newbie - MenuMaker, linking

[blewis999]

I am just learning web design (and using Web Studio 4.0, and MenuMaker 1.1), so I appologize for the simple questions; if it is not a drag and drop to link I am currently somewhat lost. I read through a lot of the older posts but still have difficulty understanding how to link an item in the MM drop down menu to a following page.

I have been able to create a home page in WebStudio (WS), and link MM to a button object on the home page by attaching the files and inserting the script at the end of the object (or so WS allows me to do via a cut an paste in a box, and specifying 'after object')

<script src="$thisfolderurl$xaramenu.js"></script><script menumaker
src="$thisfolderurl$h1.js"></script>

where h1 is the object(java script?) created in MM. There are 3 files: h1.js, h1.html, xaramenu.js. When I preview the page locally on my computer I can see the MM menu drops down from inside of WS. But
1) how do I link the items in the drop down menu to another page?
2) Which file would I edit (if I have to) and
3) what would I put in the file and where?

I have started Mary's webcode 101 course, but this would take a bit time to figure this all out by my self.

Thanks for listening, and any help.

Robert

Is this a matter of

[blewis999]

I am just learning web design (and using Web Studio 4.0, and MenuMaker 1.1), so I appologize for the simple questions; if it is not a drag and drop to link I am currently somewhat lost. I read through a lot of the older posts but still have difficulty understanding how to link an item in the MM drop down menu to a following page.

I have been able to create a home page in WebStudio (WS), and link MM to a button object on the home page by attaching the files and inserting the script at the end of the object (or so WS allows me to do via a cut an paste in a box, and specifying 'after object')

<script src="$thisfolderurl$xaramenu.js"></script><script menumaker
src="$thisfolderurl$h1.js"></script>

where h1 is the object(java script?) created in MM. There are 3 files: h1.js, h1.html, xaramenu.js. When I preview the page locally on my computer I can see the MM menu drops down from inside of WS. But
1) how do I link the items in the drop down menu to another page?
2) Which file would I edit (if I have to) and
3) what would I put in the file and where?

I have started Mary's webcode 101 course, but this would take a bit time to figure this all out by my self.

Thanks for listening, and any help.

Robert

Is this a matter of

[John Rayner]

Hi Robert,

Welcome to Talkgraphics. Can you copy and paste? It is one step beyond drag and drop.

1. Highlight the URL in the address bar of your browser of the destination page.

2. press Cntr-C

3. Navigate to MM and paste the URl in URL box of menu maker.

see pretty picture...

[blewis999]

Hi John,
thank you for the succinct and clear explaination.

I have spent several hours now trying to get this to work and I think the problem is in the URL being generated for MM. I am using Webstudio 4.0 and Mozilla/firefox. Webstudio copies all the MM files into a preview directory to allow local viewing of the web pages; which also includes the latest MM files. I checked on that by various tests and this seems to work.

I have included the screen captures in a zip file. There appears to me to be a syntax error in the URL... but I could be wrong. When I start a mozilla up by clicking on the index.html file in the preview directory I can see the MM menu, and it works except for the linking. When I try to follow the link I get the attached error ...that the file can not be found, although that is the exact file I have browsed to previously. The URL indicates there is what I would think is an extra back slash infront of the c drive letter...? I need to preview this on my system before publishing it to the web.
Any insight you could give would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks again

Robert

[John Rayner]

Okay robert,

here is Urls 101...

There are 2 types of URLs. Absolute and relative. Looks like you typo'd and had pressed Ctrl-V twice to give you 2 absolute urls. Double check the url box.

A Absolute URL is something like this;
http://www.draginet.com or like this;
http://www.draginet.com/index.html. If on your harddrive something like this C:/windows/Desktop/somefolder/index.html

A relative url is a shortcut that tells the browser to find another page in the same directory. An example of a relative url would be;

index.html
or someudderpage.html

You can get fancy with relative urls but that is for lesson 102...

If all your pages are going to be in the same directory, then you can use a relative URL easy enough. personally, I use relative urls as much as I can. It makes for less typing and the site will work both on your computer and on the net.

[blewis999]

Hi John

That makes sense thank you. I did get it to work after much toil with just using ..\software.htm

There may be a bug in the browse function of MM. Attached are the three files showing this. As can be seen the path to the files is correct in the URL for the page software, however what the browser sees is multiple pastes of the string. Is there perhaps some option that specifies relative or absolute; the browse function is the last item on the URL drop down as I am sure you know. I wonder if it works for other people?

This was a frustrating experience to be sure. Thank you for your help;

Robert

[John Rayner]

Looks like you got multiple urls in there. I imagine it would be possible although I have never tried it. AS long as you have multiple target files, I would imagine it would work.

I have seen mutiple popups before... Would never want to do it myself tho... Too tacky.

I did notice a couple things... Spaces in file names are not interpreted the same by all browsers. Stay away from spaces if you want your page to be viewed by the most number of customers.

A capital "A" is different from a small "a" on the net. Save yourself some future frustration and use all lower case letters for file names on the net. The page will work fine on your machine, but parts will be missing on the net.

software.htm is different from Software.htm for the rest of the world outside of a windoze machine (90% of the servers).

[blewis999]

Hi John

Thank you; that is good advice, I will follow it.

But I didn't put multiple URL's in the MM URL field; what I was trying to show was that this was what was happening when I browsed to the file... MM did that...

Robert

[John Rayner]

Hi Bob,

since you are using 2 programs, make sure WS is not adding the second url. Check the menu output with just MM. I did not get any second urls when I was playing last night.

[blewis999]

Hi John,

You are right, WebStudio is appending a string that points to their preview directory and using the absolute address from MM as a relative path. Thereby yielding a mess...

The only way it will work (or only way I have gotten it to work) is to use a relative path
..\filename.html

I am going to write a brief document for WebStudio on how to integrate MM. There are a large number of gotcha's; if you have time I can send you a copy to review. It would be a help to have an expert oversee the process incase I misdirect others.

Thanks

Robert