have setup matrix have been able to get the disigns working and standard pages to work. But we have a site already made in dreamweaver that we want to import.
Is this possible and is there a simple way?
Not really. We dont currently have an import facility to create and populate pages from .html files (or not that I know of). Does anyone else have something they have used?
we have rollovers at the top as buttons, so if you were on the welcome page the welcome button would be yellow then another button called search would be blue with a yellow rollover, if you click on search you go to the search page the search button becomes yellow and the welcome button becomes blue with yellow rollover.
do i edit the parse file and create a cusomization tag for each of the rollovers so they change from each page
You can, unless you can change the design to use CSS and a "current" class. Then you could use the normal Matrix menu system to highlight to currently viewed page.
If you create the customisations, you're probably going to want to just change a single image. If you have "home_on.png" and "home_off.png", then you could upload a new version of "home_off.png" under the home customisation so it looks like "home_on.png". Then your normal mouseover code would still be changing the images, except they are now both the same for this customisation.
your site does exactly what i want as far as the buttons on matrix.squiz.net with rollovers am i better of creating a java script and putting it into the css or have a path inside the parse to the file for the java script and css
It uses a JS function directly in the parse file to set URLs for the images when they are rolled over. The JS function requires the URLs for both the on and off state images for each button, so we use the "mysource_files" URLs in the parse file.
Then you do what I mentioned above with the customisations for each section. You end up with a design structure that looks like:
Design
|_ HomeOn.png (blue bg)
|_ HomeOff.png (gray bg)
|_ AboutOn.png (blue bg)
|_ AboutOff.png (gray bg)
|_ About Customisation
| |_ AboutOff.png (really the same file as AboutOn.png)
|_ Home Customisation
|_ HomeOff.png (really the same file as HomeOn.png)The off state for the buttons is gray, the on state is blue. The customisations simply make both the on and off states look the same.
what sort of customisation do i use for the images
You dont need a design area for the images (if thats what you mean). You upload a replacement image with the same name under the design customisation assets and Matrix will give you the correct url when you use "mysource_images/AboutOff.png".
that worked which is really good the only other thing i have to do now is make the text buttons on the left hand side editable so that i can add and delete text buttons is this done by constant_buttons
or do i add it to the body some how
I think you use the declared vars design area for customising text like this. Can someone else confirm this?
im a bit confused about the declare vars design
i have had a look at the example in the design manual but i dont quit get it, is there another example i could look at. All i want to do is make so when you go _edit you can add a new text button with a link
I don't know if you can _edit a design. It sounds like what you're wanting to do is create a menu? You might be better off creating a menu design area, or using a nested asset listing; that way the information is dynamically generated from the asset structure inside matrix.
when i goto www.domain.com/_edit will that mean i can go to the right side of the page and type a word for eg Welcome assign a link to it and a css style and that will become a button
The reason i want this is because the text eg welcome will change with each page so i need it to be as easy as possible to edit
There's no simple way to _edit anything in a design. In the scenario you've described you'd need to set up a design customisation for every page to be able to change this text. It would probably be better if you looked into the menu design area and have the show_level="current" so the menu is generated from assets at the current level.