Is there a way to save an existing page layout in a source collection as a “template page layout” for other books? I know that I can make a collection for my page templates. Is there a way to import the ones from books that are already done?
Am I just missing this?
Also, setting up custom pages with the % on each box is really annoying. I suppose if I understood why it is done this way, I could appreciate it better.
Jeni
Hi @JeniBister,
I think Colin has been answering your first question… maybe @ColinSuggett you’d like to summarize something here for the community’s sake?
Also, setting up custom pages with the % on each box is really annoying. I suppose if I understood why it is done this way, I could appreciate it better.
Can you say what is annoying about it? If you’re thinking “why isn’t this in cm or pixels or something” it’s because Bloom books are born to be flexible in layout so that they can be published in different formats. A book make for A5 might be turned into a Big Book, or shrunk down to a video on a feature-phone. Using proportions makes this possible.
John
Re %… I guess it is that you have to manually slide the boxes. If you know the number it would be nice to type it in. So, % would be fine. It might be nice to have them option to see container size without having to hover. Does that make sense?
So Jeni are you saying that in addition to %, you’d like to see another measure while setting the side of the boxes? Would you want mm?
So Jeni are you saying that in addition to %, you’d like to see another measure while setting the side of the boxes? Would you want mm?
I’ve also experienced difficulty moving the slider to a precise %age. So, I think what Jeni is saying is she’d like the option of being able to type in a precise %age figure using her keyboard, rather than using her mouse and the slider.
In this gif, I was trying to get precisely 50% https://i.imgur.com/rj7Made.gif. After fiddling for 30 seconds, I still hadn’t succeeded.
So, I think this is analogous to being able to type in a precise Hex color value rather than use a color slider.
Jeni, is my interpretation of what you are asking correct?
Back to the 1st part of Jeni’s question.
Is there a way to save an existing page layout … as a “template page layout” for other books?
Yes there is. Here are the steps:
Copy Page.Template Starter.About page, and paste in the page copied in step 1: right-click then choose Paste Page.The new template and its new page layout will now be available to exploit when clicking on Add Page in other books in your collection.
Note that in step 5, if there are hidden embedded languages in the page (which will show up as “translation bubbles”, you may need to make these languages visible to remove the text.
Note: we have slated to do further work and improvements to making Template books for version 5.6 of Bloom. Please feel free to share your ideas.
YES! Exactly as Colin said. I can live with the %. I want to define the box sizes.
We slide them, but then have to “let go” and hover to see the dots. I’m trying to make square boxes for some of the pages. I have customized the margins to 1cm in both A5 and A6 books. So I can see my dots when I hover over the box, but I can’t change the box size at that point.
To make things consistent, I would need the slider to have less precise measurements OR click to square OR be able to manually define the box.
I don’t know if that makes sense
OK, that’s really interesting. With my mouse settings, I can very easily drag to any percentage, in fact down to a 2/10s of a percentage point. But I can’t get to that last 1/10 of a percentage. E.g. I randomly chose 39.5% as a target, and could only get to 39.4% or 39.6%.
As a work around, you can temporarily increase the zoom. I zoomed into 180%, and then was able to get to my target of 39.5%.
Just to finish this up… @JeniBister we’d welcome a post under feature requests so that we can continue figuring out what is needed and don’t lose track of this. Thanks.