Creating Rollovers in Dreamweaver and Fireworks

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Learn how to create rollover buttons in Dreamweaver and Fireworks

Macromedia has made it very simple to create rollover buttons. In this tutorial you'll learn how to make rollover buttons in both Dreamweaver and Fireworks. We usually use Dreamweaver to insert rollovers so we'll start with Dreamweaver.

Rollover Buttons in Dreamweaver:

1. First design your rollovers in Fireworks. You need to design the button as well as the rollover and export it to your site folder.
2. Open your html file in Dreamweaver. Click on Insert>Rollover Image and select the image as well as the rollover image from your folder. Give the image a suitable name and choose a link. Click on OK.

You're done! You've successfully created a rollover button in Dreamweaver. Preview the file in your browser to test the rollover.

Rollover Buttons in Fireworks :

In Fireworks you have to use the Behavior palette to create rollover buttons.

1. Again the first step is to design your images and rollovers in Fireworks. Make sure your images are in the exact same place as your rollovers. Put your images in one layer and your rollovers in another.
2. Now you need 2 frames. Frame 1 should have the actual images and frame 2 should have the rollover images.
3. Insert slices on each of the images (Insert>Slice) and name it appropriately for easy reference.
4. Click on the slice and go to Window>Behaviors.
5. Now click on the '+' button and choose Simple Rollover.
6. Click on OK
7. Repeat the behavior steps for each of the slices.
8. The last step is to export the file. Fireworks will automatically convert the rollovers to javascript and html. You don't have to do any programming, its automatically done for you when you export the file. You just need to focus on the design and Fireworks takes care of all the programming for you. When you export the file there are two things you need to remember to do:

1. Under slicing you need to choose 'Use slice objects'
2. Under HTML style choose Dreamweaver 2.0 (or 3.0)

Fireworks will export a .htm file to the directory you have specified (along with the images). Browse the .htm file from IE or Netscape and you'll see your swap images working beautifully.

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