Attributes pane

The Attributes pane displays all of the properties of the currently selected object in the Workspace. These properties vary greatly depending on the object that has been selected.

General

These attributes are common to all elements in the template and will always appear.

  • ID: A unique identifier for the selected element. Used for CSS selections (see Styling templates with CSS files) as well as scripts (see Writing your own scripts) affecting single elements.
  • Class: One or more classes that can be common to more than one elements. Used for CSS selections and scripts that can affect multiple elements.
Do not give an element the ID 'pages' or the class name 'dynamic'. These are reserved words. Using them as an ID or class name leads to undesirable effects.

Other

These attributes are available depending on the item selected.

  • Allow Resizing: Allows columns in a table to be resized directly within the Workspace in Design mode.
  • Alternate text: The "Alt" text used when hovering over the image in a browser. Also used for accessibility.
  • Cellspacing: Defines the cellspacing attribute of the table which controls the spacing between cells in the table.
  • Cellpadding: Defines the cellpadding attribute of the table which controls the padding inside each cell of the table.
  • colspan: Number of columns that this Dynamic Table cell spans.
  • Expand table: If this option is unchecked, the table will not be merged with data in the Preview mode or in output. This can be useful when debugging or optimizing a template.
  • Field: Associates an element in a Dynamic Table body row with a data field.
    This setting corresponds to the data-field attribute (see A Dynamic Table's data- attributes).
  • Format: Defines how a value must be formatted. Which formats are available depends on the data type of the corresponding field in the Data Model (see Data types). For a detailed description of the options see: Formatting variable data.
    This setting corresponds to the data-format attribute (see A Dynamic Table's data- attributes).
  • Hide when empty: By default, a Dynamic Table gets hidden if it contains no data. Uncheck this option to keep the empty table in the output.
    This setting corresponds to the data-hide-when-empty attribute (see A Dynamic Table's data- attributes).
  • Repeat: Associates a Dynamic Table body row with a detail table in the data. The row will be repeated once for each record in the detail table. See Dynamic Table.
  • Show Row:
    • Repeats a row in the body of a Dynamic Table, if that row's sub-table runs over multiple pages. The options are:
      • Initial (default): The row will only appear once.
      • All: The row will appear on all pages.
      • Before page break: The row will appear on all pages except the last one.
      • After page break: The row will appear on all pages except the first one.
    • Rows in the header or footer of a Dynamic Table have the following options:
      • All: The row will appear on all pages.
      • Before page break: The row will appear on all pages except the last.
      • After page break: The row will appear on all pages except the first.
      • At end of table: The row will only appear on the last page.
    This setting corresponds to the data-show-row attribute (see A Dynamic Table's data- attributes).
  • Source: The location of the image file. For image resources in the template, the image path is often images/<imagefile>.<extension>
    When the source is a PDF, an addition button appears next to this box that opens the Select Image dialog.
  • Sum: Adds a running total (i.e. a subtotal) to a cell in a Dynamic Table. See Adding subtotals.
  • Type (form input element): Use the drop-down to select an input type. The drop-down lists all input types, including HTML5 input types (see https://www.w3schools.com/html/html_form_input_types.asp).
  • Whitespace element: Check to make the element a whitespace element, meaning it will only appear on the page if there is enough space for it. This is useful for templates with variable height elements or conditional elements, to fill empty spaces with transpromotional material. Note that only top-level elements (i.e. not inside another element such as a table or div) will function as whitespace elements.

Geometry

These attributes are available for certain elements that have position or size attributes such as images and boxes.

  • Top: The horizontal distance from the top-left of the object to the left position of its parent. This is used only for relative and absolute positioned elements.
  • Left: The vertical distance from the top-left of the object to the top position of its parent.
  • Width: The width of the element, by default in pixels. For an image, this defaults to the original image width in pixels.
  • Height: The height of the element, by default in pixels. For an image, this defaults to the original image height in pixels.
  • The Reset Image Size button resets the selected image to its original size.
When no unit is added to a geometry value, the default unit will be added to the value; see Print preferences.

Page

These attributes appear when selecting the Page node in the Outline Pane.