SiteGrinder

What is a SiteGrinder Hint and how do I use them?

Hints are words like "button" or "menu", preceded by a dash character, that you can add to the end of layer names in Photoshop to tell SiteGrinder what kind of web content to make out of the layers. This is the most important thing, indeed almost the only thing, you need to understand about how SiteGrinder works.

A graphical rollover button can be created from two graphic layers using this technique. As an example take two layers named "click me-button" and "click me-rollover". SiteGrinder knows they are part of the same button because the parts of the named before the hint ("click me") match each other. SiteGrinder knows from the hints that "click me-button" should appear on the final web page and be replaced by "click me-rollover" when the web page user rolls over the button. The most commonly used hints can be abbreviated by their first letters, so "-r" and "-b" would have worked just as well for "rollover" and "button".

Without these kinds of hints at the end of a layer name SiteGrinder will treat a layer as a non interactive element, just a part of the background graphics of the page.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that hints are always preceded by a dash. This means you are free to use words in layer or set names like "rollover" or "button" wherever you like. These words are totally ignored by SiteGrinder unless they are immediately preceded by a dash, as in "-rollover".

Rules for hints by example

Here are some hinted layer names with hints that work and some that don't along with the reasons why:

Valid button layer names:
Illegal button layer names

Cute as a -button
(spaces and multiple words before a hint aren't a problem)
It's so easy to make a -ButtOn
(capitalization isn't a problem either)
Sting Like A-b
(some hints can be abbreviated by their first letters)
Navigation -text-menu
(multiple hints are allowed but are not often needed)

It's so easy to make a-Button in SiteGrinder
(putting words after the hint won't work.)
Cute as a-buttun
(the hint must be spelled right)
a-but ton
(the space between the Ts above won't work)
a-butto
(SiteGrinder hints must be either the whole word or else the official abbreviation)

home - button
(no spaces allowed between the dash and the hint)

Click here for a complete list of SiteGrinder hints