section navigations

[Deborah]

Hi
I'm in the process of designing a new site for one of my customers and before I submit the layouts I'd like to make sure I can do what I am proposing. If you look at the attached jpg you'll see some graphical buttons that will have rollovers, on the left hand side of the page. I can't find how to do these in Actinic, all I get is the usual text link. Is this possible to do and if so how do I go about it.
Many thanks Deborah

[Krithika]

Hi Deborah

If I understood your query correctly, you wish to use your own navigation buttons instead of the default Actinic ones ?

If that is the case, it can be done from within the software.

Go to Design | Options and click on the Navigation tab. Here you can remove the standard Actinic icons (2 icons for each link) and insert your own. The first icon will be the one to be displayed on the site, the second icon will be what appears on a rollover.
You can also change the text for the same.
These images need to be stored in the site 1 folder for Actinic to load them correctly.

Hope this helps.

Cheers

[Deborah]

Hi,
thanks but no that wasn't what I meant. I know how to change the main navigation buttons. When you look at the jpg attached sample you'll see the nav buttons you were referring to at the top of the page for 'home, cart, search, checkout' etc. I want to change the section navigation links in the left hand side which always appear as text and it's these that I want to change to buttons.
Is this possible?

[Krithika]

Hi Deborah

Sorry, now I have understood your exact query.

I have passed this on to a senior colleague and will let you know about the possible solution.

Cheers

[Deborah]

Hi Krithika,
Thanks for that, it will be interesting to see what they say. I have managed to hardcode some html into the Act_Primary page to manually put my buttons with rollovers into the design so this has solved the issue. I still wonder if it was possible to use images in the section lists instead of the usual text or is the way I've done it the only way.
Many thanks Deborah

[Krithika]

Hi Deborah

Great to know that you have hard-coded the images in.

To do it the "Actinic" way, you might want to take a look at the Advanced User Guide (Word version), page-42, which deals with "Inserting a List of Section Images With JavaScript".

[In case you do not have the Guide, you can download it from here ]

The images need to be associated with the section names in the software (In the Section dialog box). To stop them from appearing against the section names in the right-side pane too, you can select the template "Name and description only - no image" in the Section dialog box, Layout tab under the heading 'Section Link Layout'.

I have tried it at my end and it works.

Hope this helps.

Cheers

[Krithika]

Hi

Please also take a look at the following article in Actinic Knowledge Base:-

Click Here

Cheers

[Deborah]

Hi,
Thanks for both of these tips. I'm trying to work out what they both mean, especially the first one as I know nothing about Javascript and it's a bit over my head. As I will have different colours and text for each button, six in total, do I need to create different graphics for each one and code them all in separately?
I might need to get a techie guy to look at this for me anyway.
Thanks Deborah

[Deborah]

Hi again,
I tried to follow your last suggestion but of course nothing happens except I get back the normal text for the section list. Do I create a different colour button for each section, one for the out and one for the over rollover. Then do I put them in site1 folder. Then do I need to do your second suggestion for each button? I don't see how Actinic will select the right button that I want. At the moment I can't even get one to appear!
Sorry for being a bit dim in this, I got my html to work but don't seem to be able to grasp this. I almost need a step by step to getting it to work, it'd be nice to do it the Actinic way instead of the way I've achieved it.
Thanks Deborah

[Krithika]

Hi Deborah

Can you please let me know which Theme / Clean Layout you are using at the moment?

cheers

[Deborah]

Hi,
I'm using Clean layout 03
Many thanks
Deborah

[Krithika]

Hi

Please follow these steps :-

As per the article in the Knowledge Base, create two custom variables in Advanced | Custom Variables. When you associate them with the sections, specify the images as described in the article, i.e, one as the standard image for SECTIONIMAGE and one as the roll-over image for SECTIONIMAGE2.

Now click on Design | Options and the Layout tab. In case the template being used for "Top Level Section Link Layout" (instead of Section Link Layout) is "Section Name Only - Smaller Size Text", change it to "Image Only - No Text Shown".
[ Please remember to create a back-up of any template that you wish to modify ]

Click on the Edit button.
In the tempalte, find <a href=........></a> and comment out the whole line.

Paste the following code after this line :

<A HREF="NETQUOTEVAR:SECTIONLINK">
<img src="CUSTOMVAR:SECTIONIMAGE"
alt="NETQUOTEVAR:SECTIONNAME"
onMouseOver="src='CUSTOMVAR:SECTIONIMAGE2' "
onMouseOut="src='CUSTOMVAR:SECTIONIMAGE' "
border="0">
</A>

Save the file.

Upload the changes and now the roll-over images should appear in place of link text on the left-hand pane.

Hope this helps.

Cheers !!!!

[Perfect Eye]

Hello, I'm trying to do exactly the same thing but Actinic doesnt like the Value we input into the properties tab of sections. I dont quite know what is expected in the Value field, what does it do? We've just put 1 and 2 in, for the original image field and the rollover image field.

It says "2" not found and the side nav doesnt work when we go to preview the site.

[cdicken]

We've just put 1 and 2 in, for the original image field and the rollover image field.

You need to actually put in the filenames of the images you want for the 'original image' and the 'rollover image'. If you just put '2' in then Actinic will look for a file called '2' on your PC.