Changing the content of a Master Page

Xway
1

Hi Jeremy,

here are some questions and thoughts about changing the content of a Master Page while the other pages are already made up.

I know that the Master Page should be all made up before working on other pages, but sometimes you have to go back and refine the Master Page:

As far as I can see, it is possible to

add menue items
delete menue items
change names of menue items
change the order of menue items
change colour, style, size etc. of menue items text

These changes appear on all pages that are linked to the Master Page. But you have to be very careful about where exactly these changes are made:

Say my Index Page is linked to Master 1 where my menue sits. I go to my Index Page to work on it … and now I spontaniously decide to make a little change in the menue, and I just do it - without going to the Master Page section before.

Yes, it is possible to work on master items while actually not being in the Master Page section! But doing so causes troubles. It cuts the ties to the Master Page and I found no way to link them again. The changes I made in the menue on the Index Page are now bound to the Insert Page alone, they are not overwritten anymore by the Master Page nor did the changes take place on the Master Page itself.

It might take a while before you sense the fault - too late for a simple Undo. Changing the Master Page setting of the Index Page to „None“ and back to „Master 1“ to reinstall the link does not work. You might think that deleting the menue from the Index Page could help, because it is derived from the Master Page anyway and will be restored from there when previewing the Index Page, but that’s not the case.

My workaround to restore things is: Insert an new page named „Index 1“ and choose „Master 1“. Copy the content of the Index Page (without the Master items) into the new page. Delete the old page. Rename the new page to „Index“. Restore the links in the Link Inspector. That normally works - but If there is a lot of content in the page, Xway crashes on deleting the old page.

Is there an easier way to restore the lost link to a Master Page?

I would suggest two possibilities to prevent problems here:

  1. An (optional) warning, popping up when trying to edit master items outside the Master Page section.

  2. When working on a normal page (not a Master Page), Xway automatically jumps to the master section of the linked Master Page as soon as a master item is chosen to work on it (could also be optional).

So much for that, keep up the good work!

Ernst

2

The Use Master Content checkbox will do this.

  1. If you accidentally add a menu item on an instance page, select the (parent) menu box and click on Use Master Content. (You’ve changed the content of the menu box, so Use Master Content changes it back.)
  2. If you accidentally change the text or style of text within a menu item on an instance page, select the menu item and click on Use Master Content. (You’ve changed the content of the menu item, so Use Master Content changes it back.)

One important feature of Use Master Content is that it only affects the content of the selected box and doesn’t affect the content of boxes that are within the selected box. This allows you to restore master/instance links in a targeted way, without having to worry that it will also make other more sweeping changes.

You might wonder why changing the style of text within a menu item is reversed by clicking on Use Master Content, instead of Use Master Style. This is because you changed the style of the text rather than the style of the menu item itself, and the text is part of the menu item’s content.

3

Hi Jeremy,

thank you, got it, I missed the point that Use Master Style / Use Master Content can be related not only to a page but also to a selected box.

Best, Ernst