simplelayout.base 3.0b5

SimpleLayout is an easy to use plone package for creating content pages

Introduction

SimpleLayout provides an intuitive way of adding and arranging the different elements of a page such as paragraphs, images, files and links using drag-and-drop functionality. These elements are implemented as addable and easily arrangeable “blocks”. Because of the restricted dimensions of text, images and other content elements, the general result is content with a uniform look and feel throughout the site.

How to use SimpleLayout

Check out our new video section on plone.org: http://plone.org/products/simplelayout.base/documentation

1.) Add a new Page from the “Add new” dropdown.

In this page one can now add the following page elements:

• File

• Image

• Link

• Page

• Paragraph

2.) Add a new Paragraph from the “Add new” dropdown:

• Provide a title for the new paragraph (not required) and check “Show Title” to determine whether the paragraph title will appear in the page’s body text.

• Provide body text for the paragraph.(Of course one could use this first paragraph to provide the text for the whole page, but that would defeat the purpose of having easily arrangeable “blocks” of text and other page elements)

Image tab:

• Browse for an image and provide a caption and alternative text.

• Determine whether the image is “clickable”, i.e. whether the image source can be opened in a new tab. If collective.greybox is installed, it will use greybox to show the image.

Settings tab:

• Provide keywords/tags for categorization purposes.

• Specify “Related Items”: If the “teaser” box is checked, related items of this paragraph will be displayed underneath the paragraph.

• Provide “Creators” (Persons responsible for creating the content of this item).

• Allow comments.

• Determine whether this paragraph should be included in the site navigation (by default it is not included).

When saving the paragraph, one is redirected to the edit tab of the parent page. Here one is presented with the option of editing the page as a whole, or editing one of the sub-elements of the page. The layout of the recently added paragraph can be further manipulated using the layout icons in the top panel of the that paragraph. The paragraph can also easily be deleted from here, or its order in the page changed using the “ordering” arrow icons in its top panel (will be removed, you should use the drag’n’drop funtionality).

3.) Add an Image to the page from the “Add new” dropdown:

• Browse for an image and provide alternative text. The Title is used as the image caption.

4.) Add a File to the page from the “Add new” dropdown:

• Browse for and add a file (for example a pdf). The file download link will be displayed in the page content.

5.) Add a Link to the page from the “Add new” dropdown:

• Specify an external link, which will be displayed in the page.

6.) Add another page: The parent page acts as a container in which sub pages can be added. These will appear in the site navigation.

Page Layout:

To add layout functionality to the page as a whole, go to “Site Setup” => “Simplelayout Configuration”, and check “Show Design”. A “Design” dropdown will be added to your SimpleLayout pages, from which you can choose one of 3 possible layouts: Normal, Two Columns, Two Columns One on Top Here one can also determine the dimensions of the layout columns by providing pixel values in the other 2 “configuration” tabs.

Go to the edit tab of your SimpleLayout page and choose another layout from the “Design” dropdown.

In “Two Columns” designs it’s possible to align the blocks like a table. Use the “align to grid” link in the top panel of the page.

Drag and drop functionality:

Drag the existing content blocks into the other areas of the newly created layout, by clicking on the top panel and dragging the block to the desired position.

Support of following products is allready included

• collective.greybox

• Products.PloneFlashUpload tested with http://svn.plone.org/svn/collective/PloneFlashUpload/branches/dunny-flash-10-support-via-swfupload-2.2

Simplelayout provides the following features:

simplelayout.base

• Base functions

• Base layout rendering

• Base block actions

• Base viewlets - one column - two columns - two columns with one column on top - controls

• configlet - simplelayout is completely configurable TTW, including image sizes and column dimensions

• design menu - choose between the different designs/layouts

• includes block configuration adapters - all block configs such as layout, image sizes, block height etc, will be saved in an adapter (annotations) for every block

• upgrade steps

• base JS functions - align to grid (for two columns designs only) - helper functions

• New scales for atct image field (requires zope restart)

For more information check simplelayout dependencies: * simplelayout.ui.base * simplelayout.types.common * simplelayout.ui.dragndrop

FAQ

This FAQ provides some technical information/answers.

Q:

After reinstall I lose my configlet configuration?

A:

Do not reinstall simplelayout.base using QI, but rather use portal_setup import steps. Because the configlet data is stored in a local utility, in the event of a reinstallation the utility will be removed (all data is gone) and added again with default values. The following example shows how to change the sl configlet default values with setuphandlers in a policy package.

imports:

from zope.component import getUtility
from simplelayout.base.configlet.interfaces import ISimplelayoutConfiguration

config.py:

SL_CONFIGURATION = {'same_workflow' : True,
                    'show_design_tab' : True,
                    'small_size' : 145,
                    'middle_size' : 302,
                    'full_size' : 614,
                    'small_size_two' : 66,
                    'middle_size_two' : 145,
                    'full_size_two' : 300}

method in setuphandlers.py:

def simplelayoutConf(self):
    sl_conf = getUtility(ISimplelayoutConfiguration, name='sl-config')
    for key in SL_CONFIGURATION:
        setattr(sl_conf,key,SL_CONFIGURATION[key])

Q:

How does simplelayout know which content type is a block?

A:

Simplelayout marks blockable types with the interface ISimpleLayoutBlock

Q:

Can I use simplelayout listings on other content types?

A:

Of course, just make sure your type provides the ISimpleLayoutCapable interface and paste the following code into your template

<tal:block content="structure provider:simplelayout.base.listing" />

Make simplelayout blocks addable on your type.

Q:

Can I uninstall simplelayout.base?

A:

As many new packages based on component architecture, not yet…

Q:

How can I add a new image scale?

A:

…

Q:

How can i remove them?

A:

Navigate to portla_types/blocktype in the ZMI, select “actions” and remove the image scale from actions list.

Q:

I have a content type which I want to use it as block in simplelayout?

A:

Just register a BrowserView named block_view for the specific content type, then z3c knows what to do. Example in simplelayout.types.common:

configure.zcml:

<browser:page
  for="Products.ATContentTypes.interface.file.IATFile"
  name="block_view"
  template="file.pt"
  class=".views.FileView"
  permission="zope2.View" />

Q:

I would like to create my own design template?

A:

…

Q:

Is there a possibility for blocks to show up as a portlet?

A:

This feature is under development and will be released soon.

Q:

How do you know in multible column designs, where to show up the blocks?

A:

Blocks has two additional interfaces: a slot interface and a column interface. The slot interface tells the block where he should appear. The column interface desides the image scale.

Q:

My images will be resized by CSS?

A:

Tick the box “Set simplelayout scales as image scales”, restart zope an “recalc images”. Don’t use atct_tool for this action, because it will ignore paragraphs.

Q:

Is it possible to use more than one block_view per type?

A:

Yes, in the 2.0 release of simplelayout.base its possible to define your own view for a blockable type, you have to customize the actions and the action-icons of your content type. the action id should look like the following example id: sl-dummyscale-dummycssklass-myview sl- = simplelayout prefix for actions dummyscale = the image scale, possible values are small, half or full dummycssklass = an additional css wrapper class myview = your view must be registered as block_view-myview

If yout don’t need a scale or additional css class, please fill in some dummy values as in the example above, Otherwise your view will have the wrong name.

TODO

• TESTS

• mess up JS

• fix block height, if moving blocks from two to one column.

• send feedback if ajax request fails

Copyright and credits

simplelayout is copyright 2009 by 4teamwork , and is licensed under the GPL. See LICENSE.txt for details.

Changelog

3.0b5 (2012-04-25)

• Show design tab for roles, which can be specified in the simplelayout configlet. [Julian Infanger]

• Added tooltips to simplelayout actions. [Julian Infanger]

• Fixed CSS problem with floated image and list in block. [Julian Infanger]

3.0b4 (2012-04-23)

• Do not show simplelayout controls viewlet if there are no controls. [Julian Infanger]

3.0b3 (2012-04-05)

• Fix setBlockHeights function. [mathias.leimgruber]

3.0b2 (2012-04-02)

• Added upgrade step [elio.schmutz]

3.0b1 (2012-03-05)

• Add upgrade step for creating initial paragraph versions (paragraphs are now versioned). [jone]

• Implement new way of editing a block (edit actions will appear at mousover). [24.01.2012, mathias.leimgruber]

• Fix right margin for small and middle images on the left site [20.12.2011, elio.schmutz]

• Plone 4.1 compatibility: Use _ instead of - as ID sepereator. [03.08.2011, jbaumann]

• Fix permission check for sl-actions and sl-layouts [27.05.2011, mathias.leimgruber]

• Added some CSS for new Image display behavior. [05.05.2011, mathias.leimgruber]

• Fix IE 7 stupid behaviour with floating elements. [03.02.2011, mathias.leimgruber]

• Fix sl actions view, also check action condition. [04.01.2011, mathias.leimgruber]

• fix align blocks to grid function (remove buggy px_to_em plugin) [27.12.2010, mathias.leimgruber]

• fix workflow menus css [13.07.2010, mathias.leimgruber]

• fix controls css [13.07.2010, mathias.leimgruber]

• Clean up views.py / remove tabs in configure.zcml [13.10.2010, mathias.leimgruber]

• Fixed a bug while rendering the sl-actions (check for visible attr) [13.10.2010, mathias.leimgruber]

• Removed old Products.FlashUpload support, it’s not longer necessary. [04.10.2010, mathias.leimgruber]

• implemented image scaling by plone.app.imaging. Manual recalc button in configlet is not longer necessary. [30.09.2010, mathias.leimgruber]

• added workaround for blob image field [29.09.2010, mathias.leimgruber]

• removed actioniscons.xml and added icon_expr directly to the content types xml. Because the actionicons tool in plone 4 has been deprecated [12.07.2010, mathias.leimgruber]

• rewrite browserviews with allowed_attributes [12.07.2010, mathias.leimgruber]

2.1.2

• fix alignblocktogrid function if there is only an image [mathias.leimgruber]

2.1.1

• bugfix: ObjectEditedEvent, the viewname property was missed [mathias.leimgruber]

2.1

• change dependency for simplelayout.ui.* to <=2.1 [mathias.leimgruber]

2.0

• use the action ids on blockable types to define a custom block viewname, the custom viewname is stored in anotations. check FAQ section in README file for an example. [mathias.leimgruber]

• use absolute path for control icons [mathias.leimgruber]

2.0rc6

• removed special characters that prevented buildout to run [florian.sprenger]

2.0rc5

• fix recalculating all images function, check if IBlockConfig is addaptable [mathias.leimgruber]

• fire “set init. layout” on IObjectEditedEvent [mathias.leimgruber]

• use a cookie to store the edit-mode state [mathias.leimgruber]

• remove unused code [mathias.leimgruber]

• moved JS toggleEditMode function to simplelayout.ui.base [mathias.leimgruber]

• Upgrade step from 2.0rc4 to 2.0rc5 [mathias.leimgruber]

• reorder JS by GenericSetup [mathias.leimgruber]

2.0rc4

• mark right and left column by a css class [mathias.leimgruber]

2.0rc3

• don’t display the empty sl-control panel <div /> for anonymous users [mathias.leimgruber]

2.0rc2

• fix event: change all block states from page [mathias.leimgruber]

• added simplelayout page to default_page_types [mathias.leimgruber]

• load sl-JS only if we are on a simplayout capable object and if user is logged in. [mathias.leimgruber]

• simplelayout view provides a function to determin if current object is simplelayout capable or not. [mathias.leimgruber]

• compress, merged and cache js. [mathias.leimgruber]

2.0.rc1

• remove obsolete code [mathias.leimgruber]

• added permission check befor rendering sl-actions [mathias.leimgruber]

• Change required permission to “View” from controls viewlets [mathias.leimgruber]

• updated readme

2.0b3

• Issue #1: fix some Translations [julian.infanger]

• Add the possobility to set simplelayout image sizes as atct image scales Now there’s no quality issue with IE anymore. [mathias.leimgruber]

2.0b2

• added technical FAQ to README [mathias.leimgruber]

• added HowTo to README [arno.blumer]

• fix error while reinstalling [mathias.leimgruber]

• added more info to README/HISTORY [mathias.leimgruber]

• some IE7 JS fixes [mathias.leimgruber]

2.0b1

• create two columns layout [mathias.leimgruber]

• fixed dragndrop functionality for two columns [mathias.leimgruber]

• align two columns layout to grid [mathias.leimgruber] - works great in FF 2.x - 3.x - There are some display issues in edit-mode with IE 6/7 - edit-mode for safari and IE 8 not tested

• added a tow column view with a one column slot on top [mathias.leimgruber]

• added design menu [mathias.leimgruber]

• some fixes in sl-controls ajax reload [victor.baumann]

• reload block after moving arround [mathias.leimgruber]

1.0

• Initial release

• Extracted from plonegov.website 1.0 [mathias.leimgruber]

• Shipps base function for simplelayout [victore.baumann]

• simplelayout configlet included [mathias.leimgruber]

• based on: - simplelayout.types.common - simplelayout.ui.base - simplelayout.ui.dragndrop