Gallery Preview Rotated

Hello! I have XDP 17 on Windows 10 Pro.

The gallery on the live published website displays properly. http://www.liveoakmanagementgroup.com/residential.htm

I'm ready to add more photos. Within XDP the gallery is displaying properly.

When I preview website (.xar file) the photos in the gallery are rotated. No matter what browser I choose, gallery is rotated sideways.

Attached is screen cap of preview.

Any ideas what the culprit may be?

*Note: Within Xara and the Live website view have been in place since May. I don't want to add anything to the gallery until I know why the preview is rotated.

Attachment 128066

I think it would be best if you uploaded a gallery page so we can see this Sue.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Egg Bramhill

I think it would be best if you uploaded a gallery page so we can see this Sue.

---

Egg, just upload the one .htm page?
Where do I upload?

Does this help Sue?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAO0t-T6A6s

Yes, this helps. The directions are clear and easy. Thank you, Egg.

My .xar file size is 266,526 KB and suspect it’s too large; hangs when I try to upload.

You can see a live copy of the website here: http://www.liveoakmanagementgroup.com/residential.htm

I did create a folder named “xar” in File Manager on my hosting site for the website in question. The file name is “lomg_website.xar”. For me when I go to the following url, the .xar file begins to download:

http://www.liveoakmanagementgroup.co...mg_website.xar

Hopefully you’re able to view to give me some feedback. Thank you for taking a look. If you have any suggestions how to better share/upload this file, let me know.

Sue, on the internet the images are in the correct orientation. If I open your site I get the following Page Not Found error.

I don't require the whole site. Make a duplicate of the site and delete all the other pages leaving only one page, the one that's giving the incorrect orientation. This will reduce the file size.

Other than that you can put your xar file in Dropbox, Google Drive or similar and post the link here.

Egg, thank you for continued help.

Made duplicate and deleted all pages but one.

Here's link to .xar file in DropBox:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5r7rfetjqp...bsite.xar?dl=0

Hi Sue, it previews as expected for me in the correct 'landscape' orientation.

@Egg & @Sue, I previewed Sue's XAR in Pro v17 and the outcome was the same 90 deg rotation. It appears to be an outcome of the underlying soft-grouped rectangle being rotated by the same 90 deg.

Attachment 128105

I reset two photos (photo + line colour + shadow) - they previewed as expected.

Attachment 128106

It publishes to live as viewed in the editor - so can't explain the transition in preview - maybe something related to rotation angles and resets?

Gary

That's very interesting Gary. When I preview it in Xara Designer Pro X 17.0.0.58732 DL x64 Mar 12 2020 it previews correctly.

I don't like these white rectangles with shadows as each one exports as an individual images, not large but considering Sue may have 100 of these (at present) on her site that's a lot of unecessary calls to a server. Far better to create a single named image which repeats as often as required. One issue is there's currently an overlap of each image due to the shadow.

@Gary, how did you reset the 2 photos that display?

@Egg, I do have 100's of photos on 16 different pages. It sounds like you think I should scrap current gallery. I am willing to put in time with tutorials to learn something new. Just curious if either of you can point me in the right direction.

This is strange and I wonder what caused the issue. I even looked back on several previous versions of this website that I have backed up, they all do the same thing and rotation is off -90.

Trying to duplicate the issue or correct it, I just placed a new gallery on the page from "Components/Images Resources/Photo Slideshows & Galleries". The galleries are NOW widgets, i.e "Landscape Gallery Widget". This probably prevents the issue I'm now experiencing because edits are made within the widget.

The gallery I used is NOT a widget and I did remove "Soft Group" to get the number of columns and rows needed. The template for this website is "Classic Websites" and "Elementary Theme". The gallery page on the template is now a widget. Mystery somewhat solved, the web template and the gallery template initially used several years ago were NOT widgets.

What do you think about me removing the gallery and using the current gallery widget? Time consuming to set up, so wonder if you think I should go a different direction?

Many thanks.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by hotrodsue

@Gary, how did you reset the 2 photos that display?

@Egg, I do have 100's of photos on 16 different pages. It sounds like you think I should scrap current gallery. I am willing to put in time with tutorials to learn something new. Just curious if either of you can point me in the right direction.

This is strange and I wonder what caused the issue. I even looked back on several previous versions of this website that I have backed up, they all do the same thing and rotation is off -90.

Trying to duplicate the issue or correct it, I just placed a new gallery on the page from "Components/Images Resources/Photo Slideshows & Galleries". The galleries are NOW widgets, i.e "Landscape Gallery Widget". This probably prevents the issue I'm now experiencing because edits are made within the widget.

The gallery I used is NOT a widget and I did remove "Soft Group" to get the number of columns and rows needed. The template for this website is "Classic Websites" and "Elementary Theme". The gallery page on the template is now a widget. Mystery somewhat solved, the web template and the gallery template initially used several years ago were NOT widgets.

What do you think about me removing the gallery and using the current gallery widget? Time consuming to set up, so wonder if you think I should go a different direction?

Many thanks.

---

Sue,

The reset was simply drag an image from the Bitmap Gallery, add a 4px line and shadow to it (no soft group or rectangle).

I have a custom-built grid for photos that works across mobile and desktop variants, but I'd like to share that with Egg/Acorn tomorrow before releasing it. It would work as a template, you'd copy the grid and paste it to each page, then just drag your photos onto it. The shadow is a CSS style and can be changed to whatever you want and it applies to all images. Likewise, when you add an image it automatically goes to all variants.

Back tomorrow,

Gary

@Egg have some ideas which I'll post shortly, based on your comments.

Gary

@Egg

Had some thoughts here:

1. Simplified the Photo Grid (no rectangles and shadows) and no widgets either, just a simple hand-crafted photo grid with a CSS shadow class that will work across multiple variants - Sue uses the Xara Photo Popup; for simplicity I've just stuck with it, rather than scurry-around looking for code-heavy lightbox alternatives - standard popups are really a non-starter for lots of photos, unless you think of using a javascript array - too much hassle!

2. I doubt many will trawl through pages and pages of photos - design suggestion: retain a simple photo grid for recent projects (a photo grid page); offline PDF catalogue for those visitors that want more (or even an online subsite) plus a supersite storyboard that could tell a few project stories, successes, references etc.

Here are the basics: https://initiostar.co.uk/demo/Gallery/ and here is the supersite storyboard concept: https://initiostar.co.uk/demo/Galler..._page_slider-a (XAR attached)

The main site is too large to load here: OneDrive: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AiIuqUZcKl-OiJ1l...YTWnA?e=gTh4J6

Any comments and feedback to Sue welcome - the embedded supersite will need some extra explanation, but the code is in Website HTML Head for the Slider.

Gary

Intresting template Gary. I'm still looking at it but just some initial comments.
Your images are mainly @ a 16 x 9 ratio. So I'd suggest you create a 16x9 template.
Obviously for other photo resolutions you need to set up further sizes templates.
Secondly the named images and alt text become meaningless once you drop another image onto them.

Only my first observations, still looking ;)

I was out of pocket most of yesterday, and back at it today.

@Gary, I really like all that you have done and agree not many would scroll through all those pages of pictures. It's great to offer an alternative to the customer. You've got some great ideas, and I appreciate your sharing your work. If we go with embedded supersite, I'd definitely need more instruction. It seems like @Egg may give more feedback as well.

@Egg, thank you for your observations. Since I work mostly with templates and widgets, it's wonderful to have input from those that have more experience with design, as you and @Gary. Years ago, before finding Xara, I did use Adobe Dreamweaver. Self taught, spent a bit of time getting basics on coding. That basic still helps me today. Without formal training in Dreamweaver, the transition to Xara templates works well for me. Perhaps I should look into more Xara tutorials to be better versed in Xara design outside of templates and widgets.

At this time, I'll sit tight and see if either of you have anything else to add. Then will plan to move forward to complete this project. Your help is much appreciated.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by hotrodsue

I was out of pocket most of yesterday, and back at it today.

@Gary, I really like all that you have done and agree not many would scroll through all those pages of pictures. It's great to offer an alternative to the customer. You've got some great ideas, and I appreciate your sharing your work. If we go with embedded supersite, I'd definitely need more instruction. It seems like @Egg may give more feedback as well.

@Egg, thank you for your observations. Since I work mostly with templates and widgets, it's wonderful to have input from those that have more experience with design, as you and @Gary. Years ago, before finding Xara, I did use Adobe Dreamweaver. Self taught, spent a bit of time getting basics on coding. That basic still helps me today. Without formal training in Dreamweaver, the transition to Xara templates works well for me. Perhaps I should look into more Xara tutorials to be better versed in Xara design outside of templates and widgets.

At this time, I'll sit tight and see if either of you have anything else to add. Then will plan to move forward to complete this project. Your help is much appreciated.

---

Sue,

My start point would be to ascertain whether your client has any appetite for a redesign - at this time your site publishes as expected and the only issue that occurs (inconsistently) is photos are rotated 90 deg in preview, but not when published.

It is relatively simple to a create custom-build photo grid - your 5 x 5 grid took about 15 minutes, no widgets and no soft groups. Your photos have a 4:3 ratio (500px /325px) which can be resized (in whole px) to 167px /125px with 30px spacers in a 5 x 5 grid on a page width of 1200px.

From there you can drag your photos direct from the Bitmap Gallery - use Share with Variants for the mobile variant - the upside here is that you can easily change the variant layout to 3 columns for easier viewing.

Attachment 128140

If you want a template grid and some instructions, let us know and I can forward a working example.

Should your client have a desire to revamp the site, then I'd talk through the ideas and come back to us with a suggested framework.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Initiostar

Sue,

My start point would be to ascertain whether your client has any appetite for a redesign - at this time your site publishes as expected and the only issue that occurs (inconsistently) is photos are rotated 90 deg in preview, but not when published.

It is relatively simple to a create custom-build photo grid - your 5 x 5 grid took about 15 minutes, no widgets and no soft groups. Your photos have a 4:3 ratio (500px /325px) which can be resized (in whole px) to 167px /125px with 30px spacers in a 5 x 5 grid on a page width of 1200px.

From there you can drag your photos direct from the Bitmap Gallery - use Share with Variants for the mobile variant - the upside here is that you can easily change the variant layout to 3 columns for easier viewing.

Attachment 128140

If you want a template grid and some instructions, let us know and I can forward a working example.

Should your client have a desire to revamp the site, then I'd talk through the ideas and come back to us with a suggested framework.

---

Gary, as a matter of fact, the client has me do monthly updates and just recently asked me to put that on hold as the winter months are slow and they are cutting back expenses. All I need to do is add about 20 pictures. Thank you for confirming that it publishes properly, even though preview is rotated.

At this time, I'll not do a redesign. If they pick back up with regular monthly updates, I would approach them with redesign idea. For future reference, I plan to pop on the forum for input at the start of the project. Sometimes customers ask for something that in my opinion doesn't look or work so great. The design you came up with is much more appealing; to highlight recent jobs and have online subsite or offline .PDF catalogue.

Another reason to pop on here for project ideas is the current gallery is time intensive to update. We want the first page to show the most recent, and unless I have a full page of pictures to create a whole new first page, I am copying and moving pictures on all 12 pages of pictures. Unlike a widget that you drag and drop photos new photos, and it moves remaining photos down the list.

Once again, many thanks for your input and I certainly welcome further input or ideas should you have any.

Maybe i'm missing the point - why can't you just draw a rectangle on a page the size you want the overall grid to be. Then set up horizontal guidelines that are say 150px apart. Drag one pic onto the page, position and resize - you can also crop the image using the photo tool.
Drag next image position, resize, rinse and repeat. Once you've completed the grid, select all the images and use Image\Properties\Pop up\Options to create the pop ups. Delete the rectangle guide you used.
Example
http://seascapephotographs.com/sea_and_rocks.htm

You're not missing anything LGF, your method is excellent. However Sue has a specific need and I expect almost all the images she uses are of a standard size and she also wants a background border with a wall shadow. She doesn't want the bother of needing to resize each and every photo brought into her website, hence the template solution.

I'll post my template solution shortly which I believe will suit Sue's requirements as well as being useful to other Xara users.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Egg Bramhill

You're not missing anything LGF, your method is excellent. However Sue has a specific need and I expect almost all the images she uses are of a standard size and she also wants a background border with a wall shadow. She doesn't want the bother of needing to resize each and every photo brought into her website, hence the template solution.

I'll post my template solution shortly which I believe will suit Sue's requirements as well as being useful to other Xara users.

---

Egg, I look forward to your template solution.

Many thanks to you and all those that have contributed.

Here you go Sue. I'll post the template shortly:

Here's the template.

And a link to the template within an Iframe

LINK

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Egg Bramhill

Here's the template.

And a link to the template within an Iframe

LINK

---

Egg, thank you so much! This is fantastic! I will be back at this tomorrow. Your time in creating a video tutorial and template is very much appreciated.

Here is a 16 x 12 Landscape Template:

Here is a 16 x 12 Alternating Template:

Sorry, for some reason this template won't upload at the moment.

Egg, thank you for the additional template. I appreciate your trying the alternating template upload.

@Gary and @Egg, the customer just this morning said they are considering an update to their website and asking for my direction. I am thrilled to be able to get this looking and working better. Let me get some ideas together to post here. In the meantime, I welcome continued input. My goal is to submit ideas for web update to customer by the end of the day Friday. I am on Eastern Stand Time in the US.

Late Entrant

:pointAttachment 128195

The construction is the important aspect:

1. The boring grey Soft-group has an image and a white backing with a purple edging.
2. The image - alone - has a 640px pop-up with all the trimmings.
3. The grid starts life as a Table 09 of 1 x 1 with the Caption hidden - most work is done when the QuickShape Tool is active on the selected Smart table (this is a pain to get right).
4. The Soft-group (copy to Clipboard) is added as an Embedded Group when the Text Tool is active in the first Cell.
5. After this you use the Smart Table controls to create more cells, up and across.
6. All the colours of the Smart Table are set to 'no colour'.
7. The images are then dropped onto each template image.
8. You can then add Web Animation > Show pop-up text (HTML Title) for hover pop-up detail; Web Properties > Image > Photo pop-up > Pop-up Title (confused yet?) for the HighSlide reveal; Web Properties > Image > Image > caption (Alt Text) for the Description. For each and every image.
9. As it is a Smart Table you can change the Padding to suit, rearrange rows and columns and grow as you see fit.
10. I added a Repeating Diamond Underlay as you have to add drop shadows carefully for each White/Purple border. Personally, I would use CSS on this instead; I should have added a ClassName to it before all the duplicating!

Acorn

Hi all,
I'been following this thread and thought I'd show a simple basic way to create a photo grid (mainly because I know nothing about code! :)
Sorry about the sound quality - first time I've done this.

Video unavailable
This video is private.

The video is unavailable because you've set it to Private. You need to set it to Public in YouTube LGF ;)

EDIT: Spamiky beat me to it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by hotrodsue

Egg, thank you for the additional template. I appreciate your trying the alternating template upload.

@Gary and @Egg, the customer just this morning said they are considering an update to their website and asking for my direction. I am thrilled to be able to get this looking and working better. Let me get some ideas together to post here. In the meantime, I welcome continued input. My goal is to submit ideas for web update to customer by the end of the day Friday. I am on Eastern Stand Time in the US.

---

Sue, interesting because you indicated your client had parked any changes to the website for the winter - what changed their minds?

I went back to your current website, being the best start point for a rework and have made some suggestions (they may or maynot be helpful depending on your design thoughts).

Attachment 128199

1. Create more width in the design (say 1200px) with the page background colour and pasteboard colours the same.
2. Create two variants desktop and mobile and use Export options of Scale-to-fit-Width.
3. Rationalise the content across Home, About, Services and News such that it is not duplicated - e.g. everything in About goes into About and is not repeated -best way I know to do this is to collate all the text from the three tabs into one text document, analyse, de-dup and rework back into the respective tabs.
4. Gallery pages should be substantially reduced to one page for Residential and one/two pages for Commercial - as accepted a visitor will not plough through pages of photos - if the client is attached to them, as said before, you could create a PDF catalogue.
5. Add a new Tab (Projects or name of choice) that provides storyboards for recent and interesting projects - could include a couple on the Home page too.
6. Create a consistent page style that uses the extra width.
7. Move the Social icons from the header panel - to avoid users clicking away from the main content before they have scrolled down.
8. Remove the yellow block from the logo.

- The embedded Storyboards referenced in an earlier post could be used to tell how a project was conceived, auto scrolling through the pictures in a sequential format - by using the Supersite slider you have the opportunity for text narrative to scroll onto each picture to help tell the story. The difference between using the Supersite slider, as opposed to say WOW or the CSSSlider is that text stays as text rather than losing its crispness when part of an image. To put this in context take a look at https://theparsonage.co.uk/ where the slider works in both desktop and mobile formats.

- FWIW: my original photo grid is included the XAR. I have not added a variant, but the purpose of the XAR is to give a feel for how Scale-to-fit-Width could look. I have simply used your named colours to provide continuity from your current site.

Hopefully you can create a pitch that wins you the business.

Gary

[QUOTE=letsgofishing;630287]Hi all,
I'been following this thread and thought I'd show a simple basic way to create a photo grid (mainly because I know nothing about code! :)
Sorry about the sound quality - first time I've done this.



Sorry about that. Here's the link in case.
https://youtu.be/o9i1Johzia0

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by letsgofishing

Hi all,
I'been following this thread and thought I'd show a simple basic way to create a photo grid (mainly because I know nothing about code! :)
Sorry about the sound quality - first time I've done this.
Here's the link in case: https://youtu.be/o9i1Johzia0

---

LGF, well done for your presentation.

In knowing nothing about "code", you did manage to introduce some JS (from Covoxer) and some CSS (the opacity of 1 is totaly opaque, 0 is totally transparent; the pop-up colour is another setting).

Both Egg and I have both referenced and use http://highslide.com/ref/ in many Posts.
Have a look as the design file in https://www.talkgraphics.com/showthr...ide-capability to gain a better understanding of HighslideJS.

Your grid approach to setting out the thumbnails is fine as far as it goes but you introduce a lot of scaffolding that is locked to those dimensions.
Could I suggest two alternatives?

The first is to drop a row of default image thumbs across the page. Ensure they are in the correct Layer order.
Place the first and last into your the start-left and end-right position and use Object Alignment > Horizontal position: Distribute equi-spaced & Vertical position; Align centrally.
To repeat vertically: Group the row, clone under as many rows required and position as above and space similarly, switching H to V. Ungroup.
Changing the spacing is a matter of grouping rows and columns individually and repositioning.
All this is tedious but relatively flexible.

My second is https://www.talkgraphics.com/showthr...275#post630275 (above), where I use a Smart Table: Inner Padding & Cell Width and Height to dynamically control thumb spacing.

I hope others will offer their suggestions.

Acorn

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Initiostar

Sue, interesting because you indicated your client had parked any changes to the website for the winter - what changed their minds?

I went back to your current website, being the best start point for a rework and have made some suggestions (they may or maynot be helpful depending on your design thoughts).

Attachment 128199

1. Create more width in the design (say 1200px) with the page background colour and pasteboard colours the same.
2. Create two variants desktop and mobile and use Export options of Scale-to-fit-Width.
3. Rationalise the content across Home, About, Services and News such that it is not duplicated - e.g. everything in About goes into About and is not repeated -best way I know to do this is to collate all the text from the three tabs into one text document, analyse, de-dup and rework back into the respective tabs.
4. Gallery pages should be substantially reduced to one page for Residential and one/two pages for Commercial - as accepted a visitor will not plough through pages of photos - if the client is attached to them, as said before, you could create a PDF catalogue.
5. Add a new Tab (Projects or name of choice) that provides storyboards for recent and interesting projects - could include a couple on the Home page too.
6. Create a consistent page style that uses the extra width.
7. Move the Social icons from the header panel - to avoid users clicking away from the main content before they have scrolled down.
8. Remove the yellow block from the logo.

- The embedded Storyboards referenced in an earlier post could be used to tell how a project was conceived, auto scrolling through the pictures in a sequential format - by using the Supersite slider you have the opportunity for text narrative to scroll onto each picture to help tell the story. The difference between using the Supersite slider, as opposed to say WOW or the CSSSlider is that text stays as text rather than losing its crispness when part of an image. To put this in context take a look at https://theparsonage.co.uk/ where the slider works in both desktop and mobile formats.

- FWIW: my original photo grid is included the XAR. I have not added a variant, but the purpose of the XAR is to give a feel for how Scale-to-fit-Width could look. I have simply used your named colours to provide continuity from your current site.

Hopefully you can create a pitch that wins you the business.

Gary

---

Gary,

In September customer asked to hold off on twice weekly social media posts; as winter months are slow. Earlier this week they said with winter months slow down they are considering making a change. They will transition to new registered name "Asphalt Management Group" and have purchased the domain. I like the new name having "Asphalt" in the title. They asked about having LOMG DBA "Asphalt Management Group" to maintain keywords and ranking of current site. I'm thinking Asphalt Management Group as main title then list as "a subsidiary of LOMG" in smaller tag line. Gathering more info from customer now.

All that said, may I save how much I like your ideas.

1) It looks much better in wide 1200px design, and color changes.
2) Yes, definitely need both variants.
3) The content can be much better organized.
4) Reducing gallery pages is something I did address, and believe they are open to. Believe they'll want .PDF catalogue.
5) I really like this idea of a "Projects" tab to highlight jobs.
6) Agree consistent page width throughout the site, much better than the narrow pages with the template; some those are split.
7) and 8) Nice ideas, will see if the customer is up for those changes.

Honestly, they are looking for my input and I want to present them with a good proposal from a design standpoint; including organizing the content well.

Question: Looking at my current site, how would you quote the job for the changes you suggest? I have a hard time, and often likely undercharge. Curious is most folks bill hourly or per job. I currently bill set price for job, and once published hourly rate for changes.

Thanks to everyone for you input. I am sure to be back to update and brainstorm with you all.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Acorn

LGF, well done for your presentation.

In knowing nothing about "code", you did manage to introduce some JS (from Covoxer) and some CSS (the opacity of 1 is totaly opaque, 0 is totally transparent; the pop-up colour is another setting).

Both Egg and I have both referenced and use http://highslide.com/ref/ in many Posts.
Have a look as the design file in https://www.talkgraphics.com/showthr...ide-capability to gain a better understanding of HighslideJS.

Your grid approach to setting out the thumbnails is fine as far as it goes but you introduce a lot of scaffolding that is locked to those dimensions.
Could I suggest two alternatives?

The first is to drop a row of default image thumbs across the page. Ensure they are in the correct Layer order.
Place the first and last into your the start-left and end-right position and use Object Alignment > Horizontal position: Distribute equi-spaced & Vertical position; Align centrally.
To repeat vertically: Group the row, clone under as many rows required and position as above and space similarly, switching H to V. Ungroup.
Changing the spacing is a matter of grouping rows and columns individually and repositioning.
All this is tedious but relatively flexible.

My second is https://www.talkgraphics.com/showthr...275#post630275 (above), where I use a Smart Table: Inner Padding & Cell Width and Height to dynamically control thumb spacing.

I hope others will offer their suggestions.

Acorn

---

Acorn and LGF, these are great ideas with links and pointers to help. So much appreciated.

Quote:

---

Honestly, they are looking for my input and I want to present them with a good proposal from a design standpoint; including organizing the content well.Question: Looking at my current site, how would you quote the job for the changes you suggest? I have a hard time, and often likely undercharge. Curious is most folks bill hourly or per job. I currently bill set price for job, and once published hourly rate for changes.

---

Sue,

The start point is to better understand why the client has chosen to rebrand and what they expect to achieve; in the first instance this has absolutely nothing to do with a website. You can add value to the discussion, the shape and content of the marketing proposition, and thereafter, the price they are willing to pay for your services.

Basic questions: what would you like to achieve from the rebranding - more business yes, but where do you see the opportunities, residential, commercial, in what sectors, price bands, (maybe more smaller projects, maybe more maintenance jobs) - who are these guys competitors?

From this you work with them to build headline messages and propositions. You only need to ask the questions - then you can build a proposal to help them - this is not about a website - it is about building a new marketing initiative. Become part of it -this all flows thereafter into a website and integrated social media. You can price a proposal in days with an annual support contract.

Thinking cap on - ask the questions - looks like a great opportunity.

Gary

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Initiostar

Sue,

The start point is to better understand why the client has chosen to rebrand and what they expect to achieve; in the first instance this has absolutely nothing to do with a website. You can add value to the discussion, the shape and content of the marketing proposition, and thereafter, the price they are willing to pay for your services.

Basic questions: what would you like to achieve from the rebranding - more business yes, but where do you see the opportunities, residential, commercial, in what sectors, price bands, (maybe more smaller projects, maybe more maintenance jobs) - who are these guys competitors?

From this you work with them to build headline messages and propositions. You only need to ask the questions - then you can build a proposal to help them - this is not about a website - it is about building a new marketing initiative. Become part of it -this all flows thereafter into a website and integrated social media. You can price a proposal in days with an annual support contract.

Thinking cap on - ask the questions - looks like a great opportunity.

Gary

---

Gary, thank you so much. I am starting a list of questions for them. Your direction is detailed and very helpful.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Acorn

LGF, well done for your presentation.

In knowing nothing about "code", you did manage to introduce some JS (from Covoxer) and some CSS (the opacity of 1 is totaly opaque, 0 is totally transparent; the pop-up colour is another setting).

Both Egg and I have both referenced and use http://highslide.com/ref/ in many Posts.
Have a look as the design file in https://www.talkgraphics.com/showthr...ide-capability to gain a better understanding of HighslideJS.

Your grid approach to setting out the thumbnails is fine as far as it goes but you introduce a lot of scaffolding that is locked to those dimensions.
Could I suggest two alternatives?

The first is to drop a row of default image thumbs across the page. Ensure they are in the correct Layer order.
Place the first and last into your the start-left and end-right position and use Object Alignment > Horizontal position: Distribute equi-spaced & Vertical position; Align centrally.
To repeat vertically: Group the row, clone under as many rows required and position as above and space similarly, switching H to V. Ungroup.
Changing the spacing is a matter of grouping rows and columns individually and repositioning.
All this is tedious but relatively flexible.

My second is https://www.talkgraphics.com/showthr...275#post630275 (above), where I use a Smart Table: Inner Padding & Cell Width and Height to dynamically control thumb spacing.


I hope others will offer their suggestions.

Acorn

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Have posted a reply to the Highslide thread.....

Really like the first solution!! But to modify the spacing between rows/columns, I would prefer to go with my "spacer" idea - find it quicker than ungrouping/object alignment/regroup.
Really interesting to see how folks approach things from their mindsets.