Visio hyperlinks - sort order

[John_Blight]

When there are multiple hyperlinks on a shape, the sort order as determined by the SortKey value seems to be ignored when saved as a webpage; instead, hyperlinks are sorted by ID, as they are in the ShapeSheet. This happens in Visio 2003 and Visio 2007.

I realise that the SortKey values in the ShapeSheet are processed as text, so sorting apparent numeric values as text isn't the problem.

I'm puzzled, as records of a previous experience with this suggests it has worked in the past. However, I might be mistaken about that.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

[Paul Herber]

Each entity on a webpage can only have one hyperlink, so the multiple hyperlinks allowed on Visio shapes cannot work on the webpage output. If a shape has multiple hyperlinks then use menu Insert -> Hyperlinks and choose the one that you want to use by selecting the hyperlink and clicking the Default button.

[John_Blight]

Thanks for the reply, Paul.

However, entities on webpages created by Visio can have multiple hyperlinks. The first click lists those hyperlinks, and you then click on the one you want to activate.

[Paul Herber]

Odd, I can see in the code where the multiple hyperlinks are but they don't work in any of my web browsers here, IE, Opera, Mozilla or Firefox!

[John_Blight]

I think multiple hyperlinks only work in the VML output: the GIF secondary output only uses the one hyperlink.

I don't think browsers other than IE support VML graphics.

[Visio Guy]

I just did a quick test, and IE8 only supported multiple links once you "allowed the nasty content", at which point it loads the VML. VML is a dead-end format as far as I know.

I then went into the Publish... options (which you get to from after Save As Web...) and selected .jpg only (unchecked VML) and the multi-hyperlinks did work. So it seems more tied to whatever scripting they are writing to get the multi-link pop-ups to work, than to VML. Must IE-specific scripting.

In Firefox, the multi-links didn't work at all.

I tried a few tricks, but couldn't get the links to sort properly in IE.

[John_Blight]

Paul, Visio Guy,

Thanks for your input.

It does seem that the HTML output will list hyperlinks by ID, as in the Visio ShapeSheet. I can alter the IDs in the source VDX files, but it's a chore to do so.