Web Designer 7 Premium puzzle

**grapher** · 02 April 2011, 11:31 AM

I have used WD6 for some months doing so with no more than the usual learning curve difficulties. So impressed, I bought into WD7 Premium. I have hit a bit of a wall and though I am sure the problem is down entirely to my lack of experience with this software, I can't figure out what I am doing wrong.

I have a page linked to the navigation bar on the index page (we are not allowed to furnish url's on the forum are we?). The link target is a chart which changes each month as rainfal totals aggregate. I have never had any problems with WD6 changing the link by as it were, creating it from scratch for the new .png image with the same name. The name of the target file never changes. The program steadfastly refuses to update when either previewed (export/preview) or opening my index file using my web browser. - Yes, I have cleared the browsing history.

So I went back to square one deleting the button in the navbar and creating it again with a link to the target file. Not only does the program not seem to export the modified link but having as I believe deleted the button, the "old" navbar button is still there in preview!!! What on earth is going on here? Something must be staring me in the face but I am quite unable to figure out just what it is.

I tried several times to upload a screenshot but the Talkgraphics server seems not to be taking uploads even tho the jpg size was not outside size limits.

Help please as I need to update my web site data.

**Big Frank** · 02 April 2011, 12:25 PM

Just as an exercise, change the name of the image and obviously the name within the link. Does it update now to the new image?

**grapher** · 02 April 2011, 12:27 PM

I have found the problem and it is now fixed. Thanks to one of the improvements that comes with WD7 Premium namely the Layer Gallery thumbnails and above all, drop-down detailed objects lists, I was able to see that I had two identical Navbars. Until I thought to use that new feature I was quite unaware that I had somehow pasted precisely the same Navbar one on top of another. I had been editing the Navbar that I had unlocked and which was not the top layer but the lower layer. My edits were not appearing to have been completed because the second Navbar was occluding the one I edited. As they were identical in graphical appearance it was not at all obvious that I was trying to navigate using the upper layer which was locked!

I hope that is clear! I don't think that I would have ever seen that using WD6 which does not have the drop down objects list. I would however have worked it out eventually because my next stab was to have been to delete the Navbar and create a totally fresh one. At that point having deleted one Navbar I would have spotted that there still was an identical (second copy) one on the page.

**jimhanus** · 02 April 2011, 12:52 PM

grapher,
I would have a hard time counting how many times I've "found" bitmaps etc. underneath or on top other objects that I didn't know were there. Twice in the last week, once today. I must have had an object repeat on all pages at some time in the past (unintended) but it was on a lower layer so I never saw it. What I do regularly is set the quality to Outline and look on each page for objects that don't belong. When building a website I'll also use an existing page to start the next page and sometimes a files ends up below or directly on top of another duplicate file. When it's a duplicate the outlines will usually look (to me anyway) thicker.
Hope this helps,

Jim

**grapher** · 02 April 2011, 01:15 PM

That is an interesting comment. I did not know about being able to view in Outline Quality. How do I get into that? Though the benfits of WYSIWYG are profound several years of using first Coolpage and more recently Web Designer have taught me how easy it is to create an object on a page without knowing it is there. These objects then become an overhead of course and I would like to be able to tidy up my own site using the technique you mentioned.

**Merlin_AZ** · 02 April 2011, 02:15 PM

Window> Quality> Outlines.

**grapher** · 02 April 2011, 04:54 PM

Thank you. What a useful tool - found another phantom Navbar lurking on another page. I've learned a lot today which is very pleasant.

**Big Frank** · 04 April 2011, 02:28 AM

Originally Posted by Merlin_AZ

Window> Quality> Outlines.

Not necessarily obvious if you have two identical objects overlaid.

**viiartz** · 14 April 2011, 04:31 PM

Hi all, I had a similar problem in that every time i would export the website I would find a button layout that i designed but decided not to use or turn into a navbar. I looked in every layer (well I thought I had) eventually finding then in one of the MouseOff Layer on one of the last pages I had duplicated. The graphics where not in the actual webpage but on the work area (or scratch area- don't know what you call it). Anyway this led me to think that maybe when exporting from XWDP it should not export anything in the work area, or at least XWDP should alert you that you have stuff in the work are and it will be exported giving you the choice to do so or not. I also had a hires picture that, again thought I had deleted until I noticed a huge file being ftp'ed completely constipating my upload. Surely there should be a better way to deal with graphic item not used by anything on the page(s). Just my five cent worth!