Show/Hide layer action

Freeway
1

I have a trial site at: http://www.paulbradforth.com/sg/

It has an initially visible block of text which is replaced by a
picture when you roll over one of the two thumbnails. When switching
between thumbnails, the block of text shows briefly. I’ve tried
various ‘Restore’ and ‘Sticky’ settings in the Action palette, but
none of them seem to do the trick.

Does anyone know how I can stop the text showing between thumbnails?
The answer is probably that it can’t, as I do want the text to show
when the cursor is not over a thumbnail.

best wishes,

Paul Bradforth

http://www.paulbradforth.com

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2

Does anyone know how I can stop the text showing between thumbnails?
The answer is probably that it can’t, as I do want the text to show
when the cursor is not over a thumbnail.

I had a similar problem on this site here
http://www.westcroftdesign.co.uk/lighting01.html

what I did was to place a blank image ( hidden ) on top of the image ( or in your case text ) that I wanted to hide between the thumbnails, then by placing a rollover trigger underneath all the thumbnails only the blank image shows, bit fiddly but it works, although it probably makes the site a little script heavy it was a trade off between function an efficiency

hope this helps

Gary

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3

On 24 Jun 2008, at 13:58, diarbyrag wrote:

what I did was to place a blank image ( hidden ) on top of the image
( or in your case text ) that I wanted to hide between the
thumbnails, then by placing a rollover trigger underneath all the
thumbnails only the blank image shows, bit fiddly but it works,
although it probably makes the site a little script heavy it was a
trade off between function an efficiency

hope this helps

Yes, I think it probably will; thanks Gary!

best wishes,

Paul Bradforth

http://www.paulbradforth.com

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4

On 24 Jun 2008, at 13:58, diarbyrag wrote:

what I did was to place a blank image ( hidden ) on top of the image
( or in your case text ) that I wanted to hide between the
thumbnails, then by placing a rollover trigger underneath all the
thumbnails only the blank image shows,

Gary, could you elaborate on this bit - what form did the rollover
trigger take; something like a large invisible box that covered
everything?

best wishes,

Paul Bradforth

http://www.paulbradforth.com

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5

On 24 Jun 2008, at 13:58, diarbyrag wrote:
what form did the rollover
trigger take; something like a large invisible box that covered
everything?

Hi Paul,

I made an image layer just a fraction bigger all round than the thumbnails and made sure it was behind them all and applied the rollover action to it ( set restore to yes ) I then drew an image box over the top of all the main images and applied the show/hide layer action to it ( restore to yes ) set it to hidden and gave it a unique number in the same set as the thumbnails, then set the rollover to trigger that layer, in my case I just filled it with white which is the page colour so when you mouse over the spaces between the thumbnails the rollover triggers the blank white image so you do not get that flickering of the base image or text showing through.

hope that explains it ? if not or you have any problems you you can phone me via the number on my website

http://www.anglesphoto.co.uk

Have fun and hope it works

Gary

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6

homepage.mac.com/simon_aughton/links/freeway/image%20gallery/index.html

is this what you mean.

it worked for me with
www.stuartawilkinson.com

if you need anymore advise let me know

tez

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7

On 24 Jun 2008, 11:49 am, paulbradforth wrote:
Does anyone know how I can stop the text showing between thumbnails?
The answer is probably that it can’t, as I do want the text to show
when the cursor is not over a thumbnail.

Hi Paul,

I have made you a file to show how I think it would work for you
http://www.anglesphoto.co.uk/paulbtest.freeway

for clarity I have made the rollover trigger yellow but it would normally be white and therefore invisible

hope this helps

Gary

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8

On 25 Jun 2008, at 11:50, diarbyrag wrote:

I have made you a file to show how I think it would work for you
http://www.anglesphoto.co.uk/paulbtest.freeway

for clarity I have made the rollover trigger yellow but it would
normally be white and therefore invisible

Gary, thanks for this, it’s help above and beyond the call of duty :slight_smile:

But when I click the link, the file appears in binary text in the
browser rather than downloading. Tried saying ‘download linked file’
in Mail, but nothing happened.

However, your earlier instructions by mail were perfectly clear
enough, thanks. And I still can’t make it work. I’ve made a blank
white image, in the right place, made the rollover for it, also in the
right place, linked 'em all together. What happens is that when I
mouseover the space between thumbnails, the blank white one does
appear, as it should, but not before I’ve had a quick flash of the
text that needs to be hidden. There seems to be a point where it shows
the text, briefly, no matter what I do. I’ve uploaded it again, with
your instructions applied, at: http://www.paulbradforth.com/sg/

The odd thing is that the flash of text cannot be made permanent, ie,
if you mouse from one thumbnail to the other, you get the flash of
text before the blank one comes up and hides it, but if you then
immediately mouse back again, very slowly, you can’t find a spot where
the text is permanently visible.

I’m also now getting a millisecond of white flash as whichever
rollover is rolled-over loads its image.

Any ideas?

best wishes,

Paul Bradforth

http://www.paulbradforth.com

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9

On 24 Jun 2008, at 23:48, terry mcshane wrote:

homepage.mac.com/simon_aughton/links/freeway/image%20gallery/
index.html

is this what you mean.

it worked for me with
www.stuartawilkinson.com

if you need anymore advise let me know

Thanks for this Terry, although it doesn’t fix it; see my recent mail
to Gary …

best wishes,

Paul Bradforth

http://www.paulbradforth.com

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10

On 25 Jun 2008, at 11:50, diarbyrag wrote:
But when I click the link, the file appears in binary text in the
browser rather than downloading. Tried saying ‘download linked file’
in Mail, but nothing happened.

I tried it before I replied here, I clicked on it which shows as a binary file and firefox asked me what I wanted to do with it, downloaded it and the file was just there, opened it fine in FW

if you email me at email@hidden

I’ll send it to you

Gary

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11

On 25 Jun 2008, at 14:32, diarbyrag wrote:

I tried it before I replied here, I clicked on it which shows as a
binary file and firefox asked me what I wanted to do with it,
downloaded it and the file was just there, opened it fine in FW

Ah, I’m using Safari, and it didn’t ask me anything …

Have since got your email, for which, thanks :slight_smile:

best wishes,

Paul Bradforth

http://www.paulbradforth.com

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12

Here’s a thought - and I haven’t tried it so don’t know if it will work or not.

Put the 2 thumbnails in a 2 cell table and use the cells for the rollover trigger.

Then there will be no space between them.

David

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13

On 25 Jun 2008, at 19:00, DeltaDave wrote:

Here’s a thought - and I haven’t tried it so don’t know if it will
work or not.

Put the 2 thumbnails in a 2 cell table and use the cells for the
rollover trigger.

Then there will be no space between them.

Interesting, thanks Dave …

Not sure I can put a table in the layout, but I’ll give it a go.

best wishes,

Paul Bradforth

http://www.paulbradforth.com

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14

Just having a go at this and applying the rollover/show hide to a cell seems to be a problem.

But you can apply ‘Observer’ to a cell and then maybe use Prototype or scriptaculous for yor show/hide effect.

Walter! This is your field.

David

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15

Unfortunately, Observer can be applied to a table cell, but it
doesn’t do anything there. Table cells don’t have IDs, so there’s
nothing for it to hook into.

You could use Protaculous to apply the Scriptaculous library to your
page, then add the call to observe long-hand using the Extended
dialog in Freeway.

Click on your cell, then choose Extend from the left-most tab in the
Inspector. Click new, then in the name field, enter
‘onmouseover’ (without the quotes) and in the Value field enter ‘new
Effect.Highlight(this);’

Note that you will not be able to use more specific notation than
“this” to describe the cells unless you use the Extended dialog to
add an ID to the table cell or row. But Prototype gives you enormous
power to “walk the DOM” and make an action on “this” translate into
something entirely else.

Try this trick for size:

Change the event from onmouseover to onclick. Then change the
function from new Effect… to the following:

new Effect.BlindUp(this.up('tr').next('tr'));

This little bit of whimsy uses Prototype’s powerful accessor
functions to take ‘this’ up to the parent TR then on to the next TR
in the table.

Note that this probably won’t work on IE in a “vanilla” Freeway
table, because you must use the (optional according to the W3C and
everybody else) TBODY tag in your table code in order to manipulate
TRs in that wonderful browser-shaped object.

Walter

On Jun 25, 2008, at 2:31 PM, DeltaDave wrote:

But you can apply ‘Observer’ to a cell and then maybe use Prototype
or scriptaculous for yor show/hide effect.

Walter! This is your field.

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16

On 24 Jun 2008, 11:49 am, paulbradforth wrote:
Does anyone know how I can stop the text showing between thumbnails?
The answer is probably that it can’t, as I do want the text to show
when the cursor is not over a thumbnail.

Having spoken to Paul, we have discovered that the problem disappears when you remove the border from the thumbnails, you still need the blank rollover to stop the text showing in between the thumbnails however, does anyone think this bug in FW or an inherent problem with browsers ?

Gary

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17

I have been playing with this - do you think this is any better than having the blank rollover.

http://www.deltadzine.net/test/rollovertest.html

David

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18

On 25 Jun 2008, 9:47 pm, DeltaDave wrote:

I have been playing with this - do you think this is any better than having the blank rollover.

that seems to work really well Dave

we await your method with baited breathe :slight_smile:

Gary

always interested in a simpler method, you tend to try and find a workround and sometimes you ( read I ) pick a longer method.

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19

On 25 Jun 2008, at 22:47, DeltaDave wrote:

I have been playing with this - do you think this is any better than
having the blank rollover.

http://www.deltadzine.net/test/rollovertest.html

I appreciate it David, but this looks the same as my initial effort,
with no ‘blanking’ rollover to hide the text when rolling from one
thumbnail to the other. I see a quick flash of text between the two
states, just what prompted me to write to the list about this …

best wishes,

Paul Bradforth

http://www.paulbradforth.com

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20

Yes I know - there is a flash of text layer there - it is not the perfect solution. Is there one?

But what you do get is the appearance of a smoother transition between the thumbnails because they are actually graphic items inserted into adjoining table cells with no gap between them.

The left hand thumb has a section of transparency either side of the image to fill the cell.

Which brings me back to my question about whether or not 2 adjoining cells could act as the rollover triggers without giving the text flicker when passing between them.

I know Walter offered some insight into this but I am afraid a mere mortal like me finds this to be way over my head without a lot of serious study.

And whose to say that it would overcome the flicker problem anyway. Maybe that is just how the browsers work.

I think sometimes we strive too hard to achieve something that the average surfer wouldn’t even notice - let’s face it there are plenty of abominations out there that Joe Average finds perfectly acceptable.

And so to bed!

David

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