How to create a cool navbar

This document may look complicated, but do not be tempted to skip any of the steps, or your navbar will not work! – and remember – it will be worth it in the end.

By Jonathan Pilborough

  1. Go to www.flashbuttons.com
  2. Choose the button style from the choice on the home page.(Click on it to go to the next screen)
  3. On the next screen, put in the top text box the text you want to be on the link to each page, one page on each line.
  4. In the second text box type the filenames of each page you want to link to, one on each line and in the same order as in the first text box. To find the filename, open the page you want to link to in Microsoft FrontPage, and look at the name on the tab at the top. Type all of this, including the .htm into the textbox. Don’t just miss out the filename because you don’t know it, or your navbar will not work!
  5. If you are using frames pages (your web page is split into two different pages), ask someone who understands frames to do this rest of this for you!
  6. If you aren’t using frames pages, leave the third text box blank.
  7. If your button choice supports it, use the wide colour picker at the bottom of the page to choose the colour of the button. If the colour picker right at the bottom is a rectangle shape, ignore it!
  8. Click the "Click here to generate your free navbar!" button at the bottom of the page.
  9. On the next page, firstly click the button on the left labelled "Free download" When the file download window comes up, firstly click save then in the window asking you where to put the file navigate to the folder with your webpage in and just click save without changing the file name or type.
  10. When the download is complete click on the close button – not "open" or "open folder"!
  11. Next go back to the FlashButtons.com Internet Explorer window and scroll down to the paragraph of text looking like this:-
  12. <OBJECT classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/
    shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=4,0,2,0" width="129" height="84">
    <PARAM name="movie" value="Basketball.swf">
    <PARAM name="quality" value="high">
    <PARAM name="menu" value="true">
    <EMBED src="Basketball.swf" quality="high" menu="true" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/
    download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="129" height="84">
    </EMBED>
    </OBJECT>

  13. Highlight all of the paragraph from the web page (NOT FROM HERE), then right-click on it and click copy.
  14. Okay, the hard bit is over now. Open the page you want to put the menu into in FrontPage, make sure you are in the "Normal" pane, and then click in the webpage at the place you want to insert the menu, so the cursor flashes there.
  15. Click on the "Insert" menu and then click "Web Component"
  16. In the left hand pane of the "Insert Web Component" dialog box, scroll down to the bottom and click on "Advanced controls"
  17. Then in the right hand pane click on "HTML" and click the finish button at the button.
  18. When the "HTML Markup" window appears right-click in the text box and click paste. The code you copied from the webpage should now appear. If it doesn’t, try copying and pasting from the website again.
  19. Assuming all is well, click the OK button.
  20. A symbol should now appear in the place you inserted the menu. It will look like this:-
  21. If the file you downloaded is in the same folder as the webpage and you have not changed the filename of the file you downloaded, when you click on the preview pane, your navbar should appear!
  22. If you have nay problems, try and figure out where you went wrong and start again from the step you missed out.