Stone Design Forums

http://thegoldenthread.net

I am getting a new web site off the ground. I normally use Freeway but am in a typical has to try something new phase - and I wanted to see if Create will do me any good for the web stuff I do.

Problem #1: I am not able to create buttons the way I want them in Create. Why is this? Will Create allow me to create buttons as I wish? Click the above link and see what I am talking about. The buttons I have all on the left edge. They are my own button design. Create will let me put buttons at the top of the page, bottom of the page, or not at all. Please correct me if I am wrong, I would love to activate all those left edge buttons on that page. SO how is this done?

Problem #2: This is possibly also related to Problem #1. I still don't understand how to drive Create properly. It needs help in , well, the help section. I put together a design and nearly every time I get the overlapping parts warning. So I found a work-around by selecting all, then grouping all as one. But, this may be affection the first question I had because viewing source and trying to slide in a rollover in a pure html editor wont work. Why? Because Create is outputting the whole page I designed as one large Graphic.

Please tell me there is a way to put in buttons where I want them and that I am not wasting time with getting Create to do what it is not designed to do...

And/or please tell me how to publish my pages without the overlap problem if that is how I end up with pieces I can still tweak in an html editor.

BTW, this is my first serious attempt at using Create for web pages. I have heard you guys saying it does web pages pretty nicely so I am still hopeful the trouble I am having is because I don't know how to drive it yet. I am rather disappointed that each time I make an adjustment and republish the page, there are so many little steps involved in publishing it. Too bad it can't be made to simply update what you already have, or show a WYSIWYG update screen as you go.

Crossing my fingers, and thanks for the help.

David

David,

You asked - Problem #1: ... Will Create allow me to create buttons as I wish?... I would love to activate all those left edge buttons on that page. SO how is this done?

Create will automatically place Navigation Bar buttons for you at the top and/or bottom, but you can place custom buttons anywhere you like. For rollovers, you'll need Slice and Dice, but the buttons you have at goldenthread can easily be activated in Create. Open the Help in Create and click on Creating Web Pages. There you will find a section on Prep: Add Links, which decribes both text links and graphic links (the box aroun your text).

If you go to:
http://www.stone.com/StoneStudio/StoneStudio.html
you'll see the custom nav bar at the top, the standard nav bar at the bottom, and the custom buttons in the middle near the top (Resources, Success!, Reviews, ...)

You asked - Problem #2: ...I get the overlapping parts warning. So I found a work-around by selecting all, then grouping all as one. ... Create is outputting the whole page I designed as one large Graphic.

When you get the overlap warning, click Inspect Page, and Create automatically shows you the Table Preview. The overlapping parts are hilighted, the background element in black and the forground element in green and already selected for you. Just grab it with you mouse and drag it to a non-overlapping position. If you don't care that the highlighted elements are overlapping, just leave them alone and they will be generated as a single graphic file.

I hope this helps,

I am glad to know I can proceed with Create. The overlapping problem is not so clear to me. I already know I do not want the program telling me not to put one graphic item over another graphic item. Normally this is a layers issue. There was a way in Freeway where the output was all weird unless you selected each item that was involved in the collision (overlap) and assigned it a property of a layer. After that they stacked up very nicely.

There are so many little red lines with the overlap warning that it doesn't make that much sense to me anyway.

I do own Slice and Dice, although I don't have it on this PowerBook I have with me. I will see if I can download it and try that.

Still not sure about the custom button location but great if it works. I will try the page you mentioned and get back with what I found out.

Thanks

David

Love "The Weight" BTW.

Sorry that the learning curve is steep - because Create is first and foremost an illustration and page layout program (akin to inDesign), and designed to make it easy to make web pages (and printed books) from one document. Basically, you need to throw out some of your assumptions from using programs that only make web pages.

I think you might like using the "Table Group" option to reduce all those red lines. Basically, it's useful to make logical groupings of objects.

Check out File -> Master Layers, add layer, and add your nav buttons there so they show up on every page you want navigation buttons to appear.

Check out this movie to learn how to make really cool buttons in Create using iMaginator:

http://homepage.mac.com/stone_design/gelbutton.mov
gelbutton.mov is a tutorial that shows how to use both Create and iMaginator to make web buttons, such as the common "Save", "Open", "Cancel", and so forth. This one hopefully opens up worlds of ideas for you to use the two programs together.

David, Go to my iDisk Public folder (markforge) and drag to your desktop GoldenThred.cre8 and see what ideas it gives you. Pull it apart and it may help. Buttons are made by dragging out a rectangle, add fill, add text over, then group scaleable, add link. When you have made all your buttons line them up and then group all in a table. If you do this on a Master Layer you can add it to any page you want. You will see I have added your top graphic to the Master Layer as well. Now go to each page and add text and graphics.

This is just a quick outline, I only put links on a couple of buttons.

If anyone has SuperBladePro (or BladePro for that matter) you can use their environment and textures with Mr. Stone's Method to replicate(to some degree) the effects of that PS plug in with iMaginator.

i don't say this to diminish the greatness of their program... but, it isn't useful to cocoa applications.... now, in a way, it is.

Hi, thanks for the tips. I need a little more direction in what I am reading.

Andrew:
What do you mean by Weight?

Blond:
The file available for downloading has no link posted so I don't know where you were wanting me to go?

Added question:
Notice that my page is not centered in your browser. I find this frustrating as I don't see how to correct it. I have dragged my page here and there before publishing it, including the space on top, it doesn't seem to affect where it displays on the screen.

It also shows a black space at the top which I did not want. At first I had the preference set to allow a space at the top for buttons. But I did correct this setting and it still shows with space on top.

What I want is a design like pages I have seen where it looks like a clean page is laved out and centered horizontally (touching the top vertically) on the Browser window. The background doesn't have to be black, visually it just needs to disappear and contrasted (return focus to) the data. I have seen this look here and there and I don't have time right now to browse an example and show you.

Lastly, I Have little time as I have so many FEMA housing inspections to do. But if anyone could lay all the ideas out for me with links so that when I get to it again I can pick up the thread, that would be great.

I only have one other page written so far and I can't show it or write more because of the button problem I already mentioned. It seems workable but again, I have no time right now. Once I get the pages laid out I can go on with writing the content. And content should really be my main focus - when I am not inspecting more houses of course.

Thanks to all.

David

That quote is from the Beatles song named "The Weight"

In Finder, choose GO -> iDisk -> Other people's public folder, and enter markforge in the dialog. That will mount Blond's public folder into Finder where you can just copy items to your local disk.

Centering pages is just choosing one option in Web -> Web Options panel, "Appearance", "Center Content in table" switch ON.

> black space at the top

What do you mean exactly by a "black space"?

If you mean blank, then you can add a little extra code to your "Colors" pane of the Web Option's panel in the <BODY> text field: