Using the frontend to create images

There is a frontend which can help you creating the images used as buttons or banners in XWeb. It is still in a very prototypical state, so do not expect great convenience, although it should be far easier to use than vi or notepad.

You can start the frontend by calling the ird script for your system from the "bin" directory in the XWeb distribution ("ird" for "image render dialog"). This should pop up a small Swing window with some buttons in it (click to enlarge images in separate windows):

To create a new image press the "New.." button which should open the following dialog:

In this dialog you can set all option XWeb supports with its internal renderer. The default settings give you a rather boring image with a size of 40 pixels high and 100 pixels wide, with no background color, no background image and no text rendered. You can turn all these things on and off using the checkboxes supplied. A preview of the image will appear at the bottom of the dialog once you set options to render something:

Whenever you change settings in the dialog, the preview will update -- in text fields you will have to press the enter key to update the preview, otherwise it will happen directly with the change. The text rendered can be changed so you can experiment with the appropriate sizes for your page names. Typically it is a good idea to use the longest entry to make sure it fits nicely.

Once you have created an image you would like to use you can press the "Ok" button to go back to the first window. Here press the "Save as.." button behind the "XWeb" label, which will save your settings in the format XWeb expects in the makefile. Save the results as a text file somewhere and open it in your favored text or XML editor. You can now copy&paste the XML fragment into the makefile for your website, the only information you will have to change is the type name and the file naming pattern.

You can also use this dialog to create buttons for other purposes if you use the "Save as..." button behind the "Image" label. If you use this button you can save your image in different bitmap formats like PNG or JPEG -- the format is determined by the ending. Please note that GIF is not supported due to patent issues.

A last option is to save the information for rendering the images as Java Properties file. This format can be used to render images using another command line tool: the ir script in the "bin" directory of the distribution. Call the script without parameters to get some help on the options. It can create images of the defined type by using the properties file created and a text given on the command line.