Alternatively you can set the padding margin by right-clicking on the text area and choosing Text inside >
Properties…, which allows you to enter a value.
Selecting the containing object
When you click on the object with text inside, you select the text area. The object within which the text
flows (most commonly just a shape) is a child of that text area, so it behaves similar to a group.
So if you move, copy, delete or resize the text area in the Selector Tool, the whole combined object is
moved, copied, deleted or resized. If you want to select and edit the shape that contains the text, you can
use Ctrl+click ,or right-click, Text inside > Select …. With the shape selected you can resize or edit it and
then the text will re-flow within the new outline.
A Group of 2 circles with text inside and one circle selected
To make a copy of the shape without the text, select the shape, then copy and paste.
To make a copy of the text without the shape, select all the text in the Text Tool, then copy and paste.
Creating text filled shapes
If you want to create a text shape then all you need to do is to right-click the object and select Text inside >
Select shape.
Now switch into the Transparency tool and increase the transparency to 100%
Content Catalog Text Inside Designs
The Content Catalog now includes some text panel designs that make use of this new feature of text inside
shapes. See the Components > Print & Web Components > Text Panels folder (Insert > Shapes > More
Text Panels …).
Tables
Designer now includes tables. 15.1 supports basic table insertion and editing, including adding and
removing rows/columns, resizing rows & columns, various table formatting options and automatic
formatting of the table to fit contents. It has limited support for selecting and editing complete rows and
columns - this aspect of table editing will be improved in a future update.
Find tables in the Insert menu and also in the Content catalog under Components > Print & Web
Components > Tables, where you will find a selection of attractive table designs.
Table cells
Each table cell has a text column and a background shape, which determines the background color of the
cell. Use the Text Tool to edit and format text within the cell, just as you would edit any other text. You can
also place any other type of object in a table cell by inserting it embedded in the text. To do this select and
copy the object you want to insert to the clipboard, place the text caret in the cell and paste (Ctrl+V).
Selecting inside tables to set background colors
The table as a whole has a background color and that determines the default color of each table cell. But
each cell can have its own background color and you can set the color of a whole row or column of cells.
If the table is not already selected, the first click on the table will select the whole table (you see all the
table’s handles appear). Click on a color to change or replace any of the colors used in the table.
With the table selected, clicking on a table cell will select that table cell’s background shape (the status line
will show “1 shape inside”). Then you can set the color of that cell, or click ‘no color’ on the color line to
reset it, so it will reveal the table’s background color.
You can also change the color of all cells in a row or column by selecting the whole row/column. With the
whole table selected, click on the row or column’s select/reposition handle. That selects all the background
shapes in the row or column. You can then set the background color, or reset the background color, of all
the selected cells.
Outlines
With the whole table selected, the line width control on the top bar shows the width of the cell outlines for
the whole table. You can change the outline width using that control, or remove the visible outlines by
selecting ‘None’. You can also change the outline on a specific cell by selecting that cell and using the same
line width control. And similarly on a whole row or column of cells, by selecting the row column.
To set the color of the outline, right-click on the color line and choose Set line color.
List styles include all the list settings you see in the List Properties dialog, from indents to bullet symbols
and colors. Each level within a list can have different settings and these are also all recorded in the list style.
The example above has only 2 levels of list, but you can have as many levels as you like.
To update a list style, simply modify a list that uses the style and then use the Update option in the styles
list, the same way you update ordinary paragraph styles.
Graphical lists (where you can use any graphical object as the bullet or number) are not yet supported with
list styles.
Next paragraph style
This is one of the settings for a text style. For paragraph styles it determines what style should be applied
by default to a new paragraph created following the current paragraph. For example heading styles
normally set the Next paragraph style to Normal text, because that’s usually what you want immediately
following a heading. With a list style however, it’s more likely that you want another list item to be added
when you hit return at the end of a list item. So for list styles the Next paragraph setting is only used when
you end a list. End a list by hitting return once to add an empty list item, then hit return again. The new
non-list paragraph will then use whatever Next paragraph style you chose for the list style.
Anchored objects and text flow
Anchored objects now have a new setting that determines what happens when they reach the bottom of
the text area to which they are anchored. Usually it’s not desirable to have the object extending below the
bottom of the text area, or even perhaps partially off the page. Instead it’s better to force the text to which
the object is anchored to flow to the next page or column, taking the anchored object with it. Therefore this
is now the default behavior for newly anchored objects. However it’s controlled with a new Affect text
flow checkbox in the Repelling & Anchoring dialog, so you can turn this off if required. And it’s off for
existing anchored objects, to avoid changing the way existing documents are formatted.
Embedded object nesting
Designer now has improved support for nesting of embedded objects in text. For example objects
embedded into a text panel, that is itself embedded in the main text flow of a document, now work
correctly.
Spell Checker language property
Designer now has a new “language” document property. This determines what language new text added to
the document will be set to, for the purposes of spell checking, instead of assuming the document
language should be the same as the language your device is set to. This new property can be seen and
modified with the new Document language option in the Spell Checker menu in the Text Tool. You can
still set any text in your document to any language, regardless of what the “Document language” property
is set to, so you can still have a mixture of languages in your documents when required.
If you change the current document language, you are asked whether all existing text in the document
should also be set to the chosen language, or left unchanged.
When you open an older document, the document language is automatically set according to the language
on the Normal text style in that document. Newly created documents have their document language set to
match the language setting of the current device, as with previous versions of Designer.
Text Panel Alignment options
Text panels can now be top aligned, center aligned, or bottom aligned.
Click the bottom left corner handle to cycle through the three alignment options for your panel. If you hold
the mouse pointer over this handle, the tool-tip that appears shows you the current alignment setting for
the panel.
If the panel is full of text with no empty vertical space, then it will look the same no matter which of the
three alignment options are selected. But the alignment setting also determines how the panel grows and
shrinks, as text is added or deleted, so the setting is still relevant even for ‘full’ panels. Top aligned panels
will always grow and shrink from the bottom, with the top edge staying fixed. Bottom aligned panels are
the other way around - they grow upwards with the bottom edge fixed, so these are commonly used at the
bottom of pages. And centered panels will grow and shrink equally at the top and bottom, so the center of
the panel is fixed.
Text Panel size
Text panels are now also better at remembering the vertical size you have given them. Drag the bottom
centre or top centre handles to change the vertical panel height. If you ever add more text than can fit into
the panel at that height, the panel will grow to accommodate the additional text. But if you later remove
text, the panel will shrink back no further than the height you last set using the height adjustment handles.
This helps to keep panel sizes consistent, which is useful where you have a panel occupying a defined
space or aligned vertically with other panels or objects of the same height.
allows you to enter new words. Use the tilde “~” character in a word to specify the hyphenation point(s) for
that word. Or if you want to prevent a word from being hyphenated at all, enter the word without any tilde
“~” characters in it.
Personal hyphenation lists
Each time you add a word to the hyphenation list for a document, that word is also added to a personal
hyphenation list stored on your computer. Similarly, removing a word also removes the word from your
personal list.
This list is automatically applied to all new blank documents you create (File->New), so you don’t need to
keep adding the same words to all your documents. However when you open an existing document, your
personal hyphenation list is NOT automatically applied to it, because that could change the way the
document appears. It would mean that two people opening the same document, could potentially see
different results, because of their different personal hyphenation lists. So instead applying your personal
list to a document has to be done explicitly - simply press the “Import my list” button on the Document
hyphenation list dialog.
Hyphenation in websites
You can use hyphenation in your websites, but since Designer controls the exact length of each line of text
in the website HTML (so that you get an accurate representation of your page in all browsers), words that
are hyphenated at the ends of lines are broken into two parts. This means search engines won’t index your
site on these broken words.
Multi-weight font improvements
We’ve made some significant changes to the way that Designer handles multi-weight fonts. Prior to this
update if a font was updated so that its multiple weights were presented in a different structure, this could
cause Designer to show missing font warnings for documents that had been created using the previous
version of the font. Now any such changes to a font should be transparent, so you can update to a newer
version of the font without encountering any problems with existing documents that use that font.
This update also has improved handling of the Bold button with multi-weight fonts. Prior to this update,
Designer would not allow bold to be turned on if the selected text used anything but the regular variant of
a font. Now it will work with any variant, automatically choosing the most appropriate heavier weight
variant of the same font. For example if you have some Open Sans Light text selected and you press the
Bold button, the text will appear as Open Sans Regular.
SmartShapes and Symbols
Flowline SmartShapes
Great for flowcharts, diagrams, exploded views, etc. The Flowlines behave just like Arrows, in that you can
change the heads and tails, apply rotation, thickness and so on - as well as having 90° segments which you
can drag to reposition. Find them in the Arrows folder - Insert > Shape > Arrows…
Bar & Column chart label and value text
Now when you change the appearance of a chart label, such as changing the font, font size or color, that
change is immediately replicated across the other labels for each bar. However this only happens if those
other labels have the same text style applied (usually “Bar chart labels”). So if you want one of the labels to
be different, perhaps to highlight one of the bars, simply give it a different style or use the No style option
in the styles menu to remove the style. The same happens with the value text.
Replace Symbol
To replace a symbol, right-click on it and choose Replace symbol… from the context menu. This brings up
the symbol picker, where you can search for a new symbol. You can also use this operation in bulleted lists
to replace the symbol used for the bullet points. Place the text caret in the list, right-click and choose
Replace symbol… this now also works if the symbol is inside a group so you don’t have to perform a
“select inside” operation first.
Photo Filters
There are 10 new Photo Filter Overlays with camera effects such as burn and flare, great for making a more
eye-catching social media profile!