The Back Links Action will automatically build a navigation menu based on where the current page is in your site folder structure (also known as breadcrumb links, or a site breadcrumb trail). See the menu links above for an example with the default settings. The action assumes that every directory in your site structure that will appear in the menu has an index page (index.html, index.htm, default.html, index.php, etc.).
If you haven't already, you'll first need to download a copy of the action file...
- DOWNLOAD FILE (.zip archive)
Decompress the ZIP file and put it into a new folder named "MindPalette" (if you don't already have a MindPalette folder in your GoLive actions). Put the MindPalette folder into your GoLive actions folder, which you can find here on your computer:
(Main GoLive Folder) / Modules / JScripts / Actions
After installing the action, be sure to restart GoLive so the action will be available for use.
To use the action, go to the Smart tab of the Objects Palette and drag a Body Action from the palette to wherever on the page you'd like the menu links to appear. Then, select the new Body Action and open the Actions Palette (Rollovers and Actions Palette in GoLive CS).
Select the On Parse event and add a new action on the right side of the palette by clicking the "Create New Action" icon below (looks like a page with a turned up corner - see image below). From the Action menu below, choose the Back Links action (from the MindPalette group, if you put it in a MindPalette folder).
The entry fields and setting for this action should then appear in the Actions palette. You don't *have* to change any of the options - if you upload the file to your web server, it should already be working - but there are quite a few options in the Actions Palette to customize the appearance. The options are all described below.
- home directory text
- If you leave this option blank, the web site address will be used automatically (the "www.mindpalette.com" in the exaple above). If you'd like to specify something different, such as "HOME", then enter that text in the field and the action will use that for the first link's text.
- top directory
- Leaving this option blank, or the default / will tell the action to generate links all the way back to the site's HTML root folder. If you'd like to only generate links withing a specific directory, enter that path in the field, but be sure the path starts with a / forward slash. For instance, if I wanted the example menu to start with the actions folder, I'd enter /actions/ in the field. Or, use GoLive's "pick-whip" to point and shoot to the root folder (or even a file in the root folder for older versions of GoLive).
- menu container
- This option determines what type of tag the menu is enclosed in. Paragraph tags are used by default. Use "Table" if you are using images and want to vertically center the text with the images.
- CSS Class (container)
- Any CSS class name entered in this field will assign that class to the container tag above.
- separator character(s)
- This option determines what character(s) (or even HTML code) is placed between the different links. The default value is the "greater than" symbol's HTML entity with a space on both sides, so " > ".
- separator image
- This option works just like the separator characters field above, but lets you link to an image file to place between the links. If a separator image is selected, this setting will override the separator characters setting. By default, this value is a # sign (meaning no image is used). You can leave the field blank, but GoLive may generate a bug icon for your page claiming an Empty Reference, so a "#" is preferred.
- capitalization
- Choose a capitalization option to be assigned to the text for all your links (initial caps will capitalize the first letter of every word).
- convert _ to space
- If checked (default), this option will convert any underscores to spaces in folder or file names. So, "golive_actions" would become "golive actions".
- convert - to space
- This option works just like the one above, except that it converts dashes to spaces instead of underscores. So "golive-actions" would become "golive actions".
- hide page extension
- Check this option to hide the file extension for any page name displayed in the menu.
- generate links
- This option should almost always be checked. If unchecked, the breadcrumb path will appear as text with no links to the directories.
Your action should now be ready for testing.
IMPORTANT: Please test this action on your web server. Testing locally should work, but the path will be based on the local path instead of the real server path.
When adding a new action to your site, particularly in GoLive CS2, you should always flatten and re-upload your site's GeneratedItems/CSScriptLib.js file to be sure GoLive refreshes its script library to include the code needed for the action. To flatten the script library, right click (or control+click on Mac) the CSScriptLib.js file (inside the GeneratedItems folder at the top level of your site) and choose Flatten Script Library (or Update > Flatten Script Library in GoLive CS2).
If you have any trouble, please consult the Actions FAQ here:
www.mindpalette.com/actions/faq.php
...or post a question in our online support forum:
www.mindpalette.com/forum
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