i) Open a Showcase file and select a photo and then select all photos
ii) Drag the photos into a blank, new Exhibeo page.
iii) Select a theme in Exhibeo, e.g., Slide
iv) To add titles and captions, open Metadata view. Now you can select and paste captions from Showcase one at a time. A bit tedious, but not too bad.
v) In Exhibeo, you can customize the selected theme and then export to Xway, as a usable Xway file, i.e., name.xwcomponent
PROBLEMS in Exhibeo
a) The Showtime theme does not work in Xway, at least not for me
b) You can set the minimum size of the imported xwcomonent for viewing in smaller sizes but the titles and captions do not shrink. Therefore you need to use small font sizes…UNLESS someone knows the solution to this problem. Of course one solution is to avoid using titles and captions.
c) In Exhibeo, when I select bottom left position for titles and captions, they are centered in Xway
It seems to work for me. Can you be more specific about what isn’t working?
You can use a Media Styles breakpoint to set a different text size within Xway.
Select the gallery box
Open the Media Styles section in the Box Inspector
Click on the Plus button
Choose Descendants of Item from the Selector popup
Change the asterisk in #[itemID] * to h1 (i.e. “#[itemID] h1”). This targets h1 (heading 1) elements rather than all elements. Note that [itemID] will be the ID you have chosen for the gallery box in Xway.
Enter a breakpoint (e.g. 600px)
Click on the Plus button below Properties
Enter font-size for Name, and (e.g.) 17px !important for Value
This will set the font size for titles to be 17px when the screen width is less than 600px wide.
The reason for adding “!important” is because Exhibeo galleries use JavaScript to generate CSS styles, and these will override any styles that you set in Xway (because they are added later), unless you add “!important” to the Xway definition.
To change the font size for captions, you would do the same thing (using an appropriate font size), but replace the asterisk with a p, so you’re targetting p (paragraph) elements.
Is this in the Slide theme? One reason why this can happen is if you have set a default page style (in Xway) that centres paragraphs and headings. If that’s the case, you can reset it within Xway:
Select the gallery box
Open the Default Styles section in the Box Inspector
Choose left alignment for Paragraph (this will left-align captions)
Choose left alignment for Heading 1 (this will left-align titles)
a) The Showtime theme does not work in Xway, at least not for me
It seems to work for me. Can you be more specific about what isn’t working?
NOT SURE what I was doing wrong but it is now working fine.
b) You can set the minimum size of the imported xwcomonent for viewing in smaller sizes but the titles and captions do not shrink. Therefore you need to use small font sizes…UNLESS someone knows the solution to this problem. Of course one solution is to avoid using titles and captions.
You can use a Media Styles breakpoint to set a different text size within Xway.
Select the gallery box
Open the Media Styles section in the Box Inspector
Click on the Plus button
Choose Descendants of Item from the Selector popup
Change the asterisk in #[itemID] * to h1 (i.e. “#[itemID] h1”). This targets h1 (heading 1) elements rather than all elements. Note that [itemID] will be the ID you have chosen for the gallery box in Xway.
Enter a breakpoint (e.g. 600px)
Click on the Plus button below Properties
Enter font-size for Name, and (e.g.) 17px !important for Value
This will set the font size for titles to be 17px when the screen width is less than 600px wide.
The reason for adding “!important” is because Exhibeo galleries use JavaScript to generate CSS styles, and these will override any styles that you set in Xway (because they are added later), unless you add “!important” to the Xway definition.
To change the font size for captions, you would do the same thing (using an appropriate font size), but replace the asterisk with a p, so you’re targetting p (paragraph) elements.
I WAS STUMPED here until I upgraded to V 1.1.1 of Xway and then found the Media Styles section. Now all is well.
c) In Exhibeo, when I select bottom left position for titles and captions, they are centered in Xway
Is this in the Slide theme? One reason why this can happen is if you have set a default page style (in Xway) that centres paragraphs and headings. If that’s the case, you can reset it within Xway:
Select the gallery box
Open the Default Styles section in the Box Inspector
Choose left alignment for Paragraph (this will left-align captions)
Choose left alignment for Heading 1 (this will left-align titles) This is now fixed
One more question. Ihave tried to apply your instructions using Master Default Style (Extended Properties) or Media Styles to shrink font size in titles for viewing with smaller devices but have no success here. Can this be done.
If you were previously using Xway 1.0, check that you have Automatically Check for Updates selected in the Xway menu. This should ensure that you get notified of new versions. (We also announce new versions here on Softpress Talk.)
Xway 1.1.1 is a minor update, with some bug fixes and improvements, but no new features.
A good way to read up on new features (in major updates) is to click on cross-references in the New Features appendix in the Xway User Guide. In the case of Media Styles, this will take you to the Media Styles section of the user guide, where we provide general instructions and also suggest situations in which media styles (breakpoints) can be useful.
One more question. Ihave tried to apply your instructions using Master Default Style (Extended Properties) or Media Styles to shrink font size in titles for viewing with smaller devices but have no success here. Can this be done.
Are you trying to reduce the size of all headings? This can be done, but it’s not a good idea, and we don’t recommend it. If you look at a website (such as the Softpress website) on a desktop computer and on a mobile phone, you will see that headings (and text sizes generally) are already smaller when they’re viewed on a mobile phone. This is because browsers take account of the fact that the distance from which you view a phone is normally less than the distance from which you view a computer screen. Try holding a phone flat against your computer screen, with the Softpress site displayed on both, and you will see that the text is smaller on the phone. Measured with a ruler, 72-point text on my phone screen is about half the size of 72-point text on my computer screen.
Our advice is to use media styles sparingly. There are a couple of situations in which they can be helpful in tweaking flexbox layouts (these are discussed in the user guide). Another situation is if you have a heading that is too large to fit within its container box. Apart from the specific case of slideshow titles and captions, this is most likely to happen if you chose a very large font size for a particular heading (e.g. for effect), or if the heading contains a particularly long word. In this case, you might want to tweak that particular heading, but there’s no need to make every heading smaller.
I get what you are saying about comparing the Softpress website on a computer vs an iPhone.
But when I use the Responsive Design Mode, the Softpress fonts do not reduce in size and this is how I examine my Xway files, i.e., the page title font does not reduce with the Responsive Design Mode and thus is excessive in size on small devices.
And no, I do not what to reduce the size of all headings…only the box I use for titles with an x-large font.
BY THE WAY, the info boxes that open with Media Styles remain permanent on my desktop. They stay even after tapping Cancel or OK. I can only remove them if I close and reopen Xway. Appears to be a bug.
That’s one of the situations I mentioned above, and there are step-by-step instructions for doing this in the Media styles section of the Xway User Guide. It’s worth reading the entire Media Styles section, but the step-by-step instructions can be found in Using media styles.
BY THE WAY, the info boxes that open with Media Styles remain permanent on my desktop. They stay even after tapping Cancel or OK. I can only remove them if I close and reopen Xway. Appears to be a bug.
It disappears for me when I click outside it or press Escape (Cancel) or Return (OK), but it doesn’t disappear if I press Return without entering a valid value - is that what you’re seeing?
[The same popup is used for extended HTML attributes, and extended properties: I think it should probably beep if you press Return without entering a valid value, as happens with other text fields. I’ll look into that.]
I have tried and failed several times to shrink the title heading in my Xway pages. I have tried the method that works successfully in reducing font size in Exhibeo files as well as trying to carefully follow instructions for media styles in the Xway user guide. I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong.
Also I have attached screenshots of some of the many pop-ups that remained fixed on my monitor until I close Xway.
I’ll get back to you later, but your screenshot looks very strange. Do you have this with any other Xway dialogs? What version of macOS are you running?
I’ve attached an Xway document that uses media styles to change the size of a large heading so that it fits on smaller screens. heading1 is defined as 72px Helvetica (centre-aligned) in the Default Styles section of the Page Inspector - I used px rather than ems (which is often more appropriate for headings) for the sake of simplicity.
The large heading (“Tyrannosaurus”) won’t fit on screens that are narrower than 600px, so I added a couple of breakpoints using the Media Styles dialog. You can see these in the Media Styles section of the Box Inspector: the font is reduced to 48px if the screen is narrower than 600px, and to 36px if it’s narrower than 400px. If you preview in a browser using Responsive Design Mode, you should see that this works for any device that is wider than 300px (most phones are at least 320px wide).
I’ll look into why the Media Styles dialog isn’t closing properly on your system. If you can let me know what version of macOS you’re running (choose About This Mac from the Apple menu) that might be helpful!
