interactive preview

[IanSaunders]

Hi all,

I've recently started working for a small company who use Actinic to build their ecommerce sites, and I'm a bit of a newbie. My predecessor left the company before I started, so there's not been a handover as such, and now I have to upgrade a number of sites for a large client (v7 to v9).

I've pored over the documentation I can find and done a number of searches on this forum, but I keep hitting stumbling blocks.

I sat the Web Design with Actinic course last week, and found it very helpful, but the sites I'm working on at the moment in no way resemble the example sites in the course.

At the moment, I have an issue with the interactive preview - it isn't interactive. With a bit of trial and error, it appears to work if I strip out the script tags from the outer layout. Having read through the advanced user guide, I found the section on hiding code from the preview, but this doesn't feel like the right way to do things and I'd have to apply the block to every script tag.

Please advise...

[leehack]

The preview isn't interactive, are you getting mixed up with the offline preview you can do using the buttons on the toolbar? In order to change the preview screen, you have to interact with the content tree.

[IanSaunders]

Sorry, I mean in the design tab.

[RuralWeb]

start again what you are doing is wrong. Stripping stuff out will break the site.

Look in the v8 threads about upgrading from v7 as v9 is the same as v8 in that respect. You will soon see that upgrading is not the way to do it.

[IanSaunders]

Sorry, can you please explain what you mean by "upgrading is not the way to do it"? It's precisely what I'm required to do...

I'm thoroughly confused here...

[RuralWeb]

design view is not interactive either - sounds like you are used to dreamweaver if so then actinic is very different.

[IanSaunders]

I hope I'm not coming across as stupid - just a newbie. Yes, I am familiar with dreamweaver, but I'm not confusing the two (I hope).

On the course, within the design view, If I selected a layout, a dotted line appeared around it and I was able to access the underlying code within the code window, and to navigate through the layouts using the arrow buttons.

In the site I'm currently looking at, clicking in the design window does nothing.

If I'm approaching this all the wrong way, can anyone point me in the right direction.

[dave_finlayson]

Ian,

Malcolm was suggesting that it is often easier to redesign your site from scratch rather than upgrade to v8/v9 as many people have experienced problems upgrading (although whilst this is probably a good idea we upgraded no problem, it probably depends on how good the previous guy was with Actinic).

Are the scripts running outside of Actinic in Internet Explorer, if not it could be an Internet Explorer issue. Alternatively, are they the Actinic scripts or some custom ones specific to your site?

[RuralWeb]

the problem you describe is one I have seen before with upgraded sites and one of the reasons it is best not to upgrade v7 sites especially if they have been customized.

Standard v7 site will upgrade easily but as soon as you start on a customized site things will start to go wrong. It's not the fault of actinic but generally the mods that have been done to the site which break the upgrader. You can spend the next 6 months trying to fix the errors or bin it and start again.

Most of us can spot a site which will upgrade ok just by looking at it online so if you post a URL then you may get a better answer.

[IanSaunders]

I get the impression redesign is out of the question. My boss has quoted our client half a day's work...

The scripts seem to be a good mishmash of stuff. It looks like he's lifted a lot of them from a variety of script resources. There's also a bunch of google ads.

The existing site (v7) is at http://www.prom69.com

[RuralWeb]

half a day is a daft quote IMO - even testing the upgraded site will take longer than that.

[Darren B]

In the site I'm currently looking at, clicking in the design window does nothing.

This is probably because of the google ads, you are running scripts, you need to put a block around these then the selection will work.

Take the advice of the designers here, you need to start again.

I have upgraded sites from V5 to 6 to 7 to 8 and now 9. But they have always under gone a change and i feel confident in being able to fix the problems between these upgrades. But i have been using actinic since v5 so have a reasonable knowledge to be able to do what i require.

[RuralWeb]

Looks like you have your work cut out there. The clock is ticking best of luck - we can expect to see the fully upgraded site in a few hours then!

Don't you just love it when the boss drops you in at the deep end.

[Darren B]

My boss has quoted our client half a day's work...

Sounds like alot of bosses i used to know, aint got a clue about project managing

[IanSaunders]

To be fair, he's quite supportive - I think the half-day is for the clients benefit from a cost perspective, rather than a specific deadline for me (at the moment) but it still doesn't fix my issue.

So, the consensus is rebuild the site from scratch?

Is there some way I can remove the customisation in v7 (it's installed on this pc), then upgrade and then I'd only have the customisations to do?