Problems with page links

[claire479]

Hi, I am having problems with linking pages in my website. I have got all pages linking but when you click on some buttons on preview website they come up with a solid green box on them. How can i get rid of this?

Also the animation I have put on my website is coming up very small, even when I enlarge the box this does not change. How do i make it bigger?

Thanks

[440bx]

Hi Claire,

Welcome to Talkgraphics.

Could you upload some simple files that show the problems ? This would make it easier to figure out what is causing them.

John.

[steve.ledger]

Welcome to TG CLaire.

I have more your thread from Xara Xtreme 5: The Official Guide Book > which is for discussion topics about Gary's book and so the wrong forum to post in for Web Designer issues.

Claire, one thing we do find that helps us a lot is for posters to attach their file so we can examine it and maybe find the answers to help you.

So please attached your .web file and we'll be glad to take a look.

[claire479]

Ill send you my website, not quite sure how to show you the problem otherwise.

Thanks for your help

Claire

[440bx]

Hi Claire,

There are a number of "small" problems with your website. I'll mention a few here so you can look at them and make some corrections.

You will need to open the Object Gallery in order for you to see what I am going to talk about. You open the Object Gallery by going to "Utilities" -> "Object Gallery".

Once you are in the object gallery you will see one entry for every page you have in your website. Start by expanding "Home", you do that by clicking on the little triangle on the left hand side.

Once you've done that - which is going to take your machine a while to process - you will see that there are about a dozen layers named "Page Background XXXXX". There really should only be one. Start by deleting all the unnecessary ones. You can figure out which ones are unnecessary by toggling their visibility one by one (you do that by clicking on the little eye that is on the right hand side). Every time you find one that makes no difference whether it is visible or not, then you can delete it (which I believe is most of them - if not all in this case)

After you've done that, make the "MouseOver" layer visible. You'll find that you have a bunch of green rectangles everywhere. You'll also see that there are other buttons that are obviously misplaced in other pages (the "Who will benefit" in particular). It seems like some of those objects/buttons are leftovers from ideas you had while developing the website.

There are probably other little problems that I haven't seen yet.

My recommendation is that you read about the layers in the help file. Understanding how layers work is crucial to making a website using Xtreme. It looks like this is something you need to review before you can proceed further.

I'll make some changes on your site based on my best guess as to what you intended to do and upload that when ready.

Also, make sure you correct the misspellings. There are a number of them. You have a very nice design, it would be a pity for the design to be blemished by misspellings.

John.

[claire479]

Thank you so much, they've all gone now!! Big help.
Do you know how I can make my animation bigger on my homepage?

Claire

[440bx]

Hello Claire,

Now that I've been playing with your site more, I understand better what you were trying to do.

The problem with the green rectangles is that they were not aligned properly.

If I understood your intentions correctly. You should have created a button with a green highlight for the mouseover layer, then the same button with a grey highlight for the mouseoff layer and optionally another button of a different color for the mousedown layer. It sounds like a lot of work but it really isn't because you simply copy, paste and change a color attribute every time.

All those buttons have to overlap exactly otherwise their individual pieces appear disconnected. This is what is happening on your website.

I've attached an example file with three buttons. Pay particular attention to how each button is built for each layer and exactly superimposed.

Also important is to softgroup each set of buttons of a different color. The softgrouping is what tells Xtreme which button should be displayed when the mouse is over a button. In other words, when the mouse is over "button A" of the mouseoff layer, it will then display the rendition of "button A" found in the mouseover layer because those two renditions have been softgrouped together.

This is easier to see in the example file I've attached than it is to explain. I've also attached a copy of the file you posted with some corrections. Pay particular attention to what I did to the button on the "who will benefit" page.

Also, your nice stylized A in the PARS heading is made up of a lot of rectangle pieces. This makes it difficult to manage. It would be much simpler to create a single shape with the shape editor. I've attached a file that shows how to do it with the shape editor. Also look at how I grouped the elements of the header image (the header image should definitely be reworked - you can get the same result with a lot less elements). Grouping things logically as you go will make your life much easier.

Using the stylized A I attached as an example you should be able to redo the header image with quite a few less objects. Once you've done that and the pieces are grouped properly you can set that as the page background.

It looks like you also have the footer repeating on every page. It looks like the footer could also be part of the background layer as well. Someone that knows more about Xtreme than I do might want to either confirm that this is a good idea or provide the better way of doing it.

Most important, whenever you create an object/shape make sure it is located in the layer where it is supposed to be. In your file, there are quite a number of objects that are in scattered in multiple layers when they should actually be together in one layer. Grouping the objects will put them in a single layer but you still have to ensure that the final grouped object is in the layer where it should be. I make that mistake a lot, objects end up in a different layer than I intended but now I've learned to check as I go.

Last two things I'd like to mention, the buttons file I've attached has material found in "Xara Xtreme 5 : The Official Book" which I probably should not be uploading without Gary's permission, I hope he doesn't mind my uploading those buttons. Second, I strongly recommend you consider purchasing the book, it will save you an enormous amount of grief and time. It's a sincere recommendation, I derive no benefit from making it and, it is obvious that it would save you a lot of time and frustration.

HTH,

John.

[440bx]

I can't help you with the animation, it didn't play at all.

I believe the reason is because you didn't make the swf file available. Therefore I couldn't see the problem, all I saw was a black rectangle which was no help.

John.

[440bx]

Correction to something I said a couple of posts above:

The header should probably not be set as a background. If you do that it will likely be repeated to occupy the entire page which is not what you want.

Placing it in the mouseoff layer and setting it as a repeating object is more likely to be the right way.

Sorry about the mistake, I'm still learning Xtreme myself.

John.