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Nicole
Posts: 2854
Joined: 9/15/2004
From: Nambucca / Kempsey, Australia
Status: offline
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Product Review: Xara Webstyle 4 - 3/1/2005 0:34:28
re: Webstyle Menu Problems
It seems at first glance Xara Webstyle 4 is a pretty nifty tool, especially for what I purchased it for, drop-down navigation bars. With about 300 different styles and colour schemes, which can be changed, you'd think it'd be ideal for creating attractive, workable navigation structures for large websites.
But it seems the 2 javascript files and multiple image files it creates to support each navigation bar have to be be uploaded and appear in the same folder as any page that uses them, even if the pages you're creating use includes for the purposes of site consistency, saving disc space and increased loading time.
In effect, if you have a very large site with many directories and sub-directories, you'd have to load the 2 javascript files and in my case, 2 images files for each navigation button (it used a rollover effect) in each of your directories and sub-directories, thus increasing disc space usage therefore increasing loading time.
The problem can be "solved" by not having folders within your web, thus having a very disorganised uploaded website. To me that defeats the purpose of using Webstyle navigation bars for large sites, which in reality rules them out alltogether as drop-down menus are rarely needed on small sites.
According to Xara's forum at www.talkgraphics.com the javaspript and image files can be sourced from one directory within a web and used in other folders within the web, but it seems that this only works if you use a Xara website template also created with Webstyle 4 and altering it for your own preferences. see here
Needless to say i'm very disappointed to learn what i have today about this product. It seems that a product based on organising the appearance of websites effectively only leads to a very disorganised file structure with which web designers rely to regularly maintain their sites.
Hoping like hell i'm wrong with these accusations and another webstyle 4 user can correct me.
Nicole
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businessnaples
Posts: 3
Joined: 5/16/2003
Status: offline
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RE: Product Review: Xara Webstyle 4 - 3/9/2005 17:27:49
Perhaps there is something I'm missing but I use Webstyle all the time for menus. If I load all of images and js files to the web's root directory and make a page of the menu only (also saved in the root) I can then use that menu page as an include on any page in any folder and it works fine. Perhaps that's not what you want to do but if so, it works fine fpr me. I have a rather large menu structure created from Websytle (http://www.southbayrealty.com) and all of the image files and the js files total about 16kb.
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businessnaples
Posts: 3
Joined: 5/16/2003
Status: offline
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RE: Product Review: Xara Webstyle 4 - 3/11/2005 10:48:15
Yes, it's true, I have all of the pages that are referenced by the menus in the root. However, I did a quick test by changing one of the sub menu references to a page (and that page also has the same include page of the menu) in another directory and it worked fine (the submenu URL of course needs to reference the page using the folder name [foldername/page.htm]).
Bob
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