MS FrontPage 2002

[EBSchrader]

I'm working my way through the tutorial and suddenly lost my page hyperlinks on the Homepage (index.htm). All I have left are a row of boxes, each with an X in it like you get when a photo or graphic doesn't show up on a Web site. This is my practice Web site, and I need help to restore the hyperlinks!

I wasn't sure if this question belonged in the software forum or in the web & e-mail forum, but this is where I usually go with my problems.

The last step I had performed in the tutorial before the hyperlinks went byebye was to modify the theme by changing the banner head on the Homepage. All other pages still work perfectly.

Help! I want to finish the tutorial so I can start to work on the actual Web site.

 

[davidedlin]

Those little boxes with the crosses in them are FrontPage's way of denoting a linked object that it cannot locate. What was intended to be a JPG or a GIF file instead displays a little crossed box instead of the actual image itself. There may be four main reasons for this occurring, and they are:

1. You have loaded images that have invalid file names - these may contain "special characters", such as < or >, &, or the cents character, the copyright character or the registered character (®, ©, ¢)
2. The images are not in the place identified in the hyperlink - they may have been moved to another location
3. The images may have been renamed, or the directory they are in may have been renamed
4. If you are viewing the page on another machine, you may get these if the hyperlinked locations of the images (the IMG SRC values) point to a location on the computer the web document was created on
   [/list=1]
   Right-click on the image and check the path of the image from the Picture Properties dialog box (General tab). If the path reads something like C:/My Documents/My Pictures/image.gif then the path will be invalid on any other client browser. The path needs to be shortened back to the image name only, plus whatever directory information needs to preced it, eg: ../images/image.gif or whatever the directory configuration requires.
   
   These things are the most likely causes of your problem. There are other instances where the page must be saved before it will preview correctly, but I suspect that this is not one of them. Good luck, David E

 

[EBSchrader]

These are not pictures or graphics! When I right-click on the X, there is no Picture Properties box -- only Page Properties, Border Properties, and Linkbar Properties. None of these will restore my navigation buttons!

I think modifying the theme by changing the banner at the top of index.htm may have broken the connection to my hyperlinks somehow. I checked in Navigation and all 4 subpages are still connected to the Homepage, so all the other pages still work, using the navigation buttons on the left side of each page, but the ones across the top of the Homepage won't work! They're the ones that turned into Xes.

The page has been saved repeatedly, because I was dumped out of the program once and lost the work I had been doing at the time. I even viewed it in Preview, and the Xes were still there, plus the NAMES of the buttons, but only the top half of each horizontal box appeared. Does that mean anything to you?

Any additional suggestions would be MOST appreciated!

 

[EBSchrader]

The good news is, I fixed my own problem. I'm sure there was a much cleaner, more direct way to fix it, but here is what I did: went to Format/Theme and selected No Theme. When that was applied, all references to the theme were gone. My buttons were back!!! I next went to Format/Theme and did all the steps again that I had done yesterday. I did them slowly and carefully, and at the end, my buttons were still there!!!

I wish I could say I found a magic solution, but it was only a matter of backing up and taking another run at it. Whew!

 

[davidedlin]

gee, you know I wish I could just say there was a simple answer to this kind of unexpected phenomena, under the name Dreamweaver...

However, I took the time (and it does take plenty of it) some years back to aquaint myself with the ways and means of the HTML language, and then later on with JavaScript and Jscript. This assisted me greatly afterwards, even when using WYSIWYG editors, because it allows me now to leap into HTML mode and instantly fix any anomolies that might be dogging me.

Just a thought, though I fully appreciate that time is alwas a precious commodity, and a coding language is hardly worth learning if you are only building one or two web pages a month or less.

Cheers

 

[EBSchrader]

David, I'm in awe of people like you who are experts in HTML coding and all that. However, I am trying to set up a simple Web site for a nonprofit group, and I LOVE being able to work in WYSIWYG. I do peek at the HTML view from time to time, just to see what is really going on. However, I don't have the time or the patience to learn HTML at this point.

Fortunately, I know a lot of smart people -- like you -- who can perhaps bail me out if I get really messed up and can't figure it out for myself.

Thanks again for trying to find the source of my problem. I'm just glad that the problem went away with a little fiddling on my part.