the MAKE GROUPS TRANSPARENT AS A WHOLE option in the OPTIONS dialog
("UTILITIES" > "OPTIONS", then the GENERAL tab). If you do this, when you adjust the
transparency of the whole group Xara Web Designer Premium applies the
transparency to each individual item in the group, instead of group transparency.

Creating animated GIFs

Animated GIFs are an alternative way to present animated sequences in the web. An
animated GIF is just a GIF file that contains a sequence of images, rather like frames in a
movie. Every Xara Web Designer Premium-frame is one frame in the final animation, just
like a flip-book.