I want the buttons on my website to be uniform, but when I copy and paste them, it gathers pieces of background from page to page, which aren't visible outside of the website preview. They're just blank boxes right now. To try and amend this, I deleted them and rebuilt the button row in a totally blank site and copied from there. Each time I pasted a row, I'd save, close out, then repeat. I tried doing some grouped, then ungrouped, using just half. But it is STILL gathering background from other pages. How? How does the program even know it's the same graphic if it's not even copied from one of the real site pages? I don't get it. Can you help me with this problem?

Thanks.

do you have a link to the problem so we can see exactly what you are referring to?

Hmm. I took screen shots, since I'm working on my site, and it didn't appear all wonky like it does in the preview. I don't know. Does the preview show you exactly what would go live? I don't know very much about this program, so it scares me that it'll look as it shows.

My text did not copy in the screen shots, but so you can see what I mean by buttons, this is my home page: http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&friendID=97469809&albumID=687234&imageID=54250999

And this is the following page:
http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&friendID=97469809&albumID=687234&imageID=54250999

In the preview, pieces about 1.5" in length and a little over a 1/4" deep) from the header and background on the home page hug random buttons on page two, and all following pages. I've tried deleting them all and strictly copying each row from my button-only fake page. It ends up copying background from the first page I copy them on, no matter how I do it, whether it's one button, a couple or a grouped block. I'm confused.

This glitch doesn't show on my design pages. It's in the preview only.

Hiya Amy,

this sounds pretty confusing to me, I'm trying to figure out why your images would have any background behind them at all if there isn't any to start with. If you are copying images from a screenshot then you're going to have to be really explicit on your boundries to be sure you're cutting out only the button image itself. If you are copying the button itself from somewhere give us a link to see where it's coming from so we can see how it's setup there.

Also:

Program being used to put the buttons in (in other words HTML Editor, VSD, etc.)
Program being used to edit the buttons if they are being edited at all
Version of the programs being used.
Anything else you think might be important such as browser type and version, operating system type/version etc. The more info the better we can help

No. I'm not copying anything from a screen shot. I'm not talking about some cropping mishap. I drew boxes in my in-progress VSD layout, put them in a row as shown in the screen shot, and tried to copy and paste them to all my pages, so they'd be uniform. They are not even buttons yet, just boxes with one of the provided effects. But they are not pasting correctly. They come with pieces of background attached, but this is only visible in the online preview. I mean, can't you copy and paste in this program? That's all I'm asking. It's not functioning properly.

So, I tried drawing the buttons again in a completely blank VSD site. There's no background, nothing else there, just newly drawn boxes. I tried copying them as separate pieces and as a group. I'd paste to one page, save, then exit. Copy from the blank site again, return and paste. You can only have one site open at a time, so I know I closed out.

All looks fine in the program, but in the online preview, it's still showing the boxes with baggage (dimensions already given) from whatever page I first paste on. I am copying from a blank site and saving and closing out each time I do. So why is the program pasting the row of boxes with pieces of other pages? How does it even know it's the same thing being pasted?

The only way I can think to amend it is to start with just button pages, paste in the other stuff and send it to back, but it seems ridiculous you wouldn't be able to just paste when copying from an otherwise blank site.

Amy, we need to be able to see what is going on in order to know where to start helping you. If you haven't uploaded the site, you'd better do so, possibly just to a temporary location, and let us see the code.

When you are talking about copy and paste, my guess is that you are using VSD, but it could also be the visual mode of the html Editor - or some other, completely different prog. We should not have to guess, you have to tell us. We won't know if things are going to be rendered 'wonky' or not before we know what we are dealing with.

I am strictly using Visual Site Designer and am just trying to design my pages. I'm referring to the preview provided with the program. I don't have a host yet. I have an account with Weebly I haven't touched, but it didn't look like it supported outside designs. If so, I couldn't find the ISP info needed to upload. This issue only shows in the preview provided with the program.

I've only gotten VSD so far. If I go with HostMonster, will I need the CoffeeCup HTML editor also? When I browsed the HM site, it looked like that was the case. I'm very clueless about that end of it.

Do you know a place I can upload a couple linked pages for free so you can see what I mean? Maybe it's fine live; I don't know. It could just be in the preview.

It doesn't matter how I do it. I started a totally new file with no backgrounds, just the boxes first, but as soon as I add other elements, in the preview, the error returns.

Thanks.

It should not matter what host provider you are using, VSD should upload just fine. The key in finding a good hosting provider is based on how much control you have over your uploaded content (and of course the support).

I've come across this in VSD too (latest version). I had a horizontal bar/divider close to the top of the page (a JPG created in Photoshop). I added a drop shadow to it in VSD then copied/pasted to put it at the bottom of the page. The copied divider "picked up" a chunk of the background color. If I copied it without the drop shadow, it worked fine.
It seems that VSD treated it like a PNG file once the effect was added, except it showed the background color instead of the black box it usually displays around PNGs. I didn't try uploading it to see what would show up, since it was just the one graphic it was no hassle to copy it then go back and add the shadow on each one. A bunch of individual buttons would be a different story:D

Oh. You're absolutely right! I'd done a design before and avoided this problem and couldn't recall what caused it. I'll take the effect off and try again. Thanks so much.