Cannot get new items to show up on front of background

Freeway
1

Everytime I try to put an item on top of a locked master background, it goes “underneath” the background and will not allow me to move it forward. I can see the outline of the graphic, but that is all.

Here is what I have done:

I have a graphic item as a background on the main content of the page (black). It is from the master and it is locked.

I draw, let’s say, a blue box in the working area around the page (that way I don’t accidentally create children and other problems), drag it into position on the page on top of the black locked graphic item – and the blue item disappears, leaving only the outline of the item.

I have clicked “bring to front” but nothing happens. I click layer - nothing happens.

What am I dong wrong?

freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

2

Sorry…never mind. I got it.

I had to keep fiddling with layers, “move to front” and get it in the right order. It’s working now.

Thanks,

freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

3

Sometime around 11/7/09 (at 07:44 -0400) SkipII said:

Everytime I try to put an item on top of a locked master background,
it goes “underneath” the background and will not allow me to move it
forward. I can see the outline of the graphic, but that is all.

Okay, a bit of detective work comined with a bit of teaching. (I hope
it doesn’t feel like lecturing! :slight_smile:

First of all, terminology: don’t call something a “background” if it
is an object that you can (if unlocked) drag around the page. A true
‘background’ image is one that is applied to the page and acts more
like a watermark, or preprinted stationery. You cannot send
something behind a page background image! Therefore, you have a
regular graphic object.

I suspect that the graphic is layered, but the item you then draw is
not layered. Remember, layered items always sit in front of
unlayered items even if you send them ‘to the back’ or bring
unlayered items ‘to the front’. Layered items are, effectively,
floating above the page, whereas UNlayered items always sit down on
the page.

How come you have a layered graphic but your new item isn’t layered?
Well, the ‘CSS’ button in the toolbar is probably set to Table Layout
rather than CSS Layout, so new items default to being unlayered.
Either you switched it to that after making your first
pseudo-background graphic OR you make that graphic a layer manually
at some point.

Clicking the Layer checkbox in the Inspector converts a non-layered
item into a layered item - but it won’t bring it in front of any item
that is already a layer. So the answer to your problem is this:

Make that new box into a layered item, THEN bring it to the front.

Oh, BTW, locking something does one thing only: it prevents it from
being resized or dragged around the page by your mouse. It does
nothing to prevent any other changes, including moving it and
resizing it by changing the values in the Dimensions panel of the
Inspector palette. And it doesn’t affect layering, OR how it will
behave when you look at the published output in a browser.

k

freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

4

Thanks. no pecture – i consider it helpful, and always have.

  1. I’ll watch terminology.
  2. Understand the layer issue, but no, Table Layout was not the set mode. Nonetheless, I fixed the problem and wil just be very careful each time to do things in sequence.

New issue while I have you: I get very inconsistent results with rollovers. I have followed the instructions precisely – sometimes I get all the items in the rollover actions box, sometimes just the grouped item. I have never figured out why the differences. I am doing the same procedure each time:

  1. Draw items (in the working page area)
  2. Align
  3. Group
  4. Some say go back and lock individual items, some say not needed. I have tried it both ways.
  5. Select grouped item
  6. Actions/Rollover
    Only the grouped item shows up.
    I have gone back and clicked combine children, combined graphics – on an off – no change.

freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

5

Hi Skip,

  1. Draw items (in the working page area)
  2. Align
  3. Group
  4. Some say go back and lock individual items, some say not needed.
    I have tried it both ways.

Locking is totally irrelevant to the functioning of a rollover. It
only helps prevent accidental moving of the items on the Freeway
page. That is absolutely all.

  1. Select grouped item
  2. Actions/Rollover
    Only the grouped item shows up.

The behaviour you describe can only - repeat ONLY - happen if you
group non-layered graphic items. In this case, and regardless of the
current state of the CSS button in the toolbar, the grouped item will
be created as an unlayered item and the Rollover action will only
‘see’ the group container object itself.

All you have to do to fix this is use the Inspector palette to make
the group itself a layer. Then the Rollover controls in the Actions
palette will show all your items within the group as well.

(The alternative, if your graphics are NOT layered, is not to group
things at all. Just stack things up, apply the Rollover action, and
you’ll be able to use the Actions palette as expected.)

The moral of the story? Know when things are and aren’t layered. You
may THINK you know when something’s layered or not, but it seems this
isn’t always the case. Keep working on this as I suspect it is behind
most of the problems you’ve been experiencing. :slight_smile:

k

freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

6

That is not fixing it. I know I have been a pest, so you have good reason to believe i am not doing the basics, but I made a point of exploring everything on this issue before posting.

CSS layout is active and is always active. The button grouped item is checked as a layer, but the individual items still do not show up. I have clicked every imaginable combination: combine graphics, combine children, layer, etc. No change. No individual items show up in the action window.

freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

7

Sometime around 11/7/09 (at 09:08 -0400) SkipII said:

That is not fixing it. I know I have been a pest, so you have good
reason to believe i am not doing the basics, but I made a point of
exploring everything on this issue before posting.

CSS layout is active and is always active. The button grouped item
is checked as a layer, but the individual items still do not show up.

BEFORE you group, are the graphic boxes layered or not? Please try these steps:

  1. Make two graphics
  2. Make sure they are NOT layered
  3. Align and group them
  4. Apply the Rollover action

The result should be something that doesn’t work as a rollover
because you cannot configure it in the Actions palette, exactly as
you describe.

Now try this:

  1. Make two NEW graphics
  2. Make sure that they ARE layered
  3. Align and group them
  4. Apply the Rollover action

The result should work as desired in the Actions palette.

This is nothing to do with settings changed AFTER you have grouped
things. In my tests I found the recipe for replicating the described
problem and for avoiding it, but I couldn’t (a) break a grouped
rollover that was already working or (b) fix a grouped rollover that
wasn’t working.

k

freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

8

Process #2 worked, but I have had other times when it did not work, but those times I was modifying an existing button group. There must be some stray code os something that interferes. Disappinting, because I have to go back and re-do a bunch of rollovers, but it will be lesson learned, I suppose.

i do want to mention that, no, when I drew the first graphic for the button group, it did not automatically have layer checked, even though CSS Layers was active.

freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

9

Sometime around 11/7/09 (at 09:49 -0400) SkipII said:

Process #2 worked, but I have had other times when it did not work,
but those times I was modifying an existing button group. There must
be some stray code os something that interferes.

Your Freeway document contains no code whatsoever (not counting
markup code you add yourself, of course), so you never have to worry
about ‘stray code’.

Freeway layouts are far more sophisticated than HTML can manage, in
just the same way that InDesign and QuarkXPress layouts are far more
sophisticated than PostScript (their output) can manage. The
software’s job is to produce the optimum code from your layout, from
scratch, each time you preview, publish or upload. Freeway does no
editing of existing code, so it completely avoids all the cruftiness
that can go with that. Everything is fresh, new and re-optimised
every time.

So don’t worry, it is simply not possible for Freeway to ‘have stray
code’ left in its page from earlier stages of your layout efforts.
Not possible at all. :slight_smile:

I suspect the times it didn’t work were times when you had created
the group with items that were not, for whatever reason, layered.
Like I said, this is what causes the Rollover action to not be able
to see inside the group - which is precisely the problem you’ve had.

i do want to mention that, no, when I drew the first graphic for the
button group, it did not automatically have layer checked, even
though CSS Layers was active.

I suspect that either you initially drew it ‘inside’ an existing item
(as a child item) or it actually wasn’t active when you drew it. I
could be mistaken, but at this moment I know of no other way at all
for an item to begin life on a page in an unlayered state.

As long as no other issues are brought into play,

Process #2 will always work, and

Process #1 will (in today’s Freeway) never work.

The trick to keeping all this repeatable is to ensure that the items
you’re about to group are layered and are not children of other
objects.

k

freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options