What’s a presentation without a chart or graph? To that end, let’s
create a chart. Create a new blank page. Copy and paste the Heading
and one List Item from the first page. Remember to cut and paste the
buttons onto the MouseOff layer. Select the List Item and press Make
New Step. Change the Heading and List Item text.
While I have the Steps toolbar here let’s look at what these new icons
do. Make a New Step places any selection on a new step. You could for
example have several images on your page arranged in position. One by
one, click each image in the order you want them to appear, and press
Make New Step. Each time your visitor presses the right arrow button, a
new image will slide, fade, or just appear into place. You can also use
steps to build an illustration in, what else, steps.
The push pin icon Moves a selection to the Background, which is the
MouseOff layer. The next icon, creates a Duplicate Step, such as the
duplicate List Items. The icon with the red X Deletes a Step. You can
select a stepped object and change its position in the step order by
selecting a different step number from the drop down list.
And finally, the last X icon lets you change the Step Transition Effect.
This chart is a good example of the old expression, make the hard ones
look easy and the easy ones look hard. When we are done you can tell
me which case this is.
From the Design Gallery, Presentations > Presentation Components,
Chart Components, drag and center the grid onto the page. Change all
the text to white. Change the title for the Legend to X-WIDGETS, and
add a fourth line of text (insert the Text Tool cursor after “Third
Quarter” and press Return). Change the text to Fourth Quarter. Select
the green square (Third Quarter) and copy it to the clipboard (Ctrl c).
In the Page and Layout Gallery, press the S icon on the step layers
until you find the Step that contains the legend. From the Edit > Paste
menu, select Paste in Place in Current Layer. Use the down arrow key
on your keyboard to nudge the square down into place. And that is just
the legend! Go back and select the MouseOff layer.
Rather than use the slim bars in the Chart Components folder, we will
create our own. Select the Rectangle Tool (m) and drag some
rectangles to cover three months at a time. Change the colors to the
legend colors. Select the Transparency Tool (press F6 or click the
wineglass icon). Click once on a rectangle to select it, hold down the
Ctrl key to constrain the direction, and click and drag from the top to
the bottom of the rectangle to add what Xara calls an interactive
Linear transparency.
Finally, from left to right, select a rectangle, then press the New Step
icon. This will cause the quarters to appear with each click of the right
arrow key. Change the transition effect for each rectangle to Slide in
from Bottom. This makes the bars appear to grow upwards.
Preview your chart page.
OK That looks really good. But let’s add some more pizazz to our chart.
One quarter at a time, select the quarter text in the Legend, and
change the color to Dark Yellow.
One by one, select each of the X-WIDGETS quarter text with the Text
Tool, and copy it to the clipboard. Click on the first quarter rectangle.
The Step Order drop down list indicates Step 3, the layer upon which
the blue rectangle exists. Select Step 3 in the Page and Layout
Gallery, then Edit > Paste > Paste in Place. Change the color to white.
Repeat this for the other 3 quarters. And change the Transition Effect
back to Fade for each of the four steps.
Each object placed on a Step layer will appear on that layer. Thus the
white text fades on with the bars fade on.
The original Legend text has a drop shadow which is missing. The
reason I discovered was I selected the text with the Text Tool instead
of Ctrl click selection (lesson learned). Select the four white text
quarters, select the Shadow Tool (Ctrl F2). Apply a Wall Shadow with
these settings: Shadow Blur: 3.5, Transparency: 70%, X Offest: 1.9, Y
Offset: .9. Export and Preview the page. I think this adds more drama.
Click here to see the presentation. There is an extra slide at the end.
There is a link back to this page arrow at the end of the presentation.
Enjoy the presentation. I’ll wait here for you to get back.
I asked the folks at Xara is there was some way to create a self running
Presentation. And you know what? There is! You can add a simple
javascript to the Website Properties > Website > HTML Code (head)
box.
<script type="text/javascript">
var pause = 2000;
function autoPresenter(){ xr_next();
setTimeout("autoPresenter();", pause); }
setTimeout("autoPresenter();", pause);
</script>
When you add the script to Website > HTML Code (head) it makes all
pages run automatically. You can also just add it to certain pages in the
Page > HTML Code (head) window.
I find the 2000 pause a bit too fast. You can increase the figure to slow
things down. I prefer 3000 or 3500. Experiment a little.