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So, following on from my 'why don't my buttons work' thread last week, I ask my webgeek mate to help me do some nice buttons with rollover and hit states. Apparently, using Flash isn't the way to do it.
'So how do I do it, then?''Use HTML'
'How?'
'give each of your links a class
so put class="button", or something inside the < a> tag
then in your stylesheet put:
.button{
width: button_graphic_width
height: button_graphic_height
display: inline-block;
text-indent: -99999px;
}
oh and also
background: url('/image/button_graphic') 0 0 no-repeat;
or wherever you put the button graphics
then put:
.button:hover
{
background: url('/image/button_graphic_rollover') 0 0 no-repeat;
}
you might need a different class for each link because the rollovers are different colours
or you could use two classes:
class="button green-button"
and just change the button:hover to green-button:hover
and so on for each different link
there'll be loads of examples on line
make some kind of sense?'
Er, no! I speak English, no some geek code. Can you not explain in real language, please?
Apparently not.
Do people lose the ability to communicate properly, when they get into doing all this 'code' stuff???
FWIW; the buttons actually appear, and have their rollover and hit states, but clicking on them doesn't actually do anything. I have to place linked text underneath, which kind of defeats the object.
****ing Geeks. I woon't mind, but it's us 'arty types' with a sense of aesthetics, that make your stuff look good! Who looks at the bloody code? Only other geeks!
FFS.
Get back to your crayons and leave the site-building to the people who understand it 😉
Who looks at the bloody code? Only other geeks!
And web browsers, which are what make the pretty pictures appear.
You could always stick with your pretty Flash buttons that don't work, and may well be illegal.
so someone complaining about the use of jargon includes 'FWIW' and 'FFS' in their rantm with no apparent irony intended...
Illegal??? WTF???
Marvellous.
So I'm a criminal, now???
I was asking for advice that I could understand. It wasn't explained to me in a way that I could.
'How can I, a non-geek, make nice buttons with rollover and hit states? I don't understand HTML, Java, or any of that other stuff, I need instructions in plain English. is that too much to ask?'
It appears so...
so someone complaining about the use of jargon includes 'FWIW' and 'FFS' in their rantm with no apparent irony intended...
Before he edited it (twice, I think), his post wasn't formatted properly either 🙂
so you want someone to explain how to do a techie piece of work, without him showing you how to do it??? RTFM or stop whinging and be thankful hes taken time out to help you do something which you couldn't do by yourself
[i]Do people lose the ability to communicate properly, when they get into doing all this 'code' stuff???[/i]
That's a bit like complaining when you go abroad that foriegners should put more effort into their ability to speak English 🙂
Illegal??? WTF???Marvellous.
So I'm a criminal, now???
Disability Discrimination Act. Flash navigation is a major accessibility no no.
i dont understand your point.
How are you supposed to learn Chinese if they can't speak English?
computers are very stupid - you have to make up the shortfall...
LOL!
Before he edited it (twice, I think), his post wasn't formatted properly either
It's so true. I was thinking 'WTF is going on here??' -everything I typed out appeared as a link!
How are you supposed to learn Chinese if they can't speak English?
Ah, at least SOMEBODY understands what I'm getting at!!!
I don't know this code stuff. I asked for an explanation that I could understand. I got the above code gobbledygook.
Not helpful.
So you want to write a program, but you don't want to understand the language you need to write it in....
so how would he explain it then? write about 3 pages of test, that would eventually have to use the code you don't understand.
I don't understand quantum phsyics, if I needed to understand it I'd buy a book and read it, I wouldn't hassle a friend, then get upest when i didn't understand what he was talking about...
NO! I DON'T WANT TO WRITE A BLOODY PROGRAM! I WANT TO PUT SOME SIMPLE ****ING BUTTONS INTO A SIMPLE ****ING WEBSITE!!!!!!!!!!
I'm using Dreamweaver, which is for us non-geeks to be able to produce simple websites. The rest of the site is fine, just not the buttons.
Which incidentally, work fine on my Mac, in Safari, but nowhere else.
The Geek has NO answer to that one, does he?
err yes he will have an answer, namely: different browsers 'read' code in different ways...
Do you know what a browser is?
Sorry RudeBoy but you can only symplify things so much. If you asked Stephen Hawkin to explain some of his work to you, it'd be fair to expect you to perhaps need at least physics degree first, maybe more.
If you can't understand what you were told, it's not your mates fault, you're just not equipped with the basic skills required to do html and css.
I asked for an explanation that I could understand
some things are complicated, and can take, hours, days or years to learn. They cannot necessarily be explained in a few pithy sentences
[i]The Geek has NO answer to that one, does he? [/i]
He's probably feinting ignorance. It's quite a handy thing to do in these situations 🙂
"work fine on my Mac, in Safari, but nowhere else.
The Geek has NO answer to that one, does he? "
where 2 or 3 geeks are gathered together browser compatability issues is not far down the agenda of items to be discussed and have heads shaken over.
I'm using Dreamweaver
there's your big mistake, this was fashioned by the Antichrist 🙁
Well it's very straight forward but I appreciate there is a bit of a learning curve.
First - HTML: this defines what your page does, and what it is made of.
e.g.
Singletrack
is a hyperlink written html.
Secondly, the CSS is how you decide what each of the html elements will look like. CSS is 'Cascading Style Sheet' because the styles cascade, that is their properties get passed down to their child elements.
So if I wanted to style that hyperlink I just wrote I'd give it a class.
and style it (in my CSS file)
.callmewhateveryoulike {
width: 25px;
height: 15px;
any other properties you want this to have...
}
the best way to learn is too look at the source code of websites. There are many HTML elements, and many styles that can be applied.
The above example is a very simple one.
EDIT: this forum is turning all my code into actual markup - just view source!
If it were easy to do everything, then no-one would make any money doing it. There has to be a line somewhere, buttons are it in this case. You have to get off your backside and learn it, or else pay someone to do it.
Very poor rant.
Have you tried switching it off and on again?
main() {
printf("hello, Stupid!");
}
🙂
If it were easy to do everything, then no-one would make any money doing it. There has to be a line somewhere, buttons are it in this case. You have to get off your backside and learn it, or else pay someone to do it.Very poor rant.
A justified rant though - I wouldn't make a living doing this if it was easy but it's amazing how every seems to thing making a website is something that just anybody should be able to do.
Christ, I've been doing this for nearly a decade and I'm still in awe at how awesome some others people are at this!
but it's amazing how every seems to thing making a website is something that just anybody should be able to do
it is! Making a [b][i]good[/i][/b] website is much harder 🙂
gees... quite a rant considering that the only issue seems to be you don't understand html/css.
If I was your '****ing geek' mate I certainly wouldn't be bothering to help you again...
NO! I DON'T WANT TO WRITE A BLOODY PROGRAM! I WANT TO PUT SOME SIMPLE ****ING BUTTONS INTO A SIMPLE ****ING WEBSITE!!!!!!!!!!
Further evidence of where the problem lies. A website is a program.
Damn, and this program doesn't seem to allow me to delete a post when I've accidentally clicked twice, only edit it!
Its a classic thing to do to protect your professional interests - create a language that outsiders cannot understand to increase the myth of how hard it is to do.
Medicalese is another example. used to protect the closed shop of healthcare workers and to prevent them being questioned.
Blimey.
Seems to me your friend went to a lot of trouble to help. The fact that you expect to be able to write a set up a website without apparently wanting to make the effort of understanding HTML or Cascading Style Sheets (or doing any research for yourself) is your fault not his. Either take what he says on trust or go to the trouble of finding out for yourself.
TJ - a lot of professional language is developed because it allows people who understand the fundamentals of a subject to communicate complex ideas quickly and accurately. It's not designed to create a closed shop, although it might serve that purpose as well.
READY
10 PRINT "BORED ALREADY"
20 GOTO 10
RUN
That's about as far as I ever wanted to go, with code...
well why are you trying to write a website then?
so why are you ranting when someone suggests that you need to go further than an endless loop?
RudeBoy: websites are built using HTML and CSS. You [i]really[/i] need to know at least a little of both them. Otherwise you are trying to build a house without knowing what bricks are or what keeps the roof on.
Having said that, doesn't Dreamweaver offer rollover buttons that don't use Flash? I'm sure it must! (as others have said, Flash is a bad way to do this, your friend has the right general idea)
FWIW, I used these same buttons in a website I made a few years ago, and they worked fine, as long as the correct FLash plugins were installed on whichever machine I wanted to view it on.
I asked why my buttons don't work. The geek say's 'do it in HTML' instead.
Not 'I don't know'.
I am fairly fluent in Photoshop. Not bad in Illustrator. I can do simple animations using Flash, with some very simple interactivity. I'm a competent photographer. I can use all this to produce some nice graphicky stuff.
All this bloke knows, is how to do code. He can't do the pictures stuff; he has to come to me. And his sites look sh1t anyway; really nasty.
And he's fat.
And has no hair.
I win!
wwaswas - you are probably right but it is used to exclude outsiders. Certainly in the medical world
A website is a program.
as a programmer, I would disagree. The web server is a program, but the actual content may just be plain data, though in practice most pages will contain some interactive scripting, which [b]IS[/b] a program of a kind. HTML and CSS are content description languages, a bit like a shopping list
That isn't professional language though. It's computer language. Which has to be exact and precise, because computers are stupid. They will only understand it if you get it right.
The only jargon stuff that isn't code is talking about HTML, css and classes, which are again technical terms you need to know, because they are how you communicate with the computer.
The guy was giving a surprisingly clear answer to something - but assuming at least a basic knowledge of HTML, which given it's the language websites are written in, is not surprising.
There are a million tutorials on the web about how to do this that might help you learn this stuff, start here:
< http://www.google.co.uk/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-GB%3Aofficial&channel=s&hl=en&q=css+rollover+buttons&meta=&btnG=Google+Search>
Also, be sure to test your site on something other than safari, it's a bit of a wacky minority browser. If you only have a mac, then firefox is worth checking, although obviously at some point you need to load up Windows versions of Internet Explorer to try it out.
Joe
Hope your mate doesnt read you coating his attempts to help you. Just a thought but maybe you shouldnt attempt to do it yourself if you dont like the answer he gives you FFS ! ****in non-technical tw*ts !!!
****ing geekist !!!
Stop using the G word its really offensive 😉
lol, classic designer & coder divide
imo - as a designer you should at least try and learn the underpinnings of web scripting i.e. html, css, javascript to see how they interwork etc
end of day will only make your design sense for the web canvas stronger
They are hard to talk to because they havent been laid.
"your design sense for the web canvas stronger"
well, a coder wouldn't have written that phrase 😉
programmer: how it works
designer: how it looks
Apparently, using Flash isn't the way to do it.
IMHO Flash isn't the way to do anything. Note to anybody designing a site using Flash - don't. I can understand why a designer might like to use Flash though, as it is the ultimate in style over substance.
Flash is awful. Any sites that load flash get clicked out of stright away. I want clear consise information - not a 30 second animation that annoys.
it ****s with your SEO rankings as well.
Back to the OP -
In the real world (web/mobile services), technology underpins the consumer experience
Once technical & design people can understand each other, then
the end results can be stunning
well in my experience anway
Heh!
I am not [i]completely[/i] serious, here! He is a pain in the arse to understand, though!
He's cool about me slagging him off! Just laughs at me.
I fully appreciate the work that 'geeks' have to do;I don't want to do it. My brain cannot function along such logical lines. With images, I can tweak things here and there, to suit; with webberey, it has to be spot on.
He is shit at spalining things, though. Just too lazy, really. I spose it's a lot easier to explain stuff with images, because you can see the results in front of you, instantly, whereas web geekery is mostly all 'under the bonnet'.
I've done them as Gifs, now. Let's see if he can get them to work. I would like to now how to slip them in meself, though, would save me time and pain having to deal with him...
Not 100% bothered if the buttons don't work, actually. As long as the site looks pretty! The site is going to be used by people learning about visual images, so the look is more important than sophisticated functionality. We don't need loads of fancy stuff, just pretty pics.
BTW, I mentioned before, about his screen calibration being way out. Everyone was complaning about the sludgy greenish colour, he thought it was fine. He has no sense of aesthetics...
The thing is, if you don't understand the concepts it can't be explained. It'd be like trying to explain the intricate points of Spanish grammar to someone who doesn't speak Spanish. There are some things that you have to understand to be able to understand more.
Either have him do it for you, or learn some stuff. That's just the way it is I'm afraid. And in any case, treat it as an opportunity. Personally I love to learn new stuff 🙂
so the look is more important than sophisticated functionality.
having working hyperlinks is hardly sophisticated functionality. If a button is meant to be clicked on, then you should be able to click on it.
The funny thing is, that if you hover over the button, the link appears in the status bar. Which would suggest that it should link, no?
It's all quite mystifying. I asked my mate why this is so, but he hasn't actually offered any conclusive answer. Which is bloody infuriating.
Normally, he's really good, but he has times where he gets really bogged down in things, that appear to make absolutely no difference whatsoever. Missed a deadline last week, which cooduv been avoided, tbh.
The funny thing is, that if you hover over the button, the link appears in the status bar. Which would suggest that it should link, no?
Not necessarily. You can control everything independently afaik, so you can make whatever you want appear in the status bar.
simonfbarnes - MemberA website is a program.
as a programmer, I would disagree. The web server is a program, but the actual content may just be plain data, though in practice most pages will contain some interactive scripting, which IS a program of a kind. HTML and CSS are content description languages, a bit like a shopping list
You are correct of course, but when I referred to a website, I meant everything, including the webserver and any interactive code on it, not just the content delivered to the client.
I'm used to websites with DBs or other backend systems that actually do something, rather than just offer up text/pretty pictures.
simonfbarnes - MemberA website is a program.
as a programmer, I would disagree. The web server is a program, but the actual content may just be plain data, though in practice most pages will contain some interactive scripting, which IS a program of a kind. HTML and CSS are content description languages, a bit like a shopping list
OK, a non-trivial website is a piece of software.
A flat site of the type last seen in 1996 isn't, I agree. But anything with a database backend, is.
Used to struggle to get my boss to understand this, when he wanted 'just a website' but it had to validate users, sell them stuff and maintain licence and financial records and expected it all to be knocked up in dreamweaver in a few days. And look nice (he'd obsess for hours about the background colour and answer no questions about what data we should collect about customers).
There's a technical term for people like that...