Page 52 - Xara Web Designer Premium

52 Getting Started

Web Designer Premium provides vector drawing tools which means you can resize, edit
the outline shape and re-color with no loss of quality. You can zoom in to see almost
infinite detail, and all edits are undoable.

Shape Tool
The SHAPE EDITOR TOOL allows you to create detailed vector based shapes,
and also to edit the outline of any shape.
For preset shapes such as rectangles or ellipses, or if you want to edit the outline of your
text character shapes, you need to convert the object to an editable shape first. You can
do this by selecting the "Ctrl + 1" key shortcut. You can then use the SHAPE EDITOR TOOL
to perform various advanced vector editing. Refer to the reference section on how to use
this very powerful tool.
Straight Line and Arrow Tool
The STRAIGHT LINE TOOL makes it easy to draw single segment straight lines
and to add arrow heads and tails to any lines.

Simply click and drag on the page to draw a straight line. You can click on any existing
line to select it, and once selected you can click-drag on either end to move the end of
the line around.
Adding arrowheads and tails using the Straight Line tool
The InfoBar has two dropdown lists on the left which allow you to choose an arrow head
or tail style for each end of the selected line.

Arrow head
Arrow tail
Arrow head/tail size
Reverse path

The slider on the InfoBar allows you to change the size of the arrow head and tail on the
current selected line. Or you can enter a percentage value into the size text field to the
right of the slider.

By default new arrowheads are created with a width of around 6 times that of the line
width and that is taken as the 100% size, as indicated by the size slider. If you make the
line wider, the arrowhead width also updates accordingly. Therefore enter a value less
than 100% to reduce the size of the arrowhead (and tail), or greater than 100% to
increase. Although the slider only takes the size value up to a maximum of 800%, you
can enter percentage values larger than this into the size text field.