Using a tracing image

Namo WebEditor can display a tracing image on a document that you are editing. A tracing image is an image that is displayed “under” the content of a document while you are editing it but that does not appear when the document is viewed in a browser. By designing your document on top of a tracing image, you can make it easier to conform to a certain layout: for example, you might draw a rough sketch for a page layout with pencil and paper, scan the drawing into your computer, open the drawing as a tracing image for a blank document, and then build up the document’s layout on top of the tracing image. Similarly, you might take a “screenshot” of a finished Web page for which you don’t have access to the source code (or don’t want to use the source code) and use it as a tracing image.

When you set a tracing image, Namo WebEditor inserts a custom attribute on the <body> tag of the document. Since the custom attribute is not standard HTML, browsers safely ignore it. Also, tracing images are not uploaded to your remote Web site when you publish documents that use them.

You can set the opacity of a tracing image from 0% to 100%. Reducing the opacity makes it easier to distinguish actual document content from the tracing image, but it makes the tracing image harder to see. You can also specify its offset from the top left corner of the document, in case you want to place the tracing image at a different position.

To set a tracing image
  1. On the Document menu, go to the Property group, and click Desktop Image. The Document Properties dialog box will open to the Tracing Image Settings tab.
  2. Enter the path of the image file to use as the tracing image. Only local paths are supported; images on the Web will not work.
  3. Specify the opacity of the tracing image with the Transparency slider.
  4. Specify the offset of the tracing image from the top left corner of the document, in pixels. Leave the X and Y values at 0 if you want the tracing image to start exactly at the top left corner.
  5. Click OK.

Using a tracing image