You can create a number of interesting effects by placing cells over other cells. Cells that contain images can be overlaid on cells that contain text and vice versa. There is no limit on the number of cells that can be placed over one another.
Here are two empty cells, initially placed side-by-side on a page:
Let's put an image in the right cell and text in the left. We'll format the text to be yellow and the image to be 125 X 125 pixels.
Now we'll move the left cell over the right cell:
Notice that the two cells are not exactly aligned, but instead we have positioned the text cell so that the text is over the coffee cup. If you click on a spot away from the two cells, you'll see the effect (without the cell borders) as it will appear on the published Web page:
This is one common use of cell overlays -- placing text over images. But you can also create interesting effects overlaying text cells on top of other text cells:
Another way to use overlaid cells for visual effects is to use cell background colors and borders:
The beauty of this approach is that, with a little imagination, you can create attractive graphic effects for your Web site without incurring the time delays required for graphics files.
Cell Order
When you have several cells partly or completely overlapping each other, you need to pay close attention to cell order. You can think of the cells as being like pieces of paper stacked from bottom to top. There are several ways you can affect where a cell is in the stack:
Select the cell (for more on selecting overlaid cells, see next section). Choose "Edit" from the main menu, and then "Cells", and "Order". You'll see the following submenu:
You can choose to move the selected cell "Forwards" (toward the top of the stack), "Backwards", or you can "Bring to Front" or "Send to Back".
Alternatively you can use the "Arrow" buttons on the toolbar ( ) to send the selected cell or cells forward or backwards.
Editing Overlaid Cells
When two or more cells are overlaid, it can be difficult to select and edit individual cells in the stack. This can be especially troublesome if one cell completely covers another -- it's hard in such cases to make changes to the cell that is "underneath".
Here are five overlaid cells:
In this case, although the cells largely overlap one another, there is a part of each cell that can be accessed, if you are reasonably careful. Let's say we want to modify the properties of the third cell from the top. If you move the mouse from the upper left to the lower right of the area containing the cells (with no cells selected), you will see the outline of each succeeding cell:
Here is the cursor hovering over the third cell. (Note that it is shown with a light gray outline indicating its boundaries; it is not yet selected):
To select the cell, click on the gray border, which will turn red. Then use cell formatting to make changes to the cell's format. Here' we've added a light blue background.
It's more difficult if you want to change the content of the cell, rather than its format. To change the content of a cell that is overlaid by other cells, first select all the cells in the region (see "Selecting Multiple Cells").
With all the cells selected, press the "Tab" key several times until the cell whose content you want to modify is bordered in red:
Then press the "Enter" key. The selected cell is brought to the front temporarily. You can easily highlight text or images in the cell and modify them:
After you make changes to the content of the cell, click away from any cells on the page. The modified cell will be restored to its original order in the stack of cells with the modifications in place:
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button to move the top cell lower in (or to the bottom of) the stack:
