After choosing sitespinner over 5 other website building programs (it is so easy to use), I wanted to learn more complex things.

So I decided I wanted to have DHTML drop down menus on my site. so I tried the Xara Menu Maker, the wizard is very easy to use, however when I save my finshed product, I get these things

1) 1.html documemt
2) numerous .gif files
3) 2.js files (Java Script I assume)

I first tried to add the .gif files and rebuild the menu buttons, but the gif files alone wont create drop down menus. then I tried to add the .js files with the .gif files, it still did not work.

I am a complete newbie to this. Is there a easy way to do this?. Do I have to write html codes to do this?

Any help is appreciated. Thanks

Hi Chams,

Glad to hear you like SiteSpinner. I am not sure of the correct procedure for integrating a Xara menu maker, though I know that others have done it. I don't believe you should need to write any html code. It could be that the files are not in the correct directories when you have been viewing the pages (you won't be able to Preview and see the menu for example). Try this:

1) Use Code Editor to enter the HTML code
2) Place the gif files into the directory you Publish to
3) Place the JavaScript files into the Publish directory also.

Now Publish your Project. Use your browser to open the pages.

SO its not necessary to piece together the gifs. I just have to paste the code, throw all the .gifs and .js in the proper directory and thats it?

Ill eventuall get this. I have to find out where to find the code with xara.

Thanks for the help

Hi Chams,

That 'sounds' right. However, I don't know Xara well enough to answer that - you will need to follow the instructions you got from them. If you could tell us what they say we might be able to help you out.

I am trying to do something similar, with a product called Sothink DHTML Menu. I've created a menu and I'm now trying to use Sothink DHTML Publish function to make the menu work in SiteSpinner. The automatic publish option in Sothink is not working for me, so I'm trying the next option which is to view the generated code, copy to clipboard and insert to HTML pages manually. I've created a file in SiteSpinner which is in the path c:\...\sitespinnerV2\projects\testprojects\dhtmlmenu.ims

The first step is to copy a file called stm31.js to the HEAD of HTML page, so I copied it using the Page Editor in SiteSpinner by creating a new header (header1) and it inserted successfully and I closed that window.

Then next step is to copy to BODY of HTML page some code and so I chose Copy All and then opened the Code Window in SiteSpinner and pasted that code into the Code Window and did a save and close. I see a placeholder for that code now on the index.html page in SiteSpinner.

The next step is to copy three resource files:

stm31.js
blank.gif
arrow_r.gif

the three files should be copied to the folder in the path above (correct?) as per the directions in Sothink DHTML Menu. Completed that.

Then, selected Preview Page in SiteSpinner and nothing showed up. I checked to see that the file with the the .ims extension and the three resource files were all in the same path and they were.

I'm wondering what I did wrong, or if any of the files need to be in SiteSpinner's Preview folder and not just in the path.

Any suggestions would be welcome. Thank you.

I think you need to put the resource files in SiteSpinner's Preview folder. That is where the previewed HTML page will be.

Thank you Harpo. I placed the three resource files in a subfolder of the SiteSpinner Preview folder, but I still came up with a blank page when I tried to Preview. Can I use a subfolder, or do I have to place the resource files directly into the Preview Folder? If the subfolder is OK, then I'm still stumped as to why I'm getting a blank page. Please advise, thanks.

The resource files will likely need to be directly in the preview folder. The idea behind this is that the preview folder should closely match the folders in your final published site.

So if you will have, for example, a folder called "Sothink" in your published site, you need to duplicate a folder of that name in your preview folder.

It depends on where your menu maker expects those files to be. If the menu maker instructions told you to put the files in the same location as the html page, put them in the preview folder. It it told you to put them in a sub folder below the html page, then put them in a sub folder in the preview folder.

Thank you Bruceee and Harpo. I placed the three resource files directly into the SiteSpinner Preview Folder, instead of into the Sub-Folder, and it worked. I appreciate your valuable input.

I hesitate to keep placing files into the Preview Folder because there is no easy way to keep track of items in that folder as it can get very populated. I've noted others in the Forums commenting on that and maybe in a future release of SiteSpinner there will be a way to use sub-folders or a clever way to make housekeeping in the Preview Folder a little bit better.

SiteSpinner does now place the majority of files in a 'geometry' sub folders of the preview folder.

In your case, though, it is the menu maker that determines whether the files go into a sub folder or not. If you can configure your menu maker to look for them in a sub folder, then they can be placed in one.

I've made multiple menu's with xara and other menu-builders and integrated them in sitespinner.
It's not that difficult, but one should know what to do. Once you've done it, it is simple programming.

1. First make your menu's in Xara look at a submenu (e.g. submenu 'menu')
- a link in xara should be '../[<sub path>/]<page.html|page.php>'

=> the '..' means that the os starts one directory up (in the example the website root or for testing the preview directory)

2. Save your xara menu, in xara you can also set a sub-directory for images. This should be the 'menu' submenu (so all menu images are placed there).

3. Xara should create a <name>.html file as a sample to view the menu. Here you find the coding you need for the menu to show on the html page.

4. create a code placeholder in your sitespinner project page (any html page). Be sure to set the z-order to front (top only), otherwise the menu is displayed behind some other page objects that are defined on top of the page.

5. Insert the xara coding: It should be something simular to this:

/********/

<script src="menu/xaramenu.js"></script>
<script Webstyle4 src="menu/mainmenu.js">/script>

/***********/

That's all it takes.
The xara menu (in the java script) also responds to pages that are defined as a link in the top level of the menu, this means that the corresponding button is highlighted when you select the corresponding webpage in your webbrowser. No extra code is needed for that (it extracts the name from the menu and page name definitions and compares them, eg a link to index.html in menu is compared with the filename index.html. If a button is defined for this page, it is highlighted automatically.

6. The last thing you should do is to copy the menu directory made by xara to the preview directory for preview actions by sitespinner. Remember, the menu is considered to be an external object, so you should keep maintenance of it.

7. When publishing your site, also publish the menu subdirectory to the root directory of your website e.g. /web/menu on the webserver.

8. If you are not so familiair with publishing pages, I can advise you to set up a webserver for testeing purposes on your own pc. I use the free apache webserver for instance (as it is mostly used on the internet on e.g. linux webhosts), but you can also use the additional iss webserver that comes with MS windows 2000/XP

9. If you become more familiair with external objects you can add anything, like php/mysql, Cascading style sheets (their support should be much better, cause is it really neccessary to define the CSS section in sitespinner for each page???, it should be more practical to keep maintenance of this in an editable css project file, maybe (semi-)automatically maintained by sitespinner).

I can also advice to invest in a good code editor when you move further down the webprogramming road. Sitespinner is ideal to maintain the visual presentation, a good code-based editor like aceHTMLPro (with a good overview of all methods and attributes in a side pane) is ideal to maintain extra's like PHP, Javascript and CSS and the like.

Have fun,

Mark