I would like to export the BSS html output to a USB stick to give to others. So the design can be viewed by others via a web browser without them having a server.
Is here a way to do this?
The BSS html output is there on the USB stick, but where it goes wrong is the url’s. Apparently browsers don’t accept html files directly from a drive for security reasons.
Am I asking the impossible?
See your other post as I just answered it there. Didn’t see you posted it again here so check that one. 
EDIT: The biggest reason that using Local URL’s doesn’t work is because not everyone puts things in the exact same places on their computers so it would be almost impossible to do this unless you include the local files and they place the files on their computers in the exact same locations you have them.
Thank you Jo-r!
Peter
You’re quite welcome, wish I could have helped more but unfortunately, I’m one of those that have been asking for external local file reading & linking for quite some time now.
One thing I also thought of along with the Edited post I did earlier. Usually your local URLs include your computer name, so that makes it even more impossible. Just reiterating the issue with sharing local files for BSS purposes.
Here’s a possible solution though if it’s for clients or people you’re working with. You “could” take screenshots of the page that has local files in it so they can see what it is going to look like. Granted it won’t have any functionality, but it would help some.
Another possibility is doing a screenshot of just the part that is local and cropping that so you can use that image in place of the local file usage as a placeholder so to speak.
Lots of crude work arounds, but better than no work arounds I guess lol. Good Luck!
Did some more tests.
- Made a Wordpress site on a MAMP Pro server and used a plugin to generate static html. Uploaded that static html to an iCloud folder and from there it works. That might have been because it’s coming from a remote network, so I download the whole folder to my USB stick. Unexpectedly that worked too.
- So then tested with a few html pages on Bootstrap 5 platform with links to each other, made with Pinegrow. All files in a folder on the USB stick. That worked flawlessly too on 2 Macs and a Windows machine, even though the urls showing in the browser of the different machines are different because as you also remarked the drive names are different.
Hmm not sure what to tell you there, I wouldn’t have expected it but … it could be that both WordStress (ya, not a typo LOL) and Pinegrow may be transposing them to relative links? Check the links after exporting and see what they are compared to what they were.
I’m curious also as to what types of files you need it to use locally that cannot be added? I do my method with PDF’s and such and most other things that cannot be imported. It does make Galleries a bit of a challenge if they aren’t default BS galleries, but I make sure they work, then change the links to relative and move on to the next part and ignore them lol. Works for me pretty well, but it would really depend on the types of files you’re trying to put into your page(s).
It looks like the ‘linked components’ feature is the culprit. I have a website with html pages at top level, and pages in several folders and subfolders.
Originally I had a ‘navigation clean’ component on a page in a folder, and would copy and paste that component as linked component to other pages in that subfolder.
Now I did a new test with the ‘navigation clean’ components unlinked, and the url link references in a navigation component added manually and individually for each page. (using >Link>link options). That seems to work - would need to test further.
Ah yeah, I guess that’s what I had originally thought you were using was Linked Components, but apparently you didn’t realize how they worked. That’s why I had said there is no original page that you need to copy from once you start a linked component. They are all equal so you can copy a Linked Component from any page to any page and it will be linked, because the original copied component is linked already. In other words, no master page setup, all are equal you can edit any of the linked components on any page and it will update the rest that are linked.
What I did a while back was to create 2 menus, one for the top level and one for those pages within folders (I have since stopped using folders for the pages since it’s such a hassle lol). Then you can use Linked Components in the menu for the folder level and the Linked Components in the menu for the Top level separately. Sounds like a hassle, but just copy a menu from your top level to your folder level, unlink it and alter the links to have the …/ in front of them or just the / and it should work as expected. Then use that one to link the rest of the folder level pages.
Not all that much work to edit 2 menus really so it’s not too bad.
Thanks again Jo-R for your enthusiasm!
After some more testing I’m happy your method with 2 menus works.
On a Windows 7 system with old Internet Explorer the dropdown doesn’t work but that has nothing to do with BSS I think. So glad I don’t have to work with Windows anymore. As for pdf’s, if they are not too many pages I found exporting each page to an image and then adding the images after each other to a html page works fine too. Then the assets are all in the BSS project (as images).
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