Posted By aaava on 8/25/2005 10:01:34 AM
Hi Scott:

I've just started venturing into the NewsArticles.  Had *no* idea there was such depth of design and coding in it.  Anyway, I am trying to find the ucxxxx.ascx that displays the actuall article...like when one clicks 'View More'.  I'd found it at some  point, whilst debugging the code, but duh, forgot to write it down.  Which file  is that?  I want to change the way the article is viewed by adding some javascript, and also adding a Writer Tools link to the view article page.  I *thought* it would be 'ViewArticle'.  But that is in fact an ViewArticleSUMMARY aspx file.

Also, because I don't see how you'd have the time to do it, I am trying to change the 'article' functionality to more of a 'story functionality (ie, not force the story writer to specifically add each 'page'.  Instead the 'page' would be either a short story (of which there would only be one 'page'), or a book, of which, each 'page' would in fact be a chapter.  So I need to make changes *somewhere* in order to provide the option for what you would call generally, a 'single page article' or 'multpile page' article.  Would I be able to change a template to accomplish most of this?  Because of the template design, and of course, no complaints here...it's a bargain...but the only way to see what's going on is by debugging the source, and if you do *not* know the code-behind template being using because of naming convention confusion...it's very difficult to find the ux****.ascx file to stick breakpoints on.

So to sum up, I have 3 questions:

1. Which uc****.ascx is the actual view of the *whole* article?
2. There's been much talk about this 'templating'.  Any documentation we can look at to understand it's nuances?
3. Since this is a writers site we are working on, we need to be able to allow writers to *change* their stories *after* they submit the thing.  Anyway to make this an option, instead of forcing the issue?

Thanks

Posted By Presstopia on 8/25/2005 7:28:35 PM
Scott, in the release notes for 4.08 it has this :

"Removed basic & clean templates, you can get them in this thread."

I don't use those templeates so it's fine with me if they're removed, but I did notice that they were installed again, so it seems they're still in the latest version (4.08).

Just checking to make sure I'm not seeing things.

Posted By smcculloch on 8/25/2005 3:41:06 PM

1. ucViewArticle (and it gets the formatting from view.header.html, view.footer.html, view.item.html

2. Not any documentation yet, although it is very similar to dotnetnuke skinning, you can find them in the Templates folder of the news articles module.

3. Hmm, I'll need to do some thinking here, if an article has been submitted/approved, should it be able to be changed by the submitter? (if they themselves are not an approver or admin)

Posted By aaava on 8/25/2005 11:56:54 PM

Hi Scott, thanks for the prompt reply.  I agree, this whole submitted/approve thing is a sticky wicket.  I made a suggestion in the Feedback to possibly add 'versioning' to the articles.  This way, a writer could submit an article/story/chapter, whatever, get feedback and comments asbout it, and then 'version' it, put up a new version taking into account the suggestion from the feeback, and this could overcome the whole approval issue.  Magic Gadget (man I do miss that product), had versioning...I'm sure you know how to implement  it, though I don't know how difficult it would be.  Seems like if two columns were added to the articles table (back-seat designing here, sorry!), one a boolean for 'current version' (so the author could 'step back'), and another one a version number would take care of the db part of it.  Of course, it would also truly bloat the database potentially.  And I have no idea the repercussions of this suggestion (or even if anyone else would want it, which would be a show-stopper right there) for the coding.  But I'm committed to using your News Articles for our writers' site.  Somehow.  Someway.  Writers, in case you haven't noticed are finicky folk!

I've also come up w/ a javascript based multi-column, mult-page, client side tool, where you can choose the number of columns you want, font size, etc, on the fly (similar to what iht.com does, but it actually works for the big 3 browsers...even the dreaded IE 5.2.3 for the Mac.  This way, someone could write an article, and the 'page' concept would be sort of meaningless, since the whole article would come down once, and then paged depending on module settings (initial number of columns, min column lines, initial column lines, initial font size, max font size, min font size, and comes with a completely configurable page menu.  So essentially, one would download the complete article, and the javascript figures out how many pages there are, depending on the number of columns per page, displays a menu at the bottom that is completely configurable (ie. PREV PREV n pages  [user selected number of pages to display] NEXT n pages NEXT, and also uses a similar idea to what's his names, font increase/decrease, and you can add/remove columns, resize the page, whatever, and it automatically redisplays the story, with a new menu (total pages might change depending on size, columns, and/or font size).

I'd be happy to offer it to you copyright free, to use.  I'm currenly working on a module to implement it, reading a story from a text file.  As soon as it's done, I'd be happy to email it to you, and you can decide if you want to use it or not.  Most important to me is the cross-browser compatibility, since many writers use macs and such.  I've been working on this for the last four months (I ain't nearly as fast as you are!).  And it is most definitely all my code.  iht.com planted the idea in my head, but I coded from scratch, as you can see when I finish it.   Sorry to go off on a rant...

Posted By smcculloch on 5/16/2005 5:02:58 PM

Posted By PagelsR on 9/10/2005 6:51:32 PM

Hi, Great job on the Articles module, very flexable and powerful.

I have been trying to get the View.Item.Html template to change, but no matter how I change it, nothing happens.

I understand that the ucViewArticle.ascx module uses the formatting from view.header.html, view.footer.html, and view.item.html. Are these located in the \templates\default folder?

Thanks fof any help.

Randy

Posted By breeze76 on 12/13/2005 7:58 PM

I would like to add a catagory and title to the list for the articles on the home page article view, how would I go about it?

Gene

Posted By smcculloch on 12/14/2005 2:30 PM