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From the File menu, select Export. Select Website (HTML) (*htm, *html) from the Save as Type: drop down list.

Name your file index.htm and press Export.

IMPORTANT: index.htm should be all lower case. If you put your files in a subdirectory, as I have done, use lower case for the subdirectory name as well. This will ensure that a visitor to your site sees the home page and not an embarrassing page with a list of all your site files.

When you do this Xara creates an HTML page for each physical page on the site (remember the 5th button links to an e-mail program and not a page). Xara also creates a folder with the name you gave the website. This folder contains all the images for your website. If you upload your website to a web host's server, it is important that the htm files are all in the root directory along with the folder. The HTML pages Xara creates all reference the images that are in the folder. If the browser does not find the files, it displays an icon that indicates the image could not be found. In other words, this is not the time or place to get creative.

If you name your site index.htm and you have your own domain name, you can just use your domain name for the URL. Browsers automatically look for a file called index.htm or index.html and if they find such a file, they load that page first.

I like to save my site to the desktop then I can double click on the index.htm file and preview the site. Internet Explorer displays a warning notice that it is blocking Active X controls, etc. Right click on the warning and click Allow Blocked Content and then click Yes in the following dialog. This only occurs when you preview the site on your computer and does not happen when your website is on-line.

One final point. As a rule, all photo bitmaps are exported as JPEG with 75% compression. Everything else is exported as 8-bit PNG at 256 colors. But sometimes you do not need 256 colors and can substitute a 16 color file and save some load time with smaller files.

The website title text, shadow and circle created a file size of 51K. And the page banners and large numbers were larger than they needed to be as well.

I replaced the website title text and circle with a 16 color version in the index.htm_files folder and saved almost 40K in the process. I did the same with the page banners and the large numbers. The result was the file size for the folder went from 411K down to 274K.

Click here to see the actual site.

In hindsight the mouse down buttons are a bit funky and maybe creating a live effect was not the very best solution. But this should give you a good idea of how the button states work and the steps required to create your own website.

If you missed it, Workbook 69, the HTML Workbook has some additional information and instructions for adding Flash movies to your site.

Your comments and questions are always appreciated. I would also love to see your own Xtreme created websites. You can send me your comments and website addresses using the e-mail link below.

Gary W. Priester
Host
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