Xara Webster - Selecting Objects

This page describes some more advanced methods of selecting objects in Xara Webster.

Movie

To see a movie, click here.

To select difficult objects

If you are having trouble selecting an object, you may like to try the following :

Zoom in on the object so you can click more accurately.
Reduce the quality setting to its lowest level and click on the outline of the object.
If the object is the back object in a blend with many steps, try using a high-zoom on the tiny section of the back object still visible.

To select objects in objects

With Xara Webster you can easily select objects that are contained within blends, text objects and groups; these objects can then be edited as if they were not contained. Select Inside is a shortcut to select the object you actually click on, irrespective of whether it is part of a group, blend or text object (if you want to select a compound object inside another object you can use Select Member - see below).

Choose the Selector Tool.
Place the mouse pointer over the contained object you want to select.
Do one of the following :
- CTRL-click to select the object.
- CTRL+SHIFT-click to swap the object between selected and not selected.

CTRL-Click to select the object under the mouse pointer even if it is contained inside other objects.

Notes

Some operations are not available when any selected object is inside another one.
If you hold down CTRL when you drag-and-drop an attribute onto an object inside another object, the attribute will be applied to the object inside the compound object. So for example if you hold down CTRL as you drag-and-drop a color from the color gallery onto some text, it will be applied inside and only one letter will change color.

To select a member of an object

Xara Webster has a special form of Select Inside which allows you to select a particular member of a compound object as opposed to the normal select inside which always selects the actual object you click on. With select member, a click selects the object inside the compound object which contains the clicked object. If that object is a compound object, another click selects a member in that object and so on. When the last selected object is not a compound object the next click selects the outermost object again.

Choose the Selector Tool.
Place the mouse pointer over the member of the compound object.
Do one of the following :
- CTRL+ALT-click to select the member object.
- CTRL+ALT+SHIFT-click to swap the member object between selected and not selected.
If the required member object is deeper inside the object, repeat step 3.

CTRL+ALT-click to select the next member of the selected object.

Example

The picture shows a group containing a rectangle and a (2-line) text object. CTRL-ALT-clicking on the letter S selects the entire group. CTRL-ALT-clicking again selects the member of that group, the text object. CTRL-ALT-clicking again selects the member of that compound object, the upper line of text in the text object. CTRL-ALT-clicking again selects one level deeper; the single text character. A final CTRL-ALT-click reselects the entire group allowing you to cycle through all the objects under the mouse pointer.

Notes

Some operations are not available when any selected object is inside another one.

To select objects under other objects

Often objects in the document cover all or most of other objects. Use this to select the hidden objects.

Choose the Selector Tool.
Place the mouse pointer above the hidden object.
Do one of the following :
- ALT-click to select the object underneath.
- ALT-click again to deselect that object and to select the next object underneath.

The first ALT-click selects the object on top first if it is not selected already. Subsequent ALT-clicks go on to select the objects underneath. If the selected object is the bottom object, ALT-clicking reselects the top-most object.

Click to select the object under the selected object. (ALT-click)

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