I am using SS 2.70f, and I'm in the learning and testing phase - no real project yet started. Nothing I describe here is published, and can't be at this point. It took a while, but I finally got my drop down menus to work exactly like those in the tutorial. I see from other posts in the forum that this has been an issue with other users - took me two days of head-scratching, still don't know how it really works, but it does, and I've recreated the effect several times over for practice. I'm thrilled that I'm this far in the process, but I still have two issues regarding my drop down menus - only God knows what other issues I will face as I move on.

FIRST, I made my menus out of "form buttons" using both the "draw a form button" button on the tool bar at the bottom of the window, and the menu "object > forms > button" - with equal results... as I pass my mouse over the menu header, the list of buttons drop down, and as I move my mouse down the list they lighten, when I move my mouse off, they all hide except for the header - all is right with the world. What I want to do, is to have one or two of the buttons on the drop-down list pop-up shorter drop-down lists off to their right when the mouse passes over them - sub lists made of "form buttons". When I move my mouse to the right in order to move down the sub-sub list, I need the main list to remain visible until a button is clicked or I move the mouse off the list/sub-list. Example: One of the menu heads is "Cost", the list drops down to show a button labeled "Leases" - it is here that I would like to offer sub-topic buttons for "Individuals" and "Couples" - so, how can this be achieved?

Here's the URL to an example (not my website) of the first issue above. Pass your mouse over "Services" then move down to "Workshops", note the sub list to the right of the main list with "2007 Schedule" and "Tutorials". The URL: http://www.safariguy.com/

SECOND, I created an iframe and several other pages with test photos and maps, and set the link in one of the drop-down list buttons on my main/home page to "page", "pagename", and the target to - " target="mainiframe" " (with only the inner quotes around "mainiframe", and that being the name of the iframe), and asked for the secondary page to be placed in the iframe on the main page when I click on the linked button. When I preview the entire project, run my mouse over the menu header, move down the drop-down list to the button with the iframe link, then click it, the secondary page opens in a new tab (Internet Explorer version ?) rather than in the iframe. I have checked this over and over, and everything looks to be done just as the tutorial describes. What is wrong here... could it be the browser, or is it that "form buttons" don't allow this action? I plan on selections from the drop-down menus to place the various pages of my final project into the iframe on the main/home page without ever going to the secondary pages otherwise... it seems that it should be so simple. Can anyone help with one or both of my questions? Thanks.

In answer to your first question, you will find it very difficult to achieve what you want using this method. Particularly with Form Buttons.

The menu you posted as an example is a flash menu, developed with a program called “123 Flash Menu”, and is placed on the page via a code object.

As to your second question, again you will have problems with a Form Button. In both cases, you are better of using an image for buttons. The link for an iFrame will work on an image (or most other objects). But not on a form button.

A form button is an element of a form, and when clicked, is looking for something to do as a “submit”, which I presume overrides the link’s code attached to it.

Postyr... thank you so much. That's what I needed to know so that I don't spend anymore time screwing around trying to make buttons work as menus. REALLY too bad though, they were easy to make, already in SS (no need to import or copy in), and they had a visual feedback on click (besides the color change on hover). I didn't even consider that the menu on the website I used as an example could be other than what could be created in SS.

So no way outside of Flash or another such code to do the sub-menus. I'm just happy that I'm able to do this much. For years I have been using a GUI Mac program called PageMill to do my pages, but without a solid knowledge of HTML, I could never get it to do roll-overs or drop-down menus. I have switched the web design portion of my life over to a PC so that I could learn SS (now two days into learning), and hopefully produce a much nicer and slicker website.

I am assuming that besides the tutorial way of making the drop-down buttons (via 2 layers of text with a transparent image on top as the link), I can create sets of gif images in a drawing or painting program (how about Excel?) then copy and paste into SS... yes? The copy paste of gif sets sounds easier than the text method.

I will now start over, and see if I repeat my earlier good luck with almost perfectly working drop-down menus.

Thanks. Scott

quote:

Originally posted by postyr:
In answer to your first question, you will find it very difficult to achieve what you want using this method. Particularly with Form Buttons.

The menu you posted as an example is a flash menu, developed with a program called “123 Flash Menu”, and is placed on the page via a code object.

As to your second question, again you will have problems with a Form Button. In both cases, you are better of using an image for buttons. The link for an iFrame will work on an image (or most other objects). But not on a form button.

A form button is an element of a form, and when clicked, is looking for something to do as a “submit”, which I presume overrides the link’s code attached to it.

Don’t give up so easily.

If after such a short period you have managed to get the drop-down menus to work, you have far exceeded the efforts of more experienced users on this forum.

As you said, cerate your buttons as you wish. If you have Excel, you probably have Publisher. Create some nice looking buttons with that, and take a screen shot of it. If you don’t have a program to do that, download a free program called irfanView Besides having a free screen shot tool, you may also find it handy to work with your images.

I’m not quite sure if this would work, but maybe you could create a second set of drop-down menus (for your sub menus), and set them to appear on the mouseover from an item in the first set.

Postyr:

I'm only giving up on using the form buttons as menu list items. The biggest problem is related to the second question I had, and you answered... they can't be used to populate iframes... my whole website was going to be built on that premise - select from the drop-down list and the iframe would fill with a new page or image.

The idea of a sub-list off the side the drop-down menu wasn't absolutely necessary - just highly desireable. I am NOT going to drop that idea, maybe I can figure a way to do it with gif images.

I don't have publisher, and find painting programs too frustrating to work with (downloaded Paint.NET and decided that it was not the way to go for button production), so I will either have to use a drawing program if I can find one (I have a great one on my Mac), or Excel. My first attempt at making buttons was using 3-D like Excel shapes copied into SS, but they visually corrupted when I started using buttons, grouping and applying mouse-over special effects. Excel seems like the easiest way to go as long as I can get around any visual corruption issues.

What is this about screenshots you mention? I have never been able to take a screen shot as described in my computer's online help... the key combination just doesn't do anything (on Mac it was SO easy). How do you use a screen shot as a button... does a screenshot save as a gif or jpeg?

Thanks for all your help... Scott

PS. I see that IRFANVIEW is a screenshot program... so the screenshots are gifs or jpegs?

quote:

Originally posted by postyr:
Don’t give up so easily.

If after such a short period you have managed to get the drop-down menus to work, you have far exceeded the efforts of more experienced users on this forum.

As you said, cerate your buttons as you wish. If you have Excel, you probably have Publisher. Create some nice looking buttons with that, and take a screen shot of it. If you don’t have a program to do that, download a free program called irfanView Besides having a free screen shot tool, you may also find it handy to work with your images.

I’m not quite sure if this would work, but maybe you could create a second set of drop-down menus (for your sub menus), and set them to appear on the mouseover from an item in the first set.

Taking a screen shot means exactly that. I personally use an old program called “Wisdom-soft Screen Hunter”. It’s a brilliant program, but not quite sure if it’s still available. If you are interested, I’ll check it out.

irfanView’s tool works the same.

Hit the appropriate hot key to activate the tool, and a dotted box will appear on your screen. All you need to do is re-size and place the box over the area you want to capture and hit enter.

You will then be given the choice of where to save the image, and in what format. With iffanView, you can also choose a GIF format with a transparent background.

Using Windows, you can take a screen shot of the whole screen, or the active screen (or dialogue box), but not a specified area.

For a full screen, simply use the “Print Screen” key on your keyboard. For an active screen or dialogue box, use Alt & Print Screen.

Either of the above options places a copy into the clipboard.

Now just simply Paste it into any program you wish.

Just in addition to what Terry said, there is a way to use form buttons, you can see an example here.

I haven't tested the possibility to make an extra set of submenus, so I can't say if it's doable. When time allows I'll check that and let you know.

Like Klimt, I suspect that sub-menus with form buttons are also doable. If you have your form button menu doing almost what you want, don't give up on it yet.

It would help to see what you have so far. I know you haven't published yet, but if you can publish just a test page somewhere, perhaps on an IhostVM trial site that would help.

I guess I'm going to disagree with Roma and Bruce on this one. The SS SpecialFX only allow one level of effects; i.e., 2 actions on a single object. My efforts to extend this to sub-menus requires adding extra javascript and gets to be a real mess after awhile.

There are free menu makers that will do sub-menus. CoffeeCup has one; simply generate the menu using the tools and paste the code into an SS code object.

Also, Irfanview is a fine image manipulating tool, but is not so great at image creation. You would be better off with Paint.Net and adding a few of their plug-ins to create your buttons. This will allow you to generate a button and save it directly as an image in any file format you want; no screen snapshot required. There is a button plug-in to easily create 3D "glass" buttons.

Thank you all so much. There is a lot here to absorb. Looks like Klimt has a way to make the iframes work with form buttons - I took a look at the example, and will try it out on my own test project later. With further encouragement from Bruceee I did publish my 2nd test project - which is just a bit different in content from the project I described in my initial question, but with the same form button and iframe issues.

This project was only created in order to test effects as I went through the tutorials. The company is fake. The "Rental Properties" menu is the only menu where the roll-overs do something other than display the drop-down lists (addresses real, photos fake). Note how responsive the roll-overs are. I notice when published that the drop-down lists don't immediately hide unless you mouse off the top of the list or go to another list, as opposed to the immediate hide they did in my previews before publishing.

Here's the URL. Let me know what you think. I love that I can create decent drop-down menus, and even though it took the better part of 2 days to get the effects to work, I'm proud that I got this far.

Scott

Opps!!

Here's the URL to my published test project. They said that it would be on their site for 24 hours. I published about a half hour ago, which would be about 10:00 AM Pacific daylight time in the US... Don't know what that means for you people in Austria, Australia, and New Zealand.

http://www.ihostvm.com/trialsite254185/website/

I tried out the code that Klimt/Roma suggested that was supposed allow a form button to display a page in the iframe on click. This code was applied to ...

onClick="iframe.location='IFrameTestPage.html';" - "IFrameTestPage" was the name of the page that I wanted to display in the iframe. replacing 'page2.html'

...it did the same thing that it was doing before with the "target=iframe___" that was in the tutorial... it opened a new tab in the browser for the desired page.

Then I thought that maybe I should be referencing where the iframe was actually located (same page as the coded button), and changed it to onClick="iframe.location='index.html';" - and got nothing.

So for me at least, the form buttons are no longer looking like contenders, even if I could find a way to create the sub-menus with them.

Before I move on to creating gifs of my desired buttons so that I can reapply the special fx for practice, I might take a break and continue to try to get the sub-menus to work... just for the heck of it.

By the way, RE the two replies from me above this, I forgot to mention the buttons (now a moot point) have a nice visual response to clicks, totally separate from the hover effect taught via the tutorial. I assume that without great complexity, the same visual response can't be attained via gif sets or screen shots.

Scott

Looks good to me -- I didn't appreciate that you can do so much with form buttons.

The fact that the drop-down hangs around when you mouse off it is interesting. (In both Firefox and IE8.) It means you may then be able to mouse onto a pop-up sub-menu and operate on that. Maybe. The usual problem with image buttons is that when you mouse off the main-menu, it disappears along with the sub-menu.

I agree with Larry -- when you start getting into sub-menus, things get complicated (if they weren't already!) For this reason, I too would recommend a third-party menu program.

In some of my tinkering I'll see if that delay helps in sub-menus. The inability to use the buttons for iframes makes the button sub-menu topic a moot point otherwise.

Scott

quote:

Originally posted by Bruceee:
Looks good to me -- I didn't appreciate that you can do so much with form buttons.

The fact that the drop-down hangs around when you mouse off it is interesting. (In both Firefox and IE8.) It means you may then be able to mouse onto a pop-up sub-menu and operate on that. Maybe. The usual problem with image buttons is that when you mouse off the main-menu, it disappears along with the sub-menu.

I agree with Larry -- when you start getting into sub-menus, things get complicated (if they weren't already!) For this reason, I too would recommend a third-party menu program.

I just tested the same example, where I renamed 'page2.html' to 'IFrameTestPage.html' making corresponding change in the Code field to onClick="iframe.location='IFrameTestPage.html';" and it showed in Iframe alright just like before.

I'll try it again.... you ARE testing this using "form buttons" right?

I'm also closer to getting a sub-menu to work, and will report back here with the results if anyone is interested. I'll have to repeat it several times and record the steps, so this might take a few days.

Again to Klimt, Bruceee, larryd, and postyr... thank you for all of your input and encouragement. By the way, I've been to Klimt's, Bruceee's, and larryd's websites, and I'm impressed. I"ll be spending some time at each trying to soak up some knowledge. Love some of the templates that are offered as examples... any of those usable for websites that are less than commercial?

quote:

Originally posted by Klimt:
I just tested the same example, where I renamed 'page2.html' to 'IFrameTestPage.html' making corresponding change in the Code field to onClick="iframe.location='IFrameTestPage.html';" and it showed in Iframe alright just like before.

Yes that's form buttons. If you still have a problem publish it to a trial site and we can have a look at it.

Regarding the templates you'll find many of my templates on Larry's site free for download under 'Templates'.

Roma, I fixed a problem with a SS temp folder that hide itself after the upload to the trial site, and switched my browser to FireFox thinking that IE was the culprit that wasn't allowing your fix to work... no resolution. Could it be that your iframe has settings that I need to know? The iframe and "form button" are on the same page (the index) - what should the settings be for the iframe, and anything I need to know about page settings that could be affecting this?

Scott

I can't remember if I made your code change before I uploaded to the trial site or after, and the warning said that I could only post once - true?

It's still posted on the trial site at...

http://www.ihostvm.com/trialsite254185/website/

Mouse over "Rental Properties", then move down the list to the "Interactive Map" list item, and click.

There's no photo or text on the IFrameTestPage, just a colored background in kind of a burgundy color. It's opening in a new tab, or sometimes an entirely new window.

The iframe and form buttons are on the same page (index page). The text PAGE 2 and the picture are on page2.html. Clicking on buttons Page 3 and Page 4 changes the content in the iframe. Start by downloading my .ims file here, that will make it easier for you to compare.