Creating a simple nav bar with page color and black text

[rigacci]

I am trying to create a "simple" Nav Bar that is essentally transparent (or has the page background color) with Black Text. It just doesn't want to happen.

I am using the trial version, so are there limitations that would prevent me from doing this?

I drag the Nav Bar template from the Design Gallery; the free one has black letters on a rust colored background. I attempt to make the background color of the buttons the same as the background color of the page but when I drag the color onto the buttons the text also changes color and everything disappears.

I have opened the Nav Bar properties and used the Pop-up Menu Style to attempt a change as well but that does virtually nothing.

The Nav Bar tutorial video is nice but I am still unable to get over this initial hurdle.

Can someone tell me what I might be doing wrong?

Dave

[Rik]

I'm sure a Web Expert will be along very soon to answer your question.

I am assuming that the button and text are grouped.
Try pressing the CTRL key and clicking just the button to select it.
Then when selected, try changing the colour.

[gwpriester]

There are no limitations to the trial version, aside from 30 days.

Create a rectangle and add your text. Make the text any color and make the rectangle the color of your background. Group the text and the rectangle.

Copy the text and rectangle to the clipboard (Ctrl c).

Open the Page and Layer Gallery and go to the Layer section.

Click on the MouseOver layer and Edit > Paste in Place.

Modify this button as desired.

Select the MouseOff layer and make sure that the mouse over layer is visible.

Drag a selection rectangle about the two grouped buttons with the Selector Tool (the arrow pointer) and from the Arrange menu, select Apply SoftGroup.

Click the chain link icon on the Infobar and in the URL box key in #. Press apply and preview the page. The # activates the button for purposes of texting to make sure it works.

If all looks good, use the Navigation Bar Tool to create your Navigation Bar.

The attached file may explain better. Just open it up in Xara.

[rigacci]

Thanks! That worked! I created one Button and then duplicated it and renamed each and linked each to a new page. So now I have 5 buttons and 5 pages.

But a couple of things.

When I first went to Preview the Home page and hovered over the Home button I get a large box (Black) with the text Home inside of it. What do you think I did to create that? None of the other buttons do that.



Secondly, when I first previewed the Home page and selected a NavButton for let's say the Paintings page, I would get an error saying the page had "not been exported yet".


So I colored the background and inserted some text and a different image on each new page and then saved each page into the same folder as the Home page, naming each with the name of the button linking to it.




But now, when I go to Preview the Home page, all the buttons are there and linked to the new pages but when I click on a NavButton for the Paintings page, it goes to that page but only displays the background color and not the text I added or the image.

I must be missing a step somewhere, no?


This really is an incredible program (compared to any others) and this forum is also great for resolving just these things.


Thanks again and I know I will get a handle on it soon but I am still stumbling a bit.

Dave

[gwpriester]

Hi Dave

Yes, Xara is a great product(s).

Not sure what happened in your first question. If you post your XAR or WEB file we can take a look and get it sorted.

There are two preview buttons, the first just previews the page, the second previews the entire site. You pressed the preview page icon and so when you tried to go to the other pages you got the error because they have not been published.

On your problematic paintings page, you might have your content on the wrong layer. Look at that page in the Page and Layer Gallery and isolate the MouseOff layer (press the S icon). If you don't see your content, click the S again, make sure all layers are visible, and cut your content to the clipboard (Ctrl x). Then Edit > Paste > Paste in Place.

[rigacci]

Will try that. If I have any other issues I should probably start a new thread, no?

I did get rid of that extra large black box by deleting the group without affecting the other buttons.

Not enough videos! How about some other tutorials? Or is the forum the best place for that?

DR

[gwpriester]

Well there is more information and lots of videos on all subjects on Xara Users, another Xara community board.