When I make rollovers by drawing a graphic box as a child of my header graphic, then importing my image into it. Then repeating the process for the rollover image. Then aligning the items, grouping them and assigning a rollover action, the rollover doesn’t work when I preview it.
So I have always dragged my graphic boxes outside of my site as children of nothing, then placed them afterwards. But I’d like to know what the problem is when they are children of a parent item?
I’m not sure if this changes anything, but my header is setup using an inline method, with an outer HTML item containing an image, then an empty HMTL item inside this with it’s margin set to auto. Then inside this I am trying to make my rollovers.
This is not a problem to do at all. Please follow these instructions:
Click once on your centered HTML item (the item that will become the parent for your rollover element).
Click on the Graphic Box tool in the toolbar, and sketch a new graphic box, beginning and ending within the bounds of the parent HTML item, so it is a child. Give it a color.
While the graphic box is selected, use Apple-D to duplicate it in place; use 0,0 offsets and make one copy. Give this copy a different color. Leave it selected.
Click on the word Site at the top of the site pane so it changes to Page.
Note the currently highlighted item in the list. This will be the graphic box you created by duplicating, and the original should be directly above it in the list.
Shift-click on the original, so both it and the copy are highlighted at the same time.
From the main menu, choose Item / Group.
While the group is selected, apply the Rollover Action, and configure it in the usual manner.
Preview, and marvel at your presto-changeo banner graphic.
I’m not sure to be honest. Let’s call my outer HTML item containing the header image “Outer HTML”, and the inserted HTML item with the margin set to auto “inner HTML”
I grouped my two rollover graphics, applied the rollover action to the container group, and in the actions pallete, the items available for selection are:
Outer HTML (which is grayed out)
Inner HTML (also grayed out)
Home Button (the group container)
Home btn Normal
Home btn Rollover
I’m not sure the outer and inner HTML items should be showing in my rollover actions pallette?
Make sure that all of your elements are layers. Click on them one by one in the Page pane (the site pane clicked over to page view) and look in the Inspector at the Layer checkbox.
Also, make sure that you are checking and un-checking the correct elements in the Rollover interface in the Actions palette. In the little spreadsheet view, you will see three rows, and two columns:
Normal Click
item4 x x
item2 x
item3 x
In this little ASCII-gram, item4 is the group that holds the two images together, item2 is the first graphic you drew, and item3 is the duplicate of it.
I just did this in Freeway 5, so I know it actually works. By the way, if you see more than three things in your Action interface, then you have something selected incorrectly, either one or more elements are not layers, or the group that you applied the Action to contains too many elements (too many things were selected when you created the group).
Yes, for a rollover, that’s all that’s necessary. But this particular rollover is meant to be a part of a CSS-centered layout, using a fixed-width HTML box inline in a 100%-width HTML box to create a header bar. So the rollover elements need to be positioned children of the centered HTML box.
I tried this in a simple mock-up document, and it does work, so there’s something else at play here if the OP experiences otherwise.
I think it gets tricky with inline boxes, especially if you don’t name them. Item1, Item 2, etc. isn’t very helpful when you have lots of nested boxes and you’re trying to find certain ones for effects or grouping.
I agree with that, also note that my example did not create an inline box, only a positioned child box. If you create an inline box, the only way to get a rollover on it is to use the Parameters tab of the Actions palette, rather than the stack-group-apply Action method used elsewhere in Freeway.
