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Layer Genie

Great Tool
February 6, 2003 by James Threadgill

I’ve just finished looking at the new Layer Genie extension by Marja Ribbers and George Petrov. I spent hours creating the layered menu on my site, www.ebconcepts.com, and found creating the nested flyout menu a formidable task with countless revisions of source code to achieve cross browser compatibility. Not so with Layer Genie! This handy tool is the answer to quickly and easily creating custom layer effects of all kinds. In fact, it’s so good I don’t know whether to praise or denounce the DMX Zone team for coming up with an extension that makes it so easy. Now anyone can create a custom cascading layers menu like mine in a matter of minutes and never look at the source code! Now what will I do to impress?

Easy Animation
February 6, 2003 by Matthew David

I started developing web sites way back in '95. This makes me about 500 years old in the business. I remember when Microsoft's Internet Explorer 4 came out. There were all these cool transitions you can apply to DHTML Layers. The only challenge was that the transitions did not work with any other web browser.

It is now many years later and each web browser, Netscape, IE and Opera, support DHMTL Transitions is one format or another. The problem now is that many of the browsers handle transitions differently. This makes for a lot of JavaScript and CSS code.

Now, with the release of Layer Genie I have a very easy tool that does this for me. Layer Genie sits in the Behaviors Panel and works and operates exactly like any standard Behavior. All you have to do is place a DHTML Layer onto the page, add your content and apply whichever effect you want. The effect can be a simple swipe transition, a fade in or a drop shadow.

Layer Genie is a great time saver. It also gives you the power to add animation effects to your web pages without having to resort to either complex JavaScript coding of Macromedia's Flash.
Layer Genie Review
February 6, 2003 by Spencer er Steel


You know how it is ... your client thinks they want 'a Flash site' - but they want to keep all that dynamic content - and they want it NOW! And you're holding your head in your hands as you try to explain the limitations, the cost and the time ...

Whereas nine times out of ten, all your client really needs is this extension and a little imagination to make their site eye-catching impressive, whilst keeping all the functionality and code you've worked so hard on.

What DXMZone have managed to do here is a piece together a number of equally impressive DHTML behaviours in one suite - all guaranteed to 'WOW' your client in a few seconds and save you a heap of time on the 'presentation' whilst you concentrate on the really important stuff!

As usual, installation is a breeze and the suite of behaviours are excellently signposted within Dreamweaver MX. Once up and running, you'll want to start playing - and there's a lot to play with in here! Just creating one simple layer with an image or text in and firing off the behaviour gives you a huge amount of options ... you can do a simple slide to anywhere from anywhere in any direction, make it unfold, hide, pop back up - in fact, you'll waste hours just messing around with the options and watching the results - I know I have!

Once up to speed with the basics, you'll realise how to group layers together to create cascading menu effects and others visually impressive tricks.

In fact, you'll be using this tool a lot for your menus - as you've got everything to create some beautiful cascading menus, which will definitely impress. For the more technically minded - how about creating your menus from a datasource and let Layer Genie to the rest with its effects!

Needless to say, I'm impressed. If you are a novice web developer looking to spice up your site, or working on many clients’ sites and needing to Wow them - quickly - I cannot recommend this enough. It will soon pay for itself...

Have fun

Spencer Steel

Awesome
February 10, 2003 by gordon mackay

I am a total Dreamweaver novice, but thanks to extensions like this one, which has the user of all abilities considered in the design, helps me to create professional results. Layer Genie adds a wide range of effects to any page and does it without being over the top in terms of wistles and bells. Keeps it tasteful.

So, I end by saying that this is my most significant purchase aside from Dreamweaver itself.

Thanks

Dynamic Data and Layer Genie
March 9, 2004 by Kenny Darcy
Hi all,
I found layer genie was not much use when it came to needing to use it with dynamic data, In respect I had a thumbnail and a larger image, the images are been called from a database. Using Layer Genie you need to have a layer for each record so if you dont know how many layers you need before hand it is not the tool for you. I had expected it to have this function. but it appears it is only an over priced dhtml extension for static sites.

Kenny
RE: Dynamic Data and Layer Genie
March 10, 2004 by Marja Ribbers-de Vroed

Layer Genie does not create layers... it manipulates existing layers.
But then again, it should not be too difficult to create the required layers in some server side repeat region as well, together with the image thumbnails from the database.

Layer Genie is a client side extension and is advertised as such.
As with all DHTML scripts, it can be triggered from server side code, but the webdesigner is responsible for integrating it into his server side page logic.

RE: RE: Dynamic Data and Layer Genie
March 26, 2004 by Kenny Darcy
Huumm OK I eat my words, I am humbled, ahhhhhhhh  what more can I say, I have got it to work with Dynamic data with great help from MarjaR, I am very happy to say the Layer Genie does work wonderfully with dynamic data and has now give me the opportunity to have endless thumbnails from a repeat region, I have attached the Layer Genie to the thumbnail and bingo it shows the parent image each time with out needing to refresh my page. this makes the possibilities with Layer Genie endless.

Thanks MargaR for putting up with me.


Kenny
brilliant for creating navigation menus
May 21, 2004 by Kenny Darcy
Hi Marja,
I am an a dreamweaver extension sucker, i.e I have nearly all the commercial ones available both here in DMXzone and all other dreamweaver site's, any way for navigation the Layer Geni not only does what every other commercial extension does out there to create fancy navigation Menus, but layer geni does it better , easier, faster, and simplier. It is so brilliant I cannot explain enough, I was using another extension today to create a nav menu, i was reading the tutorial and it was taking me ages as the learning curve was a little complex, but then when I thought of your Layer genie extension I did exactally what I wanted in under 4 minutes. it is a brilliant extension.

Regards

Kenny
RE: brilliant for creating navigation menus
May 21, 2004 by Marja Ribbers-de Vroed
Thank you Kenny  :-)
Layer and Scroller Genie Review
April 15, 2005 by haaz dude

The Scroller Genie and Layer Genie are two of the most useful extentions I have ever bought. They save me a ton of time on the job. I've used them on my site, and the clients that visit request the same actoins on their site.The Layer Genie can also be used as an effect as well. The more I use it the more I find out I can do with it.In both you can put video and flash movies etc... Hats off to Marja. DMX Zone in general rules!

                                                    JJ Haaz Guitar Science Inc.comhttp://www.guitarscienceinc.com

RE: Layer and Scroller Genie Review
April 15, 2005 by Marja Ribbers-de Vroed
Thank you, JJ.  :)