Nav bar creation in WD6 - stretchy button

[DocRock]

I built a stretchy button in Xpro5 and gave it a mouseover effect. I cut and pasted it as XaraX document in WD6 then created the navbar. On the WD6 canvas it displays with the mousever color rather than the mouseoff. When I preview it the mouseover effect doesn't work and is not linking. I tried moving the mouseover and mouseoff positions in the Object Gallery and other problems arose. I'd appreciate if someome look at the attached dot web file and help me find where I've gone wrong.

[gwpriester]

Doc

On page one you have two Facebook gadgets that are hidden behind the page content and I suspect that do not want to be there.

Link your button to # for the home page instead of index and you can see your mouseover work.

However, if you create a nav bar to appear on all pages it is going to be a bit wide. You may want to reconsider and have smaller text and a vertical bar.

[DocRock]

Good that you caught the facebook icons but more issues after removing them. The attached navbar was created in Xpro5 to achieve stretchy behavior. Two things happen when pasted into WD6. First, the mouseover font size is larger than in mouseoff but is chosen to be the same in both layers in Xpro5. Next, when I open the navbar properties dialog and click on site navigation bar to get it to post on all pages, all submenus are promoted to the main menu level. Can you help me to understand why those things happen?

[gwpriester]

Doc, here is what I would do. Forget about creating a stretchy button. That is old technology.

Work with your Home button, get the colors, mouse over effects, and type and everything the way you want. Then create a new Navigation Bar (it is really easy) and check Adjust Button Widths to Labels. This in essence is creating stretchy buttons, but right in Web Designer.

[gwpriester]

To answer your question. In each version, people like John Horn, and others have come up with work-arounds to missing features. And when the next version comes out, often these features get incorporated. So with the Navigation Bar Tool, it is no longer necessary to create a stretchy button. If you check the option I mentioned, this is done automatically when you generate the bar for each page.

[wuerthne]

Next, when I open the navbar properties dialog and click on site navigation bar to get it to post on all pages, all submenus are promoted to the main menu level. Can you help me to understand why those things happen?

This is not exactly what happens. Submenus are never promoted to the main menu level. What happened was that new buttons were added for all your pages. The "Site Navigation Bar" option has two meanings: First of all, it makes the bar appear on all pages and secondly, it automatically adds a button to the bar for each page of your document, and it will do so for every page you add in the future. You can simply delete unwanted buttons using the dialogue box.

In WD7, you can make a NavBar repeat on all pages without the program adding buttons to it automatically, but in WD6, the two features are enabled using the same option.

[DocRock]

Following Gary's advice to create buttons in WD6 but I'm still having problems with my navbar. I've followed weggingt's tutorial step by step (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgsg2dUNxq0) several times but end up with the mouseover text being displayed in preview browser and no link (see homepage of attached). If WD6 custom navbar creation works for others it should work for me. I'm seriously baffled. Can anyone advise?

[Soquili]

Hi DocRock,

I see you have the navbar on your index page only.

By Default Web Designer 6 indicates the page you are currently on by making the MouseOver image display. Since you only had the one button on the page that displays in preview, you see the MouseOver image.

I took the liberty of making your navbar a site navbar which added your other pages. You will need to do some minor editing of your pages so the navbar looks good on all pages. But I think you will see how the buttons work.

[DocRock]

Bill - thanks for adding the tiny bit of information (default navbar behavior) that made all the difference. I guess I was on the right track but didn't know it. Thanks again to all who offered their help in improving my understanding of navbars.

[gwpriester]

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