New to Xara Web Designer (some questions)

[johne53]

Hello - I downloaded the trial version of Xara Web Designer this morning and within 30 minutes I'd produced a half decent web site (based on the templates of course).

I'm very impressed with Xara so far but at some stage my web site will need to implement forms and tables. Can these be done within Xara Web Designer or do I need some ancillary packages?

Second question (well, a problem really) - I see regular "Internal errors" when running Xara. Most notably, these occur when starting or shutting down the app. When starting I see the message "Internal program error 2864.k.me.ps" (every time) and I occasionally see a similar message (though not exactly the same one) when shutting down. The shutdown error isn't as common but I'll note down the exact message, next time it occurs.

Are these known problems in the trial version and will they go away if I buy the full product?

[gwpriester]

Welcome to the Web Designer forum, John.

Web Designer cannot do forms. But there are websites, some free, in which you can create a form, and generate a script for that form. One of these is called Jotform.

Once you have the script for your form, create a "placeholder" object on your page the same size as your form. Open the Web Properties menu and in the Placeholder tabbed section, paste the script in the Replace with HTML text entry box.

When you preview your page, the placeholder rectangle will be replaced with your form. It really does not matter what the placeholder rectangle looks like. It is just to map out that part of the page for whatever the placeholder is going to replace.

As for the error messages you are getting. These do not sound normal. But there may be other reasons for these error messages. Also the shipping version of Web Designer has undergone a few revisions and some early bugs have been addressed and some new features added.

[Soquili]

Hi John,

The errors you are getting may indicate some portions of the program did not register correctly during installation or the first time you ran the program.

Some Antivirus and Anti-Spyware software can cause these issues.

You may want to uninstall Web Designer and reboot your machine.

Disable your security software and reboot.

Verify your security software is still disabled and if not disable it again.

Reinstall Web Designer and run it at least once before rebooting and re-enabling your security software.

[johne53]

Thanks guys. I'll check those things out asap.

One other problem has come to light that you might be able to advise me about.... I created a basic shell web page using the 'Beta' template and I published it here (this isn't the finished page of course - only something for testing purposes. In fact, most of it is identical to the Beta sample, but that will change over the coming days). The 'Product Registraion' page shows the form that I spoke about earlier although that's not relevant to my new problem.

Notice that if you mouse over the buttons, they change colour. I have several different browsers on my system. One of these is a version of IE6 with various things disabled (most notably, Flash and anything that displays garish animations). If I connect to that page and mouse over any button, my PC crashes. Sometimes it will let me mouse over 3 or 4 buttons and then crash; other times it crashes on the first one. My other browsers all seem to be okay.

Can anyone guess at what the problem might be? For example do Xara designed web sites assume that Flash (or Javascript or whatever) will always be enabled in the target browser?

[covoxer]

For example do Xara designed web sites assume that Flash (or Javascript or whatever) will always be enabled in the target browser?

Pages generated by WD do not assume anything at all. But for correct rendering of the rollover and other effects it requires Javascript enabled. If JS is disabled the page will open anyway but with some effects missing.
Also WD doesn't use Flash unless you insert it into your page.

[Soquili]

Web Designer does use javascript. Look in the index_htm_files folder. Substitute your pages name for index if you renamed it.

There will always be two javascript files png.js and roe.js

[covoxer]

There will always be two javascript files png.js and roe.js

No, not always. png.js is used only if there's at least one png image used on the page. roe.js is used only when rollover effects are present (rollover, popup layers or photo popups are present in site).

[Soquili]

Thanks John, I've always had those elements so all my folders have those files.

[covoxer]

Yes, it's hard to imagine a site without a single png image. And WD has a rollover layer (MouseOver) in the templates so it's present in new design anyway and forces use of roe.js. Unless you delete it manually.

[johne53]

Hmmm... I'm a bit baffled about the crashes then. My rollover events do seem to work (well, a few of them work before the crash) but the crash is 100% repeatable. I might try publishing the standard template (without my own changes & additions) just to see if that suffers from the same problem.