I've got a client that requires that an article be displayed in two, sometimes three, columns in Joomla. I am fairly sure they won't be happy with having to edit 3 articles for 3 columns so the splitting would have to be done automatically.
I've done something similar before where it'll split a chunk of HTML into n columns, but have no real idea how to accomplish this within Joomla itself.
Any ideas gratefully recieved!
An alternative approach:
Use Javascript to split up the Article in several column in the browser. Here I could imagine a full-automated approach could work.
Advantages (over the first approach):
As Javascript can know, which height the paragraphs actually have in the browser (unlinke PHP), you could find the optimum split more accurately.
This can be implemented in the template php-File: you tell the template to include the js-File. So it could be made context-dependent,E.g.: If the left column is collapsed (because there are no modules in it), tell the JavaScript-File to initialize to 3 columns, else 2 columns.
However, have in mind that it should rest usable for those who have Javascript disabled.
This doesn't seem to be easy.
At first thought this should be an CSS attribute, but if it exists, it is part of CSS 3.0 and as such only understood by modern browsers (if at all). But I didn't find any way to do this in CSS.
So you actually have to modify your HTML code. I would propose the following:
A Button (editor-xtd plugin) that splits the article into several parts, each one for one column, showing a dotted line in the editor box (similar to the "read-more"-Button).
E.g. it inserts in the article: (you will have to define hr.column in /templates/system/css/editor.css).
A (content) plugin that creates the multiple colum-style,
E.g. replacing the hr-Tag with table or floating divs.
This way, it is half-automized, without mangeling in the Joomla! files but only adding to extensions to it.
the CSS 3 rules for multi-columns are:
-column-width
-column-gap
-column-rule
-column-count
with the vendor label (-moz, -webkit) before.
More info at http://www.css3.info/preview/multi-column-layout/
I would use css and tell the people with Explorer to change browser! (i'm jocking of course)
Otherwise javascript is the way like said before. This script should do (not tested) http://13thparallel.com/archive/column-script/
This should be done through the template, some PHP coding is involved.
One of our clients asked us to do the exact same thing before, and we have done it through template. Note that for very small articles we increased the font in order to split the article into 3 columns.
Related
thanks for help with previous PHPWord issue. I have another.
I'm creating documents with tables where each table is basically used as a stylized container for a list of items. For example, in my case i have a collection of legal definitions. Each definition has a code, title, and textual description that appears in a table. So when there's multiple definitions, each definition has its own table, and appears like so:
and so on. Each table isnt really a table, its more i'm kind of hijacking tables to stylize my document. The problem is when I have a long list of items, invariably some of the tables will be split between pages where the top row of the table will be at the very bottom of the page and bottom row of the table will be at the very top of the next page, like so
This is very undesired. Is there any way to tell PHP word that "hey, if this table is going to be split between pages, just put the whole table on the next page" ??
I'm also using PDFmake for making pdf's and it has a pageBreakBefore function that can be used for exactly this purpose. I notice that paragraphs have a pageBreakBefore style which can force each pragraph to appear on a new page, but this isnt what i'm looking for. Is there some way i can maybe get into how PHPWord builds the document to put a conditional test in maybe?
Any input is greatly appreciated thanks.
I had the same problem .... and found the answer today in "normal" MsWord documentation. I found the equivalent in the phpWord doucmentation, tried it and it works:
In your paragraph formats, set 'keepNext' => true
I'm writing a blog and I want to show short versions of posts on the main page. I assume native php string functions aren't appropriate here since posts can be large and it would take long to substr all posts in loop. So, what is the common strategy here? I hope the question is clear and specific.
I don't want to shorten posts on client side with JS, that's not an option.
The solution I use is to make another field in db table with posts where I put short version of post, cuted begining or something like that.
It's faster, and better, you don't have to worry about length becouse you control it, there is no problem with evenual html tags used in context, and you can have a bit diffrent text on mainpage
I can think of two options. The first one involves you writing excerpts for your blog posts manually. Doing this, you don't have to worry about PHP at all.
If you do want to go ahead and automatically generate excerpts, I would set a upper character limit and then cut at the end of the sentence nearest the chosen limit. This approach may or may not produce good results depending on how your post is written.
I want to make Newegg's like catalouge functionality for my little website. I want mine to be sligthly different(greatly simplified) though. I haven't done anything so advanced(atleast in my books) before, and wanted to know if it's possible to do. I want to use PHP and JS. The new records will be added manually through using either phpMyAdmin or pehaps I will install and use either SQLyog, HeidiSQL or Navicat for such purposes. Could someone point me to the right resources to get this kind of job done as fast as possible and properly?
What I had in mind was:
For example the cell which contains the thumbimage, all the mini information about the product and the big price tag will not have a separate, more detailed page. Everything user will need to know will be inside that product cell.
Right under the thumbnail image there will be numbers(1 2 3 4 5 6), and when you hover over them, under the cursor, a big version of one of the all available images will appear.
Lastly, it should have the page generation(don't know what you call it). For example there's more than 20 product entries on the page, then the server should create a new page(First 1 >2< Last) to hold the older records.
Oh and there won't be any shopping cart functionality. You can't really "order" these kinds of products, you just find something you like and call me up about it.
TIA
I'm sure there are dozens of books on this subject. I'm attempting a short reply, however:
This sounds like something that could profit from:
a MCV-framework like CakePHP (or Django, Ruby on Rails etc), which could handle database-logic (including pagination, which is the word you're looking for), and
a JavaScript library like JQuery to handle Ajax, JavaScript and other UI-related stuff.
++?
For the page numbers, I recently had to do this. The technique is called pagination, and this thread helped me out immensely: PHP Formula For a Series of Numbers (Mathy Problem)
The thumbnail effect you want to include would need to be done in javascript. I'd recommend learning jQuery, as it is pretty easy to use for this sort of thing.
This is a hard question to answer because you haven't given much indication as to your skill level, or progress towards accomplishing your goal. Assuming we're starting at 0, there is probably more to discuss than this thread can contain. :\
UPDATE
To learn PHP's database functions, I would lean on W3School's PHP/MySQL tutorial for a quick summary, referring to the php manual's mysql documentation for details and code examples when W3schools isn't enough. This should at least get you the markup you will need to work with.
For the thumbnails, I would reiterate my recommendation for jQuery, specifically attaching a .hover() event to the image numbers (this is equivalent to the onmouseover and onmouseout events in JS) that uses the .fadeIn() and .fadeOut() animations to show and hide your full size images. Hope that helps.
Does anyone know a clever way to create even columns of text using php?
So lets say I have a few paragraphs of text and I want to split this into two columns of even length (not string length, I'm talking even visible length).
At the moment I'm splitting based on word count, which (as you can imagine) isn't working too well. For instance, on one page I have a list (ul li style) which is increasing the line breaks but not the word count. eg: whats happening is that the left column (with the list in it) is visibly longer than the right column (and if there was a list in the right hand column then it would be the same the other way round).
So does anyone have a clever way to split text? For instance using my knowledge of objective c there is a "size that fits" function. I know how wide the columns are going to be, so is there any way to take that, and the string, and work out how high its going to be? Then cut it in half? Or similar?
Thanks
ps: no css3 nonsense please, we're targeting browsers as far back as ie6 (shudder). :)
I know you're looking at a PHP solution but since the number of lines will depend on how it's rendered in the browser, you'll need to use some javascript.
You basically need to know the dimensions of the container the text is in and using the height divided by the text's line-height, you'll get the number of lines.
Here's a fiddle using jQuery: http://jsfiddle.net/bh8ZR/
There is not a lot of information here as to the source data. However, if you know that you have 20 lines of data, and want to split it, why not simply use an array of the display lines, then divide by two. Then you can take the first half of the PHP array and push it into the second column when you hit the limit of the first.
I think you're going to have trouble displaying these columns in a web browser and having a consistent look and feel because you're trying to apply simple programming logic to a visual layout. CSS and jQuery were designed to help layout issues. jQuery does have IE6 compatibility.
I really don't think you're going to find a magic bullet here if you have HTML formatting inside the data you're trying to display. The browser is going to render this based on a lot of variables. Page width, font size, etc. This is exactly why CSS and other layout styles are there, to handle this sort of formatting.
Is there any reason why you're not trying to solve this in the browser instead of PHP? IE6 to me is not a strong enough case not to do this where it belongs.
I've been racking my brain about an easy way to generate an HTML table with rowspans with PHP that would look like this, numbers indicating each cell's rowspan:
I noticed that there is sort of a pattern in the rowspans if you go from left to right, top to bottom: 1,3,7,1,1,1,1,1,3,1,1. I'm not sure if that matters.
Also, I wonder if it's possible to use any method for the table above for a table like this:
maybe addressing your second example first is easier, but it might be adapted to the first example.
the structure of the tables in html is obtained using the rowspan an colspan properties.
try to picture the table as a closet, the rows as drawers and cells as boxes inside those drawers.
with these properties, u can "merge" the cells throughout rows and/or columns.
my approach would be to set a minimal block with the appearance and data that you need, ie your second example, and write it down in html.
the "php-cycle-the-thing-up" part would require you to use that html "template" in the loop dropping your recordset data in the td portions of the html.
in that way, i think you might get what your looking for.
on the other side, if you need the php to create the table dynamically, and merge the cells automatically in a set pattern, or even ignoring the pattern and simply adapt the structure as the data is coming, it would probably be better to look at the structure from the end.
because of the way that tables are built with html, nesting table-tr-td, building cycles with this look is tricky. have you considered simply nesting divs?
i'm new to stackoverflow, i wanted to comment but by the time i finished this, i couldn't remove the answer nor comment the question, sorry if this didnt quite help you... :S
write down, come up with the recursion formula for the table. you need to come up with the math with the least number ideally ZERO conditional statements.
it's not that hard. for a desktop, i use three columns if it detects a mobile devices, my php automatically switches to 1 or 2 columns depending upon screen size