Hi Kim, Can you tell me how Dave Steves created the picture banner on the top of his website?

Hi Dave,
Could you elaborate on how you created the mouseover effects for the page links on this site http://www.runforfunstables.com? Very professional web site. Also could you explain the text locking technique.

Thanks in advance for your help!
Kirk

Hi Guys

Questions shouldn't be in the tips and tricks topic - i'm gonna try splitting you off to your own topic...

It's flash.

Also flash.


The explanation can be found in this thread:
http://www.coffeecup.com/forums/softwar … nd-tricks/

Sorry, just got here....

For some reason the tips and tricks link seems to be not there any more...

Correct that the buttons on the site are flash, however i didn't use flash to create them. I prefer Swishmax2, which is easier to use and cheaper than Flash. You can find it at http://www.swishzone.com. Just like Flash, there will be a learning curve, but it is gentler.

The locked text is NOT Flash and is accomplished by applying the following technique:

- Create your text using the TEXT tool in VSD
- select it with the POINTER tool
- Click on the OBJECT button at the top toolbar. OBJECT PROPERTIES appears as a little toolbox window.
- Click on the ALLOW ADVANCED TEXT checkbox
- Click on the EFFECTS button on the top toolbar
- click on the SHADOW effect, with opacity set to 100% (the shadow should be invisible)

By doing the above steps, you have told VSD to render the text out as an image. You can still edit the text normally, but when your site is saved and uploaded, the text will be an image. This locks your text in, but it is no longer truly text.

Good things:
text is locked in
Use any font you want - it will be locked in too - great for headers

Bad things:
Text is not found by search engines
The edges of fonts don't seem to be as smooth when you do this. Not as well anti-aliased.

Sorry for the late reply.

One thing I forgot to mention...unbelievably...a very cost effective option for doing custom flash navigation buttons would be Coffeecup Flash Firestarter.

Reasonably priced (especially within any of their bundles) and is extremely easy to learn and use.

I personally don't use it all the time only because it lacks a feature called "easing" which makes certain motions look more natural.

But with a little ingenuity, cool navigation buttons are possible.

Oh, one other thing - it won't allow you to do rollovers, but otherwise it is reasonably effective for simple nav buttons.

Hi Cary
You can achieve something similar using CC gif animator.
See my banner created with CC gif animator on www.orrufc.co.uk.