How to create an external border when using more than one cell? 
Author: Adrian E.
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Almost all the pages of the site I have created use a single cell and I have added what I consider to be a nice looking green border. The Contact page however, has 2 cells so I cannot use the border option as each cell's border is treated individually. Screenshots are attached.
How can I make a border appear around these 2 cells so that the page retains the same identity as the rest of the site please? I could find no mention of this in the manual.
Posted on the
That is not very difficult.
Set on the left object a window around like earlyer, then remove the line on the right, set also the corners on top and lower horizontal line on the right side to 0, set also the outer margin on the right side to 0.
Do the same for the right object but then on the left hand side.
That's it, just play with it, you will see how it works.
See for instance my website with picture examples I use sometimes here in Answers.
The blue text is a seperate text box and the picture also an seperate object.
http://andreweb.nl/x5_test/pictures-x5answrs.html
Author
Hello Andre, I have only just seen your reply because this forum has no option for sending a mail when a reply has been received. Sorry about that!
Anyway, when you say "window" I am assuming you mean "border" however, I'm having trouble achieving what you are suggesting because there are 3 objects on the page.
There are 4 cells. In the first row, left column, is a text object. On the right of that there is nothing. In the second row there is the email form on the left and a text object on the right. In other words, there is no way of making an external border because cell #2 is empty.
I thought about creating a table because that can have a border but there is no way to insert the email form in the table. Or at least, no way I am aware of...
Cell #2 could be an empty text cell and you can apply borders to that, but not sure how that would affect your spacing... maybe put some spaces in there?
Or incorpate cell #2 into the cell #3/4 and use indentation on your text.
Just as Barry say's put an object top right but I would suggest to use the html object and set only 1 space in it (spaces are ignored in html so you won't see it), then you can make the borders as suggested earlyer.
BR Andre
Author
Sorry for the delay in reply guys. I only got around to testing your suggestions today. I have attached a PDF showing what it looks like now, which is not very good, together with screenshots showing all of the settings I have used.
Adrian
If you turn off drop shadow in top left cell
Turn on drop shadow only on x axis for the top right hand cell can you make them align by modifying margins?
Sorry Adrian,
I tryed to make a tutorial and I came on the same problem you have now.
It's not possible to create a border when using the drop shadow option on mulipple objects.
It creates a space on the other side that is not possible to modify in any way. maybe somebody else know's a solution, for now I would say skip the drop shadow. I shall try and think about a better solution for you.
Author
I was thinking along the lines of a background image for the border but I am worried how it would look on different sized screens. It would need to be in 3 sections for it to be resizeable but each cell treats its background as a separate item so that wouldn't work.
The ideal solution would be a table. I don't understand why I cannot put an email form in the table? Even FrontPage 98 allowed you to do that and that's 9 year old software!
Adrian, I too tried my own suggestion and it failed for me as it did for Andre.
My limited experience with tables is that they do not work well with responsive layouts (resulting in a slide bar rather than resize or re-order). The best solution I could think of would be an option to not show specific cells above a specified resolution, then you could have different layouts created for various devices. Website X5 lets you hide cells below specified resolutions now, I cannot imaging it would be too hard to add the same feature to hide specific cells above specific reolutions.
Author
I think the simplest solution would be to have no border on the Contact page. It means that the site would not be equal on all pages however I would bet that 99% of people won't even notice it. It is only web and graphic designers that tend to focus on things like uniformity.
Changing the subject, and I don't know if I'm permitted to ask such an unrelated question without starting a new thread, I purchased the v12 upgrade a few months ago but never installed it as someone here told me it was too buggy and advised me to stick with v11. If I do install it, will I be able to import all the sites I built with v10 and v11 without them becoming corrupted?
I ask this question because, as I understand it, v12 is alll about responsive layouts, a bit like Wordpress, so I am worried that the previous format may not be read the same way.
Adrian
I have imported multiple sites from both V10 & V11 into V12. I had no issues with the exception of one page one one site. For this page I opened the project in both versions and copied the data across. Some of the sites were very large and one had multiple huge photo slideshows, but it worked perfectly. Once into 12 I then turned on responsive and started making the minor tweeks required to achieve the desired results.
Author
<< Once into 12 I then turned on responsive and started making the minor tweeks required to achieve the desired results. >>
I don't suppose you could expand on that?
Also, have you found v12 to be buggy or is it generally a stable release?
I have found it generally stable, issues I have observed though answers have been primarily due to the Win 10 upgrade or underlying hardware issues. There are still some outstanding issues like graphics in tables and a gallery issue. All are on answers for us to find, but unfortunately there is no single list made available of outstanding issues.
You will see what I mean by minor tweeks. The order of cells (you get to choose the order) dictates when cells can be placed one under the other or stay next to each other for instance. Incomedia have done a really good job, you will be surprised at how the default responsive views of your site will look generally great and if you wish to make changes it will be easy.
My site and about 10 others have been imported, in full screen (or with responsive turned off) they are near identical to the old versions, this link will show some of my sites, mostly imported. If they have a note "optimised for viewing on mobile devices" they were probably imported in to v12 (only 2 are new sites since 12 was released).
http://www.esahc.com/web-clients.html
I have not had any issues since the toaster menu for single page websites was fixed, the upgrade is good :-)
Author
<< this link >> ???
I would be very interested to see what you have accomplished Esahc.
My personal experiences with v10 and v11 are mostly positive in that I have been able to produce reasonably polished results. I am no web designer. My talents lie in copywriting and graphic design so a program like X5 helps to make up for my lack of web design skills.
Apologies - brain fade. . . .
"X5 helps to make up for my lack of web design skills" Me too!!!
http://www.esahc.com/web-clients.html
Adrian,
I do a lot of testing so I append the strangest things in x5, in General I had no big problems with V12, one update was not the best, but this was fast corrected. I did not use that update, usualy I will wait a few days to see if there are issues... So it affected me not. ( I also keep backups of projects and older version when newer comes along, this reminds me to backup the latest versio of x5.... LOL
But Buggy, no not in my experience.
You could still use your border by the way, but don't use the drop shadow. And it will just show up good. You could also take away the drop shadow on the other pages. I thinks it still looks good this way.
I have tryed other ways for you but so far no luck. You can always make an IDEA post for Incomedia to see if they can correct this behavior so it's suitible to use for everybody in the future, cause it's not very nice to have the option but not the possibility to use it in an multi object page.
Goodluck,
Author
Bald Rock wines site is quite nice Fred. I think you should center the navbar on your own site though. That's just a personal opinion though. ;)
One thing that really gets up my nose in X5 is its bugginess where text heights are concerned. I am forever battling to get it to respect a text height after having pasted in modified plain text. It just won't let me keep the size wanted so I end up copying ans pasting cells from one site to another in order to recover text that works.
Another thing I find annoying is the 1000+ template claim made when purchasing X5 Professional. They say it comes with all these templates to choose from but it isn't true. Mine came with 3 and any nice templates are all charged for. Even the free ones only load a background image with a navbar. You don't seem to get the site structure as shown in the preview. Perhaps I just don't understand how to access the 1000+ templates?
Andre, I really like the drop shadow on the border in that particular site. It blends well with the overall design. So, in this case, I think it is best to forego the border on the Contact page. The IDEA post is a good suggestion though so I will try to get around to that later today.
Offcource Adrian,
And you are right it looks very nice with the drop shadow.
As for the templates, they are there and they are templates, so with a basic of three page normaly. You have selection boxes in the templates selection part, set them to all and you will get the 1000 + templates easily.
For the text, try using the copy special button and copy button in x5.
Also it's possible to copy the style in certain objects, use your right mouse for that. If does not work give me an example about the problem youre facing there.