Can I use images AND text in a menu item? (MM1, MM2)
Article Applies To:
MenuMachine 1 & 2
GoLive 6, CS, CS2
Mac, Windows
Article ID: 000025
Category: Pre-sales information
Issue
Is it possible to use an image in the background of a menu item and place text over the image?
Solution
In MenuMachine 2 you can use background images with text over the image.
In MenuMachine 1 you can either use text or images as the menu items but not both.
If you have MenuMachine 1, you can either
• upgrade to MenuMachine 2 if you need this feature; or
• create individual images with text in them and use those as the images
If you want to create images, you can use two or three images so you can have a rollover state and a click state if desired. Be aware that the more images you use, the slower the page will be to download.
1. To quickly create all the images without having to create a lot of separate Photoshop files, use a Photoshop SmartObject on a blank page and create all the gifs with the text changes from the one file.
2. In Photoshop 7 or ImageReady 7 (or later), create the file to the size of the button. Make the background. Create a text layer as the top layer using the longest menu text to give you an idea of the width you'll need. Save this file as a .psd file.
Note: do not put the text layer in a "set" as this will "hide" it from the SmartObject functionality.
3. On the blank page in your GoLive site, drag in a PhotoShop SmartObject and link it to the .psd file.
4. You will be prompted to edit the text (which is editing the text that you put on the top layer), and to set the Optimizations settings, and to save the file. Save it into a folder for all the menu images using a particular name. Repeat this process for all the items in the menu - making sure you save the .gifs with DIFFERENT names. What you end up with is a set of .gifs all created using the same PhotoShop file as their template so to speak.
5. For the rollover effect, set up another .psd file with the changes that need to be seen in rollover state, then repeat the process adding _over to the corresponding names.
6. Then, once you have your folder full of .gif images in your site, use the MenuMachine Inspector to link to them.
Using SmartObjects in this way to generate files that have text changes but the same background can save you a lot of time.
However, if each image in the background is different but needs text overlaying it, you'll have to create the images with text manually.
TIP: Try to only use images in the top level of the MenuMachine hierarchy when possible as increasing the number of images increases the overall page load time.
Last updated: July 29, 2006
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