Mouse Crazy!

Can anyone give me a tut. on the mouse over and down states for XXPro5? I make the gel buttons I'm going to use and install them on the normal state layer, give them their links and they work fine, but how do I make the mouse over? The only way I've found is by cloning a gel give it the mouse over colour I want place it on top of the original, making sure it is in the m.o. layer, hit the hide button and they work fine but it seems a bit long winded this way. I had no problem making these in XXPro4 with WYSIWYG, but I'm surely missing the easy way in Pro5! I'm a newbie at all this web page making so go easy guys, but if I don't ask I'll never know :D

Cheers, Stygg

Stygg,

Sounds like you are doing it the right way. I create the mouse off button that I want and group it. The copy it, switch to the mouse over layer and paste in place (Shift+Ctrl+v). Then I use the great object gallery to drill down to the elements of the mouse over button that I want to change and make the changes. Then I marquee select both the mouse over and off buttons, apply a soft group (Ctrl+Alt+g), and apply a link. Then you can turn on or off the mouse over layer if you don't want to see them while you continue working.

Unless I missed something our methods sound very similar.

Eric,

It does seem like the same method Eric, I think what is mis-leading me is, when I made buttons in Gary's tut. for WYSIWYG in XXPro, there was three states, Normal, Mouse Over and Mouse Down, say Black for Normal, hover mouse over button, say you'd used Red for mouse over and when you clicked on it, it flashed green, this being the colour for mouse down. Perhaps I'm missing how you make this mouse down?

Stygg

Ah! OK. Now I understand what you want to know. The way that I would create a Mouse Down effect is to simply create a third button that either had no links (so it didn't change when you moused over it) or left the button the way it was (as far as links go so you still get the mouse over effect) and just change the mouse off state for that particular button for that particular page. And there you go. You have your 3rd state. Maybe a little fiddly, but it gets you what you want.

Eric

[Edit: Hmm...on re-read of that, Perhaps I didn't provide enough detail. Give me a few and I'll repost with more detail.]

OK. There are two different methods that I would use, depending on if you want someone who mouses over your mouse down button to see the mouse over effect or not.

1st method: No mouse over effect---

Select the button for that page (i.e. the Home button for the Home page). Remove the link. Change the button Mouse Off layer to what you want your Mouse down effect to look like.

2nd method: With a mouse over effect---

Same method as above, just don't remove the link.


I hope that helps.

Eric

Hi Stygg,

I use 3 layers for a 3 state button.

MouseOff for the normal look of the button
MouseOver for the mouse over look of the button
MouseDown for the look of the button when it is clicked.

The .xar file is attached.

Oh, that kind of mouse down. A different color when it is clicked and only for the second that it is clicked. I was thinking a different color all the time for the page that you are on, as opposed to just showing someone that they are clicking something. However that works too if that is what you are after. Thanks for that Bill.

Eric

Thanks Eric and Bill for your help, much appreciated and cleared things up for me in the mouse down question but expect I'll have a few more questions regarding web pages!! :D

Many thanks, Stygg

Glad to help. I took Bill's example a little bit further and made a variety of button designs based on his 3 colors. All have the 3 states that he was talking about. Enjoy.

Eric

Great buttons Eric, many thanks for sharing and all your help.

Stygg