Goodbye XARA !

[davehewy]

I've been using Dreamweaver MX2004 & Xara Webstyle 4 to create a page, it was all going fine until yesterday! I may have manually changed the .js file for the menu bar, but now when I try to click the edit in webstyle button, I just don't see my menu bar. They seem to have lost contact with each other!!

Anyone any ideas

Dave

[Flash]

hmmm .. strange.

The only time I can't see the menu is when I have put the .html file in a frame and I open e.g. the frame page like "index.html"

but thats me and I call it "sbtk" http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

[davehewy]

If I load up Xara standalone, and go to my project, I still don't see the menubar. I'm really confused about how Xara remembers where your project is and what's in it.
Why on earth can't you just "open" a menubar irrespective of where it is or what project Xara thinks it's in. It seems that if you just change one thing Xara loses the link and that's it, you've got to start from scratch because you have no way of just loading it in.
Is there a way around this?

Dave

[bb2]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by DaveHewy:
I've been using Dreamweaver MX2004 & Xara Webstyle 4 to create a page, it was all going fine until yesterday! I may have manually changed the .js file for the menu bar, but now when I try to click the edit in webstyle button, I just don't see my menu bar. They seem to have lost contact with each other!!

Anyone any ideas

Dave <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hi what changes did you make to the .js file? or did you ammend the html script element inserted into the page?

Also if you click on the navbar in dreamweaver it will cause the associated html to be highlighted. Include the html highlighted in your reply as it will display the name of the template and the project folder in which the corresponding template is stored in. In order to access an edited template start webstyle and click on navbars and then select the saved radio button and click on the project folder in which the template you wish to edit is saved.

[davehewy]

I think all I did was change a URL associated with a menu item, and add another drop down item into one of the top level menu items.
I probably also changed the generated html in my page, specifically because I want to have 1 menu bar for my entire site, so I reference one copy of this in a folder from my doc root.
Is there any way at all of importing an existing menu into Xara?

[pcontour]

So Dave, What you are saying is that you changed the .js to include a mainmenu item and a submenu item, instead of using Xara itself.

I have a good post about getting started with Xara.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by FP-User:

http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/confused.gif I had the same problem on FP2003, It took me about 5 hours to finally figure it out. I'm new to this. A person with more experience would have figured this out in a few minutes hopefully. I did not experience this problem with Menumaker itself only with Webstyle 4.
http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif
Assuming you did the same things as me the tool didn't put your graghics into the website that you were working in when you asked FP to create the toolbar in the first place.

Here is how I did it right. I created a folder inside my FP website in the folders view. I went to one of the webpages and then inserted xara ... .
Now in XARA create a new navbar. Just do a couple of buttons. Now hit SAVE. In here make sure that the directory you use in the top bar is the one you just created. Now in the bottom right. Click the button, (it says graphics _or something_. Now make this directory the same as the one you just created. Test it out.
http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/confused.gif
Maybe you don't want to lose all your previous work. You need to be sure the thing will work for maintenance. If you try to move stuff around on your own, it may cost you more in the long run.

Why didn't it just put everything in the right place itself. That's what seemless integration is all about. http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

---------------------------------------

My opinion on the question any way importing an existing menu into Xara.
- You can't insert a menu not created with Xara.
- Making a menu with Xara is so fast that I wouldn't bother trying to reuse one that I created for another purpose. But if I did, I would open Xara twice, once from the desktop to see the previous menu and the second time from DW or FP. Then I would just copy the attributes.

Hopefully someone will reply that I'm wrong on both of my points above.

[davehewy]

Mmm - you're probably right about it being quick enough to just do another one. It won't affect the rest of the page.
I'll just create another new project, build my menu, then copy that out to my website directory, and never edit the original other than through webstyle.
I just find it irritating that it's so unintuitive - these guys need help with the usability of this tool - even the mags i read slag it off in this area, yet it's got some fantastic features.

[pcontour]

http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/wink.gif Sounds good. If you just start off on the right foot, there are very few problems. The thing is they never tell you how to start off. The videos all start out with the directory where the graphics are put already there.

I am using the images folder, in my website, on my PC, for all my images and all my Xara Stuff. Then when I publish everything, since Xara uses relative paths and all the menues work perfectly, just like they did on my PC. I found it was easiest to keep all the pages that I wanted the menu on, in the root folder of my site. If you build the menu from the home page, and then try to use it on a page that is contained in a subfolder, the menu won't work. That's because the relative links were setup to work from the root directory where the home page is located. So since you only want to maintain one menubar that's the way to go. That's a universal issue common to menubars. You could hardcode for you server directory structure. Then you can't test on your own PC.

If you use frames, and you can't with Xara so far, then you have no problem with the menubar, because the frame with the menubar can be setup to allways have the same root directory.