Trying to update a very old website that uses rollovers.

[adampicz]

I am trying toi make a few small updates to an old website I built in Dreamweaver back in 2005. The wesbite still works functionally but a coupole of the rollover links are broken and I'd like to fix them as is if possible.

The website www.collisionmachine.com was an arts group project we ran back in the day and I would like to maintain the original design as a kind of live archive. I'm planning to add some new pages but I can build those in the modern dreamweaver. The big challenege is how do I fix the old rollover links without having to completely rebuild (and thus ruin) the archive site version? 

Specificallly on the https://collisionmachine.com/index.html# page, the archive linnk (which is the first building rollover) is broken. Any suggestions appreciated.

[osgood_]

Specificallly on the https://collisionmachine.com/index.html# page, the archive linnk (which is the first building rollover) is broken. Any suggestions appreciated.

By @adampicz

It's not broken its just that the link is pointing to the page which is already open, the index.html , which is the default page.

Line 165: <A HREF="#"

Change the link to the page where you want the user to be taken (presumably the 'archives' page) and it will most likely work.

I wont go there in reference to code being a bit of shambles and long outdated.

[adampicz]

Thanks. The issue is I donot know how to edit a webpage with slices and rollovers anymore. In dreamweaver back in the day I knew how but now I need to find a new way to edit. Photoshop doesn't let you use slices and rollovers anymore. Any thoughts about how to actually import the whole website and edit it as is?

[osgood_]

Thanks. The issue is I donot know how to edit a webpage with slices and rollovers anymore. 

By @adampicz

You dont need to. Just open the page in code view in Dreamweaver, find <A HREF="#" on about line 165 and change the link to where ever your 'archives' html is located. I assumed it was in a folder named 'archives' - all the other links follow a similar pattern 'folder_name/file_name.html - but this one does not follow that pattern as far as I can tell:

<A HREF="archives/archives.html"

I don't know where you have stored it but point the link to it by changing the path inbetween the " "

But take the advice - rebuild your website 'as soon as is possible' to use up-to-date workflows which are compatible with todays viewing devices.

[Nancy OShea]

Holy Hot Mess!  <----IMAGE READY SLICES---> 😝.  Whoever told you Photoshop design comps were OK to use in production, lied.

Sadly, there's nothing here to preserve.  Here's why:

1. The landing page alone contains 44 code validation errors. 

https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.collisionmachine.com%2F

2. There's not one word of REAL TEXT for search engines, language translators and screen readers to "see."  For all intents & purposes, your site is blank.  Images of text are not content.

3. It FAILS all web accessibility & usability guidelines, a nightmare for vision impaired uses to navigate.  On the basis of ADA, it should be taken down because it's a liability.  

4. The site alienates 75% of Internet users because it's not web friendly.  Smartphones & tablets won't have a good experience and will likely leave as soon as they land, assuming they ever find it.  Google penalizes sites that aren't mobile-friendly.

Ditch this site.  It's not helping you.  If anything, it's couterproductive. Rebuild it responsively with Bootstrap or some other modern layout approach like Flexbox or CSS Grids.   In it's current table-based, <--IMAGE READY SLICES--> state, this site is not sustainable.

[adampicz]

I really wish people would stop with the "you dont need to" and "ditch this site" answers which aren't helpful and clog up the feed for actualy useful asnwers. 

I know how to write html code so fixing the "a href" wasn't really my issue but thank you foir teh example. I already fixed that on my local machine. That was just an example of one of the things that are broken, ALL of which need fixing.

Which is why, Nancy, your answer is just plain obnoxious. I (me personally) built that site in 2005 using what was available so no one lied to me that "Photoshop design comps in production" were ok. Does it look to you like I'm trying to use this for commerce?  NOPE. If you had actually bothered to READ MY QUESTION instead of getting cute, you might have seen the sentence that says

"The website www.collisionmachine.com was an arts group project we ran back in the day and I would like to maintain the original design as a kind of live archive." Meaning I domnt want to "ditch the site and rebuild it in bootstrap. I want to maintain it AS IS.

So your advicer toi "ditch that" is... I'll be polite and call it... unhelpful. In the future why not just cede the space to people who have useful advice, read the questions and aren't just on here to bloviate and waste people's time.

I am looking for suggestions from anyone who is familair with legacy tech and legacy deisgns. Specifcally is it even possible to use slices, rollovers and export to HTML in modern dreamwear or photoshop. Or, is there an lternative software that can do this.  

To reapeat I DONT WANT TO DITCH THE SITE OR REBUILD IT FROM SCRATCH IN ANOTHER PROGRAM. The whole point is to maintain it as is, with some fixes. I can go back and fix the code link by link and line by line but it will take foever.

SO, If anyone has advice about doing this quicker, as I asked, it would be much appreicated. Everyone else who has opinions that arent useful, post them in reddit. 

[BenPleysier]

I hope that the rant has made you feel better. It has certainly helped me.

Now, you do not want to rebuild the site in which case you are stuck with a line by line editing.

Time for Reddit.

[osgood_]

Sorry to say but it's your response which is unhelpful. Face facts, you can either consider taking advice from those that have been there, seen it and done it or keep on wallowing in a cesspit of outdated junk code, which sounds like you are frustrated with, there's no other option. At some point everything becomes redundant or broken, maybe you have reached that point, some time ago but are continuing to flog a dead horse.

[B i r n o u]

SO, If anyone has advice about doing this quicker, as I asked, it would be much appreicated. Everyone else who has opinions that arent useful, post them in reddit.

By @adampicz

could you please, tell what exactly you would like to fix ?... I have loaded your page, but unfortunally I di'nt find out any place to clik...  I didn't check the code yet either...

[Nancy OShea]

I get that this was a vanity project back-in-the-day and you have personal attachment to it for sentimental reasons.  But this is almost 2024 and the web is nothing like it was 20 years ago.

Sorry you don't like my answer.  I call things as I see them without rosey filters.  In my professional opinion, this project has too many downsides to justify tossing more fees at it for hosting, domain name, SSL certs, etc... — and for what exactly?  What is the upside here?

Real ARCHIVES contain REAL CONTENT mostly historical or scientific that can be cross-referenced and accessed from web searches. The problem is your site is devoid of any real content to archive.  

Serpent eating it's own tail

If you want to revisit memory lane or keep certain pages for posterity, use the Way Back Machine and pay for Archive-It service. That's what they're for.

I've said all there is to say.

Goodbye & best of luck.

[Ben M]

I really wish people would stop with the "you dont need to" and "ditch this site" answers which aren't helpful and clog up the feed for actualy useful asnwers. 

I know how to write html code so fixing the "a href" wasn't really my issue but thank you foir teh example. I already fixed that on my local machine. That was just an example of one of the things that are broken, ALL of which need fixing.

Which is why, Nancy, your answer is just plain obnoxious. I (me personally) built that site in 2005 using what was available so no one lied to me that "Photoshop design comps in production" were ok. Does it look to you like I'm trying to use this for commerce?  NOPE. If you had actually bothered to READ MY QUESTION instead of getting cute, you might have seen the sentence that says

"The website www.collisionmachine.com was an arts group project we ran back in the day and I would like to maintain the original design as a kind of live archive." Meaning I domnt want to "ditch the site and rebuild it in bootstrap. I want to maintain it AS IS.

So your advicer toi "ditch that" is... I'll be polite and call it... unhelpful. In the future why not just cede the space to people who have useful advice, read the questions and aren't just on here to bloviate and waste people's time.

I am looking for suggestions from anyone who is familair with legacy tech and legacy deisgns. Specifcally is it even possible to use slices, rollovers and export to HTML in modern dreamwear or photoshop. Or, is there an lternative software that can do this.  

To reapeat I DONT WANT TO DITCH THE SITE OR REBUILD IT FROM SCRATCH IN ANOTHER PROGRAM. The whole point is to maintain it as is, with some fixes. I can go back and fix the code link by link and line by line but it will take foever.

SO, If anyone has advice about doing this quicker, as I asked, it would be much appreicated. Everyone else who has opinions that arent useful, post them in reddit.

By @adampicz

I think the biggest problem that I see is that you are trying to make this site street legal to drive, when it's not meant for that purpose. If the intent is to keep this as a living archive and you want to add new pages, why not consider alternative approaches. For instance, you could build a simple new single page, or mini-site around this that links to the archived site (move it into a sub-folder?). It remains accessible for the purpose you intend, but this way you get a modern landing page with the added pages that you are looking to develop without having to bother yourself with trying to edit and maintain this old code which is obviously frustrating.

[rayek.elfin]

What I understand from your responses so far is that you would like a visual editor to make changes to these pages.

Usually I would suggest Pinegrow. But Pinegrow is based (and expects) reasonably updated html code, and even though it will open 99.9% of all pages without issues, it fails miserably in opening these pages. I suspect it is caused by a missing doctype.

Because the code is so outdated (tbh it was terribly outdated even back in 2005: sliced websites are a relic from the nineties 😉 ), I thought I'd try BlueGriffon. And low and behold: that will load your website's pages correctly and allow you to make changes more-or-less visually. Or at least inspect the visual design without breaking things 🙂

But ImageReady specific javascript code has to be manually edited, of course. In fact, if you have to make large-scale site-wide link changes, I would suggest to simply use any good code editor's search and replace function to change these efficiently.

I assume you have a local copy running in a local webserver? Open one of the pages in BlueGriffon, select the element you'd like to change, and open the dual view. That will help you figure out which part must be changed. Copy the code that must be replaced, do a search and replace for the entire site and replace that tidbit of code with the updated one. Repeat for any other link.

As I mentione above, this particular step I wouldn't do in BlueGriffon, btw. Either Visual Code or Notepad++ (or any half-decent code editor) would be better suited to search and replace code in an entire site.

The issue with ImageReady sliced Photoshop exported pages is that they were never meant to be edited either by a human or a visual tool. They were purely meant for quick and dirty conversion of Photoshop designs into something that would be viewable on the web. So no matter the visual tool: you will have to get your hands dirty and dive into the code to fix links, even if a visual tool like BlueGriffon is able to open these pages and display properly.

Good luck! I like the design. Would be nice to update it for modern times.

[Nancy OShea]

BlueGriffon stopped updating in 2019.  For that reason, I quit recommending it.

Visual Studio Code with the Free Preview Extension would be a better tool for editing scripts.