swap picture effect

[herbiehysteria]

hi guys, i think this is one of the best forums ever, very impressed with the speed of replies!

my problem is this - i have made 5 icons in XEP and then duplicated each to make one of each with a full shadow effect on it (the only difference between each identical pair is the shadow), - i then exported all ten as .gifs

on the webpage, the design will allow the user to hover over the icons and then a simple 'swap picture on mouse over' behaviour has been set to show the shadow around the particular icon when hovered upon

i have created a table with each seperate icon in its own cell

however, it works fine but the second icon (the one with the shadow) changes fine but to a smaller version of itself i.e the size of the icon is smaller when it changes

i want it so that just the shadow 'appears' around the icon on mouse over
your help appreciated
Herbb

[aridzone]

What you need to do is add some of your background to your buttons.
This way when the shadow is applied you see it on the background.
Keep the button the same size.

Like this:

[herbiehysteria]

thanx for the quick reply aridzone
seems very simple to do, can u pls explain how i need to add a bit of my background to my icons? do i need to do that for both?
your help appreciated
herb

[aridzone]

If you have a solid color background it's easy.
Just create a rectangle large enough to hold the button and shadow.
Color it same color as background color, and set line width to none.
Then place it in back of all your buttons. You can copy/paste. Be careful the buttons are all located in the same spot.

[raynerj1]

The shadows you applied made the graphic bigger, when you exported the larger graphic the same size as the original graphic the graphic got scaled down, or if you saved them larger, the browser drew them smaller. The 2 graphics have to be the same size. If you take a look at the navigation buttons on this page, you can see what I mean about size, and what was said about positioning.

[gwpriester]

Welcome to the Xtreme Conference.

The shadow is actually a bitmap. If you look at the button with the shadow in Outline View (Window > Quality) you can see the bitmap rectangle.

So, as has been suggested, make a rectangle that is large enough to accommodate the shadow and then duplicate the rectangle for the non shadow version. Make sure that both buttons are in exactly the same place in the rectangles.

The background rectangles can be transparent or the same color as your page background.

Gary