Zoomstop to skip webbots navigation menu

[Kirsty]

I've been trying to exclude a navigation menu, which is in the form of a FrontPage webbot "include" page. However, I cannot get the Zoomstop function to work, whether I put the Zoomstop/restart instruction in the document itself, or in the included menu page....

Anyone any tips on this?

Kirsty

[Ray]

Make sure you have the ZOOMSTOP tags exactly as specified in the Users Guide and FAQ (http://www.wrensoft.com/zoom/support/faq_howto.html#zoomstop).

That is, the tags must appear exactly as in the following example:

<!--ZOOMSTOP--> ... text I want skipped ...<!--ZOOMRESTART-->

And both tags must appear on the page for them to work (you cannot just have a ZOOMSTOP tag with no closing ZOOMRESTART).

Next things to check:

If you have only recently added the tags to your pages, and you are indexing in Spider Mode, you may be indexing a cached copy of the webpage. To ensure that this does not happen, check the option "Reload all pages (Do not use cache)" on the "General" tab of the Configuration window.
Check if FrontPage is stripping out HTML comments. Some web authoring programs offer an option to "compress" or "optimize" the webpage in which it removes what it thinks is irrelevant content. Make sure you have these options disabled.

[Kirsty]

I think I've done all this, but I will check again. Thanks very much for the assistance Ray.
Kirsty

[Ray]

Just remembered... it'll also be worth checking which version you are using (click "Help"->"About" in Zoom). There was a bug in Version 5.1 build 1000 regarding ZOOMSTOP functionality, but it has been fixed in builds since then.

For more information and download link to the latest build, see here:
http://www.wrensoft.com/zoom/whatsnew.html

[Kirsty]

Thanks Ray - I've just checked and am using Zoom V.5.1-1002 downloaded on 6 July, so I guess that ought to be OK?

I've done all the checks that you suggested, but still can't get it to exclude the left hand menu words. Very frustrating!

Kirsty

[wrensoft]

Can you post the URL to your site, so that we can see what you have done.

[Kirsty]

The page (still under development) is:
http://www.outpostuk.com/2007/aberdeen/abzhome.htm

The left hand menu is:

http://www.outpostuk.com/2007/include/aberdeen/abzlleftnav.htm

(The rest of the URL in full is: /2007/include/aberdeen/abzlleftnav.htm.)

However, curiously, the Zoomstop/restart coding does not appear in the final viewable source code of the first page, even though it appears in the coding of the included left hand menu page....

Any help you can give would be VERY much appreciated.

Kirsty

[Ray]

As you have noted, the ZOOMSTOP and ZOOMRESTART tag do not actually appear on the page you are indexing:
http://www.outpostuk.com/2007/aberdeen/abzhome.htm

So the problem here is not with Zoom, but a problem with your web page authoring software. I suspect that you are using FrontPage seeing the use of "webbot" includes.

I'm not very familiar with FrontPage, but one possibility that comes to mind is if you modified the page outside of FrontPage, then the FP Server Extensions will be unaware of your changes. Did you modify your menus outside of your web authoring app?

I would recommend referring to the documentation for your web authoring software (FrontPage or otherwise), and check the proper method to make changes to your menu pages.

Another thing to look out for when using WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors, is that you do not have an option enabled which strips out HTML comments in web pages. This could sometimes be vaguely labelled as "optimize" or "compression" features. They are generally documented (by the software developers themselves) as a possible culprit of breaking scripts.

[DW76]

I am having a very similar problem. I'm am using include files for my navigation menus and I have tried to use the <!--ZOOMSTOP--> command, but the spider is still indexing the nav links. I am using Dreamweaver to edit the site and I am sure that the <!--ZOOMSTOP--> command is not being removed. Do you have any ideas?

[Ray]

Have you checked all of the above? "Reload all pages (do not use cache)" being an important one if you only recently applied the tags to your pages.

Can you give us a URL to the page in question so we can take a look?