Act_Section_Tree

[PaulGrimshaw]

Hi,

Does anyone know if its possible to set actinic to not create certain parts of the act_section_tree file? I dont have any need for the image bits etc.

I am trying to streamline my files and have saved 10s of kbs, but this file is annoying me.

Thanks,
Paul.

btw - recommend this site for shrinking javascript - I have saved loads on the actinic default actinicore etc. It went from 9.7 to 2.9 and actinicextras from 1.3 to .3!
http://alex.dojotoolkit.org/shrinksafe/

[NormanRouxel]

You can use the inbuilt PHP to read the Act_section_tree.js and write it back out; to either a new file, or overwrite the existing one. Use a Condition so this code only runs on your top-level Section page (otherwise you'd waste a lot of CPU time repeating this for every page).

I did this on my V8 FilePruner add-on that strips out all code that isn't needed for a navigation menu and limits the generated levels to 2 or 3.

[PaulGrimshaw]

Hi Norman,

How hard would it be to modify your fileprune php to remove the unneeded image lines as well?

Could you let me know and I'll buy a copy.

Thanks,
Paul.

P.S. I guess once you have the sectiontree in php, it would be a reasonably easy thing to add my java menu into it and output the result as a html rather than a seperate file, then I wouldnt need the sectiontree java uploaded at all.

P.P.S. Just noticed your upload software is priced at 75 at the top, but 125 later on.

[NormanRouxel]

FilePruner runs as part of the Actinic page compile process. It strip everything except the Section Name and URL and compresses the resultant code. It omits the image tags. It writes the data to a new file.

It wouldn't be hard to use it to generate inline HTML (a set of nested UL's perhaps from the same data).

[PaulGrimshaw]

Norman - send us an invoice

Paul.

[NormanRouxel]

Paul,

I'm just testing with 8.0.3Beta and getting some inconsistent behaviour.

Can you hang on a little longer please as I'm swamped with things to do right now and won't have any time to investigate for 2 weeks.

Please remind me then in case I forget.

[NormanRouxel]

Paul,

Whew! I now have managed to create the Holy Grail of spider friendly dynamic cascading menus for Actinic.

A tiny bit of PHP and some cunning subversion of the Site Map code generation and I've got a Layout that you can drop onto your design that will generate a set of static HTML links within nested UL lists. They are displayed as a cascading menu via DHTML / and styled via CSS. The core code is from www.twinhelix.com - look in DHTML / FreeStyle Menu.

The links are search engine friendly and fail safe by generating a simple site-map like listing on non JavaScript browsers.

This won't be so useful on sites with thousands of sections as the UL lists are embedded in each page - and they might get quite big on huge sites.

[PaulGrimshaw]

Hi Norman,

That sounds great. Do you have a working version up anywhere?

Paul.

[nsb]

Hi,

Is there anyway to add custom variables to the Act_section_tree.js file when it is generated?

Thanks.

[NormanRouxel]

Paul,

No public download. Send me an email and I'll send you a copy to try out. Be aware it was only written yesterday and may have buglets (although I've not found any).

I tried it on a 160 Section store and the resulting HTML was around 14Kb. So it's probably quite usable up to 500 pages.

[NormanRouxel]

Nihal,

Yes, sort off. Not when it's generated but when it loads in the browser. Use JavaScript there to copy the structure to a new one, adding / removing elements as you go.

There's an example on www.drillpine.biz/forums under NorCascade regarding adding extra navigation to the menu.

I did some tests of using PHP to manilulate Act_section_tree.js during page compile time. However the page preview keeps rewriting this file (with dummy links) making it a bt hard to trust.