Idea for a Typolight Enhancement

How to install and use Contao

Idea for a Typolight Enhancement

Postby harley77 » Tue Mar 02, 2010 9:24 pm

I have a site I'm building that features a number of pages that contain multiple articles with 12-15 elements per article.
Many of these elements are the same and thus I use a combination of modules and insert tags to eliminate redundancy and make it easier to update. In doing so, if you were to look at the article on the back end, you really couldn't tell what many of the elements actually did. See pic below.

elementlist.gif


What would be nice is the ability to add some descriptive text to the element that would show in the back end element list. This way I can see at a glance that the module there contains fixed html code and shouldn't be altered. Where as other elements, I can put in a note saying "Edit this element to change Price". This makes things easier in case someone besides myself has to make changes later.

Also, being able to collapse element sections would be really nice too as in the example you can see above, most of the elements are fixed and should not be changed, keeping them minimized would be quite helpful.


Anyway, that's it for what it's worth.


-Brian
Last edited by harley77 on Tue Mar 02, 2010 10:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
harley77
User
 
Posts: 45
Joined: Wed Jul 01, 2009 7:01 pm

Re: Idea for a Typolight Enhancement

Postby ramjet » Tue Mar 02, 2010 10:52 pm

Yip I like your both your ideas...
element BE comment and element collapse....
Get thee to Feature Request in the Ticket System verily I say. :D
ramjet
User
 
Posts: 536
Joined: Sat Jun 20, 2009 12:24 pm

Re: Idea for a Typolight Enhancement

Postby Vera » Tue Mar 02, 2010 11:26 pm

What does such a module contain itself? What type of content does it have? Because the way I read it you could also use aliases to refer to content elements.

But a descriptive tag would not be unwelcome :) I sometimes find it hard when refering to a content element via an alias to find the correct content element in the list. So perhaps they could benefit from that as well (content elements are often listed as "id - type")
User avatar
Vera
User
 
Posts: 200
Joined: Mon Jun 29, 2009 8:28 am

Re: Idea for a Typolight Enhancement

Postby Ben » Wed Mar 03, 2010 9:33 am

Brain - I like your idea about descriptive text on modules. You should add this as a feature request at http://dev.typolight.org if you have not done so already.

From looking at the screenshot, it looks like you might really like using the Catalog extension: http://www.typolight.org/extension-list ... 69.en.html. The overview is this:

1. Define all of the field types for a catalog
2. Populate each entry by filling the appropriate info
3. Create modules and modify templates for frontend display.

Here are 3 examples of where I've used this extension:
http://www.aquazulplaya.com/luxury-cond ... armen.html
http://www.whitakeroil.com/products-chemicals.html
http://www.visualoutdoor.com/billboard-inventory.html
User avatar
Ben
Contao team
 
Posts: 486
Joined: Wed Jun 10, 2009 7:45 pm
Location: Atlanta, Georgia

Re: Idea for a Typolight Enhancement

Postby harley77 » Wed Mar 03, 2010 4:52 pm

Thank you for your suggestion Ben, I've looked at the catalog extension before. I have no doubt that it has the potential of making the site I'm building a 100x easier to maintain (as it is being used to show a catalog of products),but I have BARELY a beginners knowledge of php. My html and css are pretty good, but I don't think that will be enough. I wouldn't even know where to begin to replicate what I have made currently using the catalog extension.

I will be adding the feature request above to the dev site sometime today.
harley77
User
 
Posts: 45
Joined: Wed Jul 01, 2009 7:01 pm

Re: Idea for a Typolight Enhancement

Postby Ben » Wed Mar 03, 2010 7:06 pm

Brian,

Do you have a public link you can publish (or send to me via PM)? I'd like to see what you've done to assess feasibility of doing the same in catalog. I'm not a php guy either and I've been able to do everything I need with the catalog. It really only requires html, css and a few php replacement tags for the template. The tags are really easy once you have an example to look at.
User avatar
Ben
Contao team
 
Posts: 486
Joined: Wed Jun 10, 2009 7:45 pm
Location: Atlanta, Georgia

Re: Idea for a Typolight Enhancement

Postby harley77 » Wed Mar 03, 2010 8:48 pm

PM Sent. Site isn't quite ready for prime time so I don't think it would be good to make it a public link yet.
harley77
User
 
Posts: 45
Joined: Wed Jul 01, 2009 7:01 pm


Return to Using Contao

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users