Xara’s approach to website design is simply this, put the objects on the page anywhere you want them and Xara will take care of the rest. Anyone who has struggled with and been frustrated by Adobe Dreamweaver will appreciate the Xara way. And unlike most website design applications, everything you need is under the same roof: design tools, photo editing tools, text tools, and publishing tools. If you are artistically challenged, you will find everything you need to create a website from professionally designed templates to graphics, buttons, headers and all the rest in the Designs Gallery. But for me at least, the real fun is in doing it yourself. From scratch. In this Workbook, I’ll try cover the basics so that even new users will be ready to start designing by the time you reach the last page. If you have questions, press the e button on the Navigation Bar to send me an e-mail, or visit the Web Design Chat Forum on TalkGraphics. To start, we need to determine the size of the page. There are two ways to do this. The easiest way is select New from the File menu and then select a web page size from the fly out menu. Select the size that feels right for you. I like the 955 (XGA) size. If you want to set up a custom page size, right click on the page or pasteboard (the area outside the page) and select Page Options... In the Page Size tabbed section, select Custom from the drop down Page Size list and specify your page dimensions. Drag and drop a custom color onto the page or pasteboard to change the color Name your custom color and it will appear on the screen palette You can add a new page to your site by clicking the Page icon on the Infobar. There are three page options icons in the fly out menu: Insert a Duplicate Page, Insert a Blank Page, or Delete the Current Page. These page options also exist in the Page and Layer Gallery which is docked on the right side of the screen. Click twice on the page title to edit the title. You can change the page order by dragging and dropping a page in a new location. We’ll cover Layers a bit later on. NOTE: In Photo and Graphic Designer 7 you need to hold down the Ctrl key when you drag and drop a color or bitmap onto the page or the pasteboard area. No need for the Ctrl key in Designer 7 or Web Designer 7. You can drag and drop a bitmap onto the page or pasteboard. The image will tile automatically. If you are going to do this be aware that if the image is very large, it may slow down the page when it is loading. Often by the time your page has loaded, your visitor is long gone. So best to use a small tiling bitmap. This way only the one instance of the bitmap loads and the browser automatically repeats it.