Problem with CSS Menu & Hyperlinks

Hi there,

First I apologise if this question is answered already, but I haven’t found the info anywhere (forum, faqs or manuals).

I have been maintaining a simple site for my church http://www.stdavidsdalkeith.co.uk which I originally built with an old version of Go Live.

I saw the light recently and purchased Freeway 5 Pro. I first regenerated the site with some improvements, eg Master pages, Googlemaps action.

The site design is a simple design with 2 master pages having a common header and vertical navigation menu on the left side, and then pages with variable content just to the right of the menu. The content can flow down the page quite a long way on one or two pages. This content contains some hypertext links, both internal and external which worked ok.

I just tried rebuilding the site with the menus as CSS menus and it was both easy and looked nice. When I tested the results, I eventually noticed that any hypertext links in the html content to the right of the CSS menus looked ok, but did not actually link. Hypertext links in the content to the right which were below the bottom of the CSS menu continued to work as normal…

What am I doing wrong or missing?

I look forward to hearing from you.

Julian

quote

Hi Julian

I am not getting that problem here with FF3 - I am mainly looking at the Useful Links page

What browser is giving you the problem

David

quote

David, Sorry, I had already backed the CSS Menu changes out as the site is live and I didn’t want the parishioners to lose confidence in the site.

When I was testing the site with CSS menus, the problems were experienced using Safari on an iMac running Leopard (all latest software), plus an older Powerbook running 10.4.11 with iCab version 4.1.1 Beta 61.

Have you any sites with CSS Menus? Julian

quote

Why not post a page in a subfolder that we can look at

eg www.stdavidsdalkeith.co.uk/menutest/

David

quote

David,

That is a good idea.

I have just updated the site with a new ‘CSS Menu Test’ link in the main menu. This invokes a copy of the Useful Links page based on a new master page which uses CSS Menus Action. This leaves the site working for most users, but those interested can try the new menu out and see if it works for them or not.

Taking the ‘CSS Menu Test’ link gives me the same problem as before, i.e. hyperlinks alongside the CSS menu box have lost their effectiveness. Hyperlinks below the bottom of the CSS menu box continue to work.

I am interested to hear how it performs for you.

Julian

quote

Hi Julian,

The problem is that the item on the page that contains the menu is overlapping the other links on the page. Make the item smaller the same size as the live preview of the menus), re-upload, and your links will be free again.

Hope this helps.

Joe

On 13 Aug 2008, at 08:34, julk wrote:

David,

That is a good idea.

I have just updated the site with a new ‘CSS Menu Test’ link in the main menu. This invokes a copy of the Useful Links page based on a new master page which uses CSS Menus Action. This leaves the site working for most users, but those interested can try the new menu out and see if it works for them or not.

Taking the ‘CSS Menu Test’ link gives me the same problem as before, i.e. hyperlinks alongside the CSS menu box have lost their effectiveness. Hyperlinks below the bottom of the CSS menu box continue to work.

I am interested to hear how it performs for you.

Julian

quote

Joe,

Thanks for that.

I have set all master pages up so that menu items are contained in a fairly narrow html item box. On the test master page I have adjusted the CSS Menus action width to look like the previous menu width and this shows ok in the live preview.

I use a vertical guide on the master pages to ensure that all ‘body’ page html items are to the right of the guide and left aligned. This leaves a vertical gap between the menus and the other items.

This is why I am puzzled. The effect is just what you are describing, but I cannot see why what I have done ends up with this problem…

Julian

quote

According to the code the width of the item is 980px. Select it and make something between 150 and 200px (in the Inspector palette) and re- upload. The visible menus in the design view are just a preview of where the menus will be, the item that contains the menus will still be the same width as it is in Freeway (and therefore invisibly cover everything underneath it).

Joe

On 13 Aug 2008, at 09:41, julk wrote:

Joe,

Thanks for that.

I have set all master pages up so that menu items are contained in a fairly narrow html item box. On the test master page I have adjusted the CSS Menus action width to look like the previous menu width and this shows ok in the live preview.

I use a vertical guide on the master pages to ensure that all ‘body’ page html items are to the right of the guide and left aligned. This leaves a vertical gap between the menus and the other items.

This is why I am puzzled. The effect is just what you are describing, but I cannot see why what I have done ends up with this problem…

Julian

quote

Joe,

The menu html box is already 169px wide in the inspector box. Interestingly the master page is 1000px wide and the menu box starts at 20px.

I suspect that the CSS Menus Action is somehow setting the 1000-20 value in the code for the effective item width, although the inspector shows 167 and menus display at the required width.

I have the main menu width set at 10 em in the action window as this fits the 169 px wide menu item. What ems are I don’t know.

I have not found any way to alter this 980 effective item width in Freeway.

I have posted a support request to see what the official response is.

Many thanks for your help.

Julian

quote

Joe,

Apologies for not realising you are the main guru of Freeway support.

Many thanks for the very fast response to my support query.

I have used the solution you suggested and invoked the inspector layer option for the menu item on pages which have CSS menus and hypertext links to the right of the menus.

My site is all up and working now with CSS menus.

David,

Many thanks for the help - try the site now and see what you think of CSS menus.

Julian

quote

That appears fine now.

Remember that one of the main advantages of the CSS menus is being able to create submenus and sub-submenus.

It may be that your navigation could be better served by having some submenus.

The obvious one would be the Parish Organisations which could have

Altar Servers Child Protection Children’s Liturgy Choir Cleaning Counters Fabric Gardening Gift Aid Hall Liturgical Music Ministers of the Eucharist Offertory Parish Council Pass Keepers Piety Stall Primary School Pro Life Readers Sacristan Secondary School Society of the Sacred Heart St. Vincent de Paul 200 Club

As submenus.

David

quote

David,

Thanks for the suggestion of using submenus. Do you have any other favourite layouts or actions that you recommend I try?

In the first week of using Freeway I have invoked CSS Menus, Favicon, Download Files with size and GoogleMaps actions.

The problems I currently have are that the GoogleMaps action seems to override the Favicon and on that page only I get the generic globe instead of my favicon.ico. In addition the GoogleMaps only aligned to the first 4 characters of postcode and I had to resort to using the advanced lat. and long. coordinates to centre my map.

I am looking forward to continue trying Freeway features in the site. My audience is mainly silver surfers and I will have to be restrained given that they will respond badly to gimmicky layouts and I have to allow for those with poorer eyesight.

Julian

quote

Dear David,

I posted the same problem yesterday using the Freeway Express 5. I went through the correspondence about the problem, and as I understand it you have solved it by invoking layers, something that is limited to the Pro version? Juggling with the width of the HTML box that contains the CSS menu and the width of the menu in the Actions Box did not help me. Or is this only a problem that shows up in preview and not when the site is finally uploaded?

Thanks

Frank

quote

Frank,

T’was me that encountered this effect. I contacted Freeway Support who advised

‘making the item containing the menus a layer (check the layer option in the Inspector) will fix the problem’

I found the layer check box in the properties section of the inspector when the html item containing the menu was selected. Selecting the layer check box did indeed make links further to the right on the page work with the CSS menus.

I have the pro version and hope you have the same check box available in the express version.

I hope this helps.

Julian

quote

Hi Fran,

Sorry, you will need to wait for the next update to Freeway for a fix in Express.

Regards,

Joe

On 18 Aug 2008, at 10:36, Frank Bracke wrote:

Dear David,

I posted the same problem yesterday using the Freeway Express 5. I went through the correspondence about the problem, and as I understand it you have solved it by invoking layers, something that is limited to the Pro version? Juggling with the width of the HTML box that contains the CSS menu and the width of the menu in the Actions Box did not help me. Or is this only a problem that shows up in preview and not when the site is finally uploaded?

Thanks

Frank

quote

Dear Julian and Joe,

Many thanks for the response. It is now clear to me, and the solution will be an upgrade to the pro version.

With kind regards

Frank Bracke

quote

Dear Omar,

Thank you for the response. I do not have a published site yet as this is my first attempt. However, I encountered the same problem published in a thread started august 12 by Julian (Julk) (thread 37900). It seems to be something that needs a fix in a next update of Freeway. Meanwhile, it can be solved by applying layers, which is only possible in the pro version. Many thanks for the response

Frank

quote