Opus includes a powerful option to let you reduce the amount of work required in building your publication. To do this, you can create a master design and use it on all your pages.
The Master Style Page can be edited just like any other but in this case whatever is on the Master Style Page will be automatically included on any other page in your publication.
A Master Style is set up when you choose your publication style in the Startup Wizard. If you want to change it subsequently you can do so by selecting the Style page. Click with the right mouse button and select Change Style from the menu that appears. This will take you through part of the New Publication Wizard to choose the style and display mode of your publication.
Note:
Some of the page templates (cover pages, intro pages and dividers) are designed with in-built backgrounds to hide the master page style. Double-clicking on the page will allow you to edit this background and NOT the page itself. To do that you will need to select the page in the Organiser and select Properties from the Edit menu or the right mouse menu.
The Master Style Page is displayed at the top of the list of pages in the Organiser. The background area of the Page View will contain numerous "Master Page" captions to remind you that you are working with the Master Style page.
This is ideal for setting a fixed background for your page or other consistent design elements, including lines, panels, company logos, publication titles etc. It is also useful for ensuring that each page has particularly actions if that is appropriate. In an interactive publication, for example, you may want a Next Page, Previous Page and Exit button on every page.
Note:
When developing your project you can preview the Master Page by pressing the function key F5. However, the Master Page itself does not appear in the published version of your publication
To use a master page on any other page in your publication simply double-click on the Page itself to bring up the Properties dialog. Open the General tab and select Use Master Page option and choose the Master Page you wish to use from the drop down list provided.
Master Pages are also excellent ways of reducing the amount of editing if your publicaiton need changing. If elements which appear on almost every page only need to be edited on one page it reduces the amount of work involvled in changing them.
You can access the individual elements of a Master Page with actions on the content page. This enables you to show or hide, disable or enable different elements of your Master pages. The master page will be shown on the Actions dialog beneath the objects on the current page, and all the objects on the master page will be displayed beneath that.
Simply select the checkbox for any object you want to Show/Hide or Enable/Disable.
This is useful, for example, in hiding or disabling a "back" button on the first page of your publication or a "next" button on the last page.
You can use as many different master pages as you need and select the one required for a particular page as detailed above.
You can even use "nested" Master Pages. This means a Master Page can use another Master page as its master and will incorporate the items from the other Master Page as well as it’s own. Note that any background set on the second master page will be ignored so the original master page should always be the one to define the background.
An example of this might be to set a Master Page to set the background colour and design for the whole publication and perhaps display a company logo. You then design a second master page which has some navigation buttons on for the content and then a third page which just has a score display (for a quiz section perhaps). Both of these secondary master pages can be set to use the original one to ensure they have the same style and logo.
Sometimes you will want items on a Master Page to display over the top of anything else on a page. An example might be navigation buttons which must not be hidden by other content.
Simply select the Objects Appear on Top option and any objects on the master page will display over the top of anything on subsequent pages which use it.
Note:
There is no need to disable the Background on this kind of Master Page, Opus will ignore it automatically. However, if you have a frame on this page which covers the whole page this will also cover all the objects on the subsequent pages which can give rise to confusion.