Two, what should be novice questions, - a rectangle & what manual

[bardow]

Hi - two items:

I have been working with NOF13 for some time now. Still I got stumped in how to create and place a simple red rectangle around a block of text on a normal page in one of my sites. It is only intended to call special attention to the text and a graphic next to it. I've tried using the instructions I have (such as they are) and have been totally embarrassed by the severity of my failure.

The second item is what is the best source of information that one should turn to to solve such a profound challenge, other than bothering the saint-like experts in this forum who throw-out lifelines to the many needy who come to sit at their feet? If there is a computer heaven these souls should be assured a seat among the chosen.

I have tried the built-in help menu in NOF13 and it's less that helpful with my question of how to make a simple rectangle. I ran all sorts of searches to no avail. Just trying to find the drawing tool in the program itself which instructions tell you is in standard tools doesn't quite do it. When you place your cursor over the various icons the closest you come is "rectangle" or "horizontal rule." So for the newcomer there appears to be no drawing tool. I'm not sure how to draw a simple shape even now when playing with the tools.

The best informational tool I've found is the Users Guide for NetObjects 11. It is in Acrobat format and so gives you a robust and useful search ability. Enter a phrase into search and it will find it if it exists in the document.

It's far more useful and quick than anything else I've seen. Obviously if you're looking for something specific to NOF13, it can't supply that answer.

Still if you did a search you'd quickly find Chapter 19 Drawing Shapes and Lines. (How about that!) It's much more helpful, but unfortunately still doesn't answer that question about how to draw a rectangle consisting of four lines. (Really!)

My biggest complaint as I read from NOF instructions is that I don't know where to look for the object they refer to. One other thing that has caused me all sorts of delays is trying to find an item referred to in an instruction. Do you know, for instance, how to specifically get to your legacy plug-ins. I think we should create a single sheet for all those things we are asked to use and have no idea where to look for them.

Imagine this sort of a master searchable page. It's dumb and unfancy, but could do the trick. Here's a sample of a few entries:

VIEW/>COMPONENTS>LEGACY PLUG-INS
VIEW/>MORE PANELS>PAGE PROPERTIES
SITE/>OUTLINE/F3 PAGE PROPERTIES
VIEW/>ADVANCED TOOLS>PHOTO GALLERY

(It wouldn't take much time to create an entire page listing of simple mappings for all such sometimes hard to find items or locations for the newcomers among us. Even the name and location of tools can be included. What about it? It seems like a no-brainer.)

I've talked too long, forgive me. But there have got to be a number of ways to make thing easier for newcomers to NOF.

Cheers and thank you experts, I don't know where I would be without you.

Barry

[antonsvideo]

do you mean a textbox border?

[franko]

and I totally agree that the best documentation NoF has produced is the PDF Getting Started guide and User Guide. Unfortunately, as you say, these haven't been updated since v11 and the online help that has been produced for vs 12, 13 & 15 simply doesn't cut it. I continually refer noobs to these documents to learn the application but the more new versions that come out, the more the manual become out of date. I would strongly recommend NoF update these documents and if they don't have the resources in-house, then hire a good tech writer that knows the application to get it up to date. At this juncture, there isn't really that much additional that needs to be added, but with each new release it becomes a bigger and bigger task.

[bardow]

Well, if you want to suggest the easy way...(I had meant how to construct an independent rectangle). But as soon as you mentioned "textbox border" I went to my site and had it added within a minute or two. It works perfectly well for what I wanted to do in highlighting a particular portion of a page. Thank you for simplifying my life.

Am still having a devil of a job trying to create pop-up windows to add bio facts about some of the more famous writers that were part a series of 100-year-old letters I have displayed on a page in my site titled letters.You might find the site interesting to visit since it is all about one of the most remarkable dancers who ever lived and has been lost to history for quite a long time. The URL address that can be pasted in is "ques.com/Virginia Dances/index"

The warning I keep getting when I try to do the linking from the letters startsith NetObjects Fusion 2013 at top of window and then the message "Connection to IE lost! Will cancel preview." And the application shuts down. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

I trust it's a good deal warmer where you are than here in New York these days when I took my 75 pound poodle out last night for a walk at midnight facing a 5 degree temperature and unusual wind speeds. Take care and thank you again.

Barry

[antonsvideo]

your site is using autoframes (not recommended) and is using html 4.01 output

I would disable frames and try HTML5 or HTML5 dynamic output, you will find things will start to work much better

[franko]

The connection to IE thing sounds like either 1. security software (Firewall, AV, malware scanner or similar), 2. The thing they're meant to protect; ie a virus. 3. Most likely, Windows doing something wierd. The thing about Windows that most irritates me is the way it thinks it knows better than you what you want to do and assumes everyone using it is a moron (actually, that would probably be true if only there weren't so many software companies creating necessary software that only runs on that pathetic platform). (COME ON, NOF, WHERE'S THE MAC VERSION?)