Tutorial: 1. Introduction to changing menu options
Level: Intermediate. Published on 16 December 2002 in How to change the menu options
An overview of the steps needed to edit and create new menu options for your website.
One of the first things you'll want to do when working with a PageKit is to alter the menu options to suit the requirements of the website you're making. For example, if you're building a website for your band, you won't want menu options such as "Products" and "Services". Instead, you'll probably want options such as "Music", "Tour Dates", "Photos" and "Discography".
In this section we'll show you how to change the PageKits menu options to suit your requirements. As far as the menu options go, the PageKits fall into three broad categories:
- Text-based menus. A lot of the PageKits have menus that are simply HTML text in the Web pages. To edit these menu options, all you need to do is edit the HTML source files. Examples of this type of PageKit are GE-OM, Hi and Tune!.
- Bitmap image-based menus. These PageKits have menu options that were created using images for the menu labels. Because the PageKits were created in older versions of Photoshop, the type layers in the PSD's are not editable, so you'll need to create new text layers in order to create new menu options. Most of the old PageKits, such as Uncle, Taste 2 and Footdown fall into this category. In addition, a lot of the vector image-based PageKits (see 3. below) were created in Photoshop 6, so if you're using Photoshop 5.5 or earlier, or Paint Shop Pro 7 or earlier, then these will also appear as bitmaps rather than vectors.
- Vector image-based menus. These PageKits also use images for the menu labels, but as they were created in newer versions of Photoshop the type layers are editable, so you do not need to create new text layers to alter the menu options. Most of the newer image menu PageKits are of this type, such as Invader and High Life Time Machine. However, you'll need Photoshop 6 to be able to edit these layers - in Photoshop 5.5 and Paint Shop Pro 7 they will mostly still appear as bitmap layers (see 2. above).
You'l be able to tell which type of layer you're working with by looking in the Layers palette. In Photoshop, if you see a capital letter "T" next to the menu layer then you can edit the type; if not, then you'll need to create a new type layer for the menu. In Paint Shop Pro, if you see a little "+" sign next to the layer, click on it. If you see another layer appear below with a capital letter "A" next to it, then you can edit the type.
Click on the appropriate link below to follow the instructions for editng the type of PageKit menu you are working with:
- Changing text-based menu options
- Changing image-based menu options in Photoshop
- Changing image-based menu options in Paint Shop Pro
The end
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