12. Creating GRE Styles

GRE is a powerful feature in Site Studio. GRE stands for Graphical Rendering Engine and creates images on-the-fly (eg. dynamically).

GRE images are built using instructions from a GRE Style. A GRE Style is a blueprint on how a GRE Image should be assembled.

In this project the menu is using GRE Images. When documents are added, new images are automatically created to reflect the changes.

GRE images can be inserted in the document, just like a resource image.

Create a new GRE Style to be used as a text header (see below)

The GRE Styles button is located on the main toolbar.

Click the GRE Styles button, which opens the GRE Styles Dialog.

Click Add to create a new GRE Style and name it "Heading".

Double-click the Heading in the list to bring up the GRE Style Dialog.

Select Arial, 16 pixels and white (#FFFFFF) as text color. Set the left margin to 25.

Click the Background tab.

Select Horizontal in the Background gradient drop-down box. Choose Color1 to #CC6633 and Color2 to #FFFFFF. This will make a horizontal gradient from Color1 to Color2.

Click the Border & Overlay tab.

Enable Use Overlay Image and click the Select button.

Choose Library Image and click the Select button.

Select the arrow_08_right_down image in the Symbols folder. Click Select.

Click OK to exit the Select Resource Type Dialog.

Select Place Left in the Placements drop-down box.

Set left padding to 4 pixels.

Enable Color Transformation and pick the orange color (#FF9900). Color transformation will automatically shift the colors in the image to the selected color.

Click the Image Size tab.

Set the width to 250 pixels and the height to 24 pixels.

Now the GRE Style is complete, click OK.

Also click OK to exit the GRE Styles Dialog.

In the next chapter the new GRE style will be tested.