You will probably find that you want to use the edited versions of your themes in multiple Xplains. Instead of editing the theme for each individual Xplain you can save Xplains with your edited themes as "stylesheets" and then load them into the Xplain you are working on.

Important – you can only store one edited theme per Xplain:

The current Xplain always stores only one edited theme, which is the theme that it uses itself. When you choose a theme the Xplain's own internal theme is overwritten with the settings of the chosen theme.

This means that you need to save a separate .xplain file for each edited theme you want to reuse.

1.For each theme you want to reuse, edit the theme in a single Xplain and save it in an easily accessible location.

2.To use a saved theme in a new Xplain, select Customize Theme in the Design toolbar. Then select Copy from... in the Colors and Fonts tab to load the theme from your stylesheet Xplain.

Because of their special capabilities, the properties of numbering tags are separate from HelpXplain themes and styles. This is because these tags are identified by their shapes and their colors. Because of this, the colors and other properties you set in your theme for shapes have no effect on the numbering tags.

How numbering tag properties work

•When you insert the first numbering tag it always has the color shown in the menu.

•If you just click to insert it, it will have 60 x 60 px dimensions. Dragging to insert or changing the size after inserting changes the dimensions for the next tag you insert.

•Subsequent numbering tags selected and inserted from the menu get their color, size, font color and font size from the last tag in the current sequence.

•You can insert a numbering tag with  properties by copying and pasting any existing tag. It will then have the properties of the copied tag, but the number in the sequence will still be correct.

This theme settings tab provides the basic, quick-edit options and will be the only settings that most users need to touch.

Hot tip: Copy theme settings from an existing Xplain!

Each Xplain stores its own theme settings. Once you have set up one with the configuration you like you can import it to another Xplain. Just select Customize Theme in the Design tab, select the Copy From... button and select the .xplain file with the customized theme you want to use.

Texts

Basic formatting options for new text objects. The outline is for an optional box around the text object. You can fine tune the font formatting in the Text CSS tab (see below).

There are separate settings for Body Font (normal text) and Heading Font (headings, duh...).

Shapes

Fill and outline for all new shapes, including arrow shapes. Does not apply to lines or arrows (lines with arrow heads).

Callouts

These settings allow you to define separate fill and outline settings for callouts (text bubbles) so that you can define them differently from standard shapes, if necessary.

Spotlight Shapes

Defines the appearance of animated spotlight shapes. Usually you will only want to adjust the Fill Color and Opacity, which define the color and transparency of the background around the spotlight. By default the background is black and 50% transparent. Different colors will usually only look good for special effects.

The Outline setting defines an optional outline for the spotlight "hole" in the background. In most cases you will want to leave this off.

Lines

Line style, width and color for new lines and arrows (lines with arrow heads).

Images

Outlines to be applied to new images.

This theme settings tab allows you to customize the basic formatting for text objects set in the the Colors and Fonts tab. The styles you edit are those available in the text formatting tools for text objects in the Home tab.

Only change the existing styles

Note that you cannot currently add new styles here. Only the standard 5 styles will be used: Paragraph Text; Heading 1, 2 and 3; and Preformatted (corresponding to pre).