Page Links not working...

[r_beacroft]

Hi,
I am new to Xara Web Designer - however, I have followed the instructions in the help to create a link to another page - but unfortunately nothing happens when i click the link...
I have created a website using the interface theme...
Right clicked some text i want to hyperlink - in link tab selected "Link To" and selected the page from the dropdown, all other settings in this tab are default settings.
This generates the html:

<a href="contact.htm" onclick="return(xr_nn());" onmousemove="xr_mo(this,0)" >

The href is correct...but does not work - even if i remove the events - it does not work when run in preview or publish? is it a css issue?

Almost forgot - using Xara Web Designer 7 version: 7.0.0.16149 M DL Mar 23 2011

Also doing the same thing on the home page within the left hand panel does not work - but i cannot even find the relevant html within that page?? My guess is that it must be trying to inject it via javascript??

Also - is there a way to control the mouseover color of the navigation bars? I selected the navigation bar - selected "Edit Navigation Bar" and played around with the menu style settings. To no avail - all color settings appear to be ignored??

I'm guessing being a newbee i must be doing something wrong - any help greatly appreciated...

Regards,
Rik

[gwpriester]

Welcome to TalkGraphics Rik

To link text (I just tried this with the Interface template), highlight the text by dragging the text cursor across the text you want to highlight.

Click the Link icon on the Infobar

Select the link target from the Link menu.

Xara is an WYSIWYG website creation program and not an HTML editor. So you should not alter any of the HTML code except by inserting code in the Head of Body sections using the appropriate buttons on the Website, Page, and Placeholder section. And code you add by hand will be lost as soon as you republish/preview your site.

The only way to change the navigation bar colors is to double click on the navigation bar, and select Ungroup to Edit Graphics. Delete all but one button, usually the HOME button. The button exists on two layers, mouse off and mouse over. And each button is Soft Grouped. So you need to Arrange > Remove Soft Group. This leaves two groups (each group is the button and the text). Ctrl click on the rectangle to change the color. Highlight the text with the Text Tool to change the text color, font, style, etc.

When you have made your changes to both buttons on both layers (you can make one layer or another invisible in the Page and Layer Gallery), select both groups and Arrange > Apply Soft Group.

Open the Website Properties menu, and select the Navigation Bar Tool. Create a new Navigation Bar and set it to appear on each page.

This is a lot of work for a new user and one of the reasons why Xara created the templates.

[r_beacroft]

Hi,

I followed the steps you indicated - I cannot get any links working anywhere on the website...
I have included the web file - hope you are able to help

Also with regards to the navigation bar - there isn't a huge about of choice available from the listings - do you recommend anywhere i can get hold of some more choices?

Kind Regards,
Rik

[gwpriester]

Everything works perfectly Rik - Are you pressing the Export and Preview button? Press the second button with the multiple pages to see your entire website.

I previewed the site and your three e-mail links and website links all work as they should.

One suggestion. After each email address, add (in the Links URL text box) ?subject= and a Subject you would like to appear in your visitor's e-mail program. So, if for example you want the Subject line to say Feedback from My Website then use username@website.com?subject=Feedback from My Website.

[r_beacroft]

The issue is not with the links on contact page - it's with trying to have a link that takes you to the contacts page....
Please try on the home page, highlighting the word "contacts" in the left hand div and linking to the contact page - whatever i do this does not work...

[gwpriester]

I see three buttons on the home page Home Contact and About and all three work for me. I do not see any other links on the home page. Am I missing something?

[r_beacroft]

yep - pls follow instructions i gave...

from the previously attached file, select any text in left hand div on home page and try to have it link to the contact page.

I cannot get it working...

[PhilM]

The text area that starts "Natural Resource Trade Brokers" and the dark blue box behind it are marked as a repeating object and grouped. Those two things are masking any links on the text. Right-click on the area and select "Stop Updating". Then Ungroup. When you do that you'll see that the entire text area is linked to the Contacts page. You'll need to remove that link and apply a new one just to the words that you want to link to other pages. The blue background also has the contacts link so you should probably remove that too.

There's also a group covering that text which you need to remove before the links will work properly. Use the View Quality slider to turn quality down to outlines and you'll see two rectangles off the page to the bottom left. These are grouped with the top bar and so the group covers the entire page. While still in outline view mode, right-click on the rectangles and select "Ungroup".

(Note: Xara lets you click /through/ transparent areas and select things that you can see but browsers don't, they only let you click on the first thing they hit even if it's completely invisible where you click...)

Now, when you preview your page the links will work!

The colours in the Menu style dialog control dropdown menus that can appear below the navbar buttons. Your navbar doesn't have any dropdown menus so these settings are not relevant.

To change button colours you must edit the objects that "draw" the buttons on the page. You can do that in various ways but the simplest and safest is to edit the named colour that they are based on:
* First use the Page and Layer Gallery to make the MouseOver layer visible.
* Now you can see the mouse over colour of all the buttons (note that the display is not WYSIWYG at this point!).
* Now find the green colour on the colour line at the bottom of the window named "Theme Colour 2"
* Right-click on it and select the "Edit Theme Colour 2" item
* Edit the colour
* Close the colour editor, turn off MouseOver visiblity (to avoid confusion) and preview the page/site

Hope that helps.

Phil

[gwpriester]

Thanks Phil - Great explanation