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Thread: new user - complaints, frustrations, bugs, no helps and questions

  1. #1
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    Default new user - complaints, frustrations, bugs, no helps and questions

    I'm still evaluating whether I should pursue building my website with this program or give up and look elsewhere. That I have to even post here and ask basic questions is the indication of a greatly lacking helps document. It fails to explain any concepts or the "why" one would want to do something. It handles most help subjects with "here's what you can do" always leaving the user with more questions than answers - usually the "how?" and always the "why?". None of the help buttons on the dialog boxes have help items associated with them -useless for learning what the options presented in the box mean. What are the purposes and reasons and concepts behind all the things you can supposedly do?

    I mostly am left fumbling around trying to learn the program by trial and error with most of my tries producing no noticeable result or, when in Style view, causing the program to crash. This trial approach works well in most logical programs but NetObjects is very quirky and inconsistent.

    Here's just one of many examples of this inconsistency: In style view, I select the "Text Object" style and change the background to a solid color box in the CSS common panel. When I try to then remove the box -click "none" or "automatic" the box turns white but fails to return to transparent. I can make it transparent in page view but it remains white solid in style view. There are many many more such frustrations and instability. Sometimes it works, other times no.

    I'll change a font in page view, and then click it back to automatic and it doesn't revert back to the CSS style - very buggy!

    A most fundamental question: what is the relationship between the CSS common box where one can change properties, and the properties box where one can also change properties? Example: I can change the text color in the Text properties as well as the CSS common panel. Which is used when and WHY? I understand the basic idea of CSS as I used it in Dreamweaver to some extent, but I do not understand how it is being implemented in NetObjects. - And it doesn't seem to be implemented with any consistency.

    It's the basic functionality, stability and utter lack of real helps that is driving me nuts! Someone needs to explain the fundamentals quick or I'm gone. I keep hanging on because I love the concept of Site, Page, Style, and Assets views and the quick in program preview. - this makes total sense and I loved it right away because of this but... It could be great but it keeps fighting me and wasting my time.

  2. #2
    Senior Member franko's Avatar
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    The documentation is now in a wiki at http://wiki.netobjects.com/Table_of_Contents and is pretty comprehensive. I see NoF has now removed the Mountain Jacques sample site which was used in the 'Getting Started' documentation up until v11 and was terrific for beginners working through building a site for the first time. I still have a copy both of the documentation and of the sample site if you'd like it - just message me with your email address and I'll send it to you.

    It will give you a very good idea of the concepts behind NoF and its workings; then you'll only need to read the wiki for the additional features that have been added since v11; there are some but not too many that they can't be grasped in a few days' reading.

  3. #3
    Member gl33's Avatar
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    You can find the "Creating Your First Website" tutorials for versions 12 and 13 here:


    http://netobjects.com/html/documentation.html

    http://netobjects.com/html/build-you...ts-fusion.html

    http://downloads.netobjects.com/en/n...e.pdf?type=pdf



    Regards - Donald

  4. #4
    Senior Member franko's Avatar
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    I see you can also download the Mountain Jacques tutorial site assets there also.

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by franko View Post
    The documentation is now in a wiki at http://wiki.netobjects.com/Table_of_Contents and is pretty comprehensive. I see NoF has now removed the Mountain Jacques sample site which was used in the 'Getting Started' documentation up until v11 and was terrific for beginners working through building a site for the first time. I still have a copy both of the documentation and of the sample site if you'd like it - just message me with your email address and I'll send it to you.

    It will give you a very good idea of the concepts behind NoF and its workings; then you'll only need to read the wiki for the additional features that have been added since v11; there are some but not too many that they can't be grasped in a few days' reading.
    I went through the Mountain Jacques tutorial (one of the many things I did trying to unearth basic concepts). I'm not as green as I may sound. This tutorial was so basic I was able to figure all this out on my own. The problem is with NetObjects (I thought I made that clear). It is very buggy and crashes often in style view, and you didn't address the example which is very typical. The helps are as disjointed as the program.

    Please answer my main question in a conceptual way: again, what is the relationship between the CSS common and the properties panel on a given object? (they seem to overlap in their function). -There is just no consistency. It is like the program has been cobbled together by many different people in different places with different intents over many years. -Do I have that about right?

  6. #6
    Senior Member warrenr's Avatar
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    Why would anyone want to help a person with that attitude?

  7. #7
    Member gl33's Avatar
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    OK! Maybe you should just state there's a bug and submit a ticket here:

    http://support.netobjects.com/

    And ask if this was fixed in 2015 or can be verified or confirmed.

    Also, every program has bugs in case you have not looked at other forums and software.

  8. #8
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    if Nof crashes in style view often, it could be caused by several things:
    1. anti virus or spyware program was enabled during Nof inatallation
    2. the Nof installer was not run as admin
    3. the Java Runtime is corrupted or outdated, download latest from java.com
    4. start Nof the first time by choosing run as admin

    the CSS Common panel can be closed if the advanced options are not needed such as spacing, padding, borders, bg image x and y position etc, but I keep mine open but only use it sometimes

    to revert font changes back to automatic can be tricky if the text selection is not the same as when the changes were made
    http://www.videoproductions.com.au/N...formatting.mp4

  9. #9

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    Please verify the following:

    You are using the most recent version of NetObjects Fusion 2015. In the File menu choose Help then About.
    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	NOF2015-Build.jpg 
Views:	1846 
Size:	31.2 KB 
ID:	2174
    The build number should be 15.00.0000.1050, if it is not, download and install the latest update. http://netobjects.com/html/downloads.html

    The latest version of Oracle's Java 32bit JRE is installed. (even on a 64bit machine) Visit http://java.com/en/download/installed.jsp using Internet Explorer. If you do not, install the Windows Offline (32bit) JRE from here: http://java.com/en/download/manual.jsp
    Screenshot here: http://teamneto.com/tutorial/images/java-jre-32bit.png

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by Steve Raubenstine View Post
    Please verify the following:

    You are using the most recent version of NetObjects Fusion 2015. In the File menu choose Help then About.
    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	NOF2015-Build.jpg 
Views:	1846 
Size:	31.2 KB 
ID:	2174
    The build number should be 15.00.0000.1050, if it is not, download and install the latest update. http://netobjects.com/html/downloads.html

    The latest version of Oracle's Java 32bit JRE is installed. (even on a 64bit machine) Visit http://java.com/en/download/installed.jsp using Internet Explorer. If you do not, install the Windows Offline (32bit) JRE from here: http://java.com/en/download/manual.jsp
    Screenshot here: http://teamneto.com/tutorial/images/java-jre-32bit.png
    This forum is for NetObjects 2013 which I'm using. I didn't post in the 2015 forum. I'm on a new computer with the latest Java version which was installed prior to NetObject's installation.

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