Designing with Actinic Developer Guide v8

[FlashGordon]

The sticky for new users refers to a document called 'Designing with Actinic Developer Guide'. The link to get this takes you to the Actinic download page. But the Actinic download page only has a copy of this document for v7 . How do I get a copy for v8?:

[wjcampbe]

There is no Developer edition in v8.

[completerookie]

you should be looking at the "designer" version - its the equivilent to the developer

[FlashGordon]

The sticky thread 'NEW USERS - Please Read This First' has a link at the bottom described as ''Designing with Actinic Developer Guide' that takes you to a download page. However, this page only has a link described as 'Designing with Actinic v7'. I want the quivalent of this for v8 - but it looks like this does not exist! So why refer to it on a sticky thread under v8?

[wjcampbe]

Ah - Mr Dicken needs to update his profile signature - that is a link to the v7 document which has been in his forum signature since JC was a little boy.

All the available v8 documentation is referenced in the body of that thread, right at the top.

[cdicken]

Sorry about that. My signature has now been updated.

An overview of design is available in the standard v8 Getting Started Guide, and there are lots of advanced tips and tricks in the v8 Advanced Users Guide

[FlashGordon]

I was looking for information on the 'Deploy Partial Site Designs...' facility. Help gives an overview but I was looking for more detailed information. Looks like its going to be 'trial and error' approach!

Gordon

[cdicken]

The 'Deploy Partial Site Design' feature is best suited for sending people little changes to their existing designs - it is hard work to send an entire design to a customer as, as well as the layouts, you have to send them all the layout selectors used by your designs - with all the correct default layouts selected in the 'Top Level Value' fields of those layout selectors.

And when you send someone an updated layout selector, you will lose all the specific layout choices currently set within the content. It will set every product/section in their store back to 'Use Parent'.

I'll write up something for the Advanced Guide - in the meantime I hope this gives you some pointers.

[RuralWeb]

it is hard work to send an entire design to a customer as, as well as the layouts, you have to send them all the layout selectors used by your designs - with all the correct default layouts selected in the 'Top Level Value' fields of those layout selectors.

This is a dissapointing aspect of V8 - this is one of the main requirements as a designer. I need to be able to design a site and email a file to a client who then imports it and jobs done. I could do this easily with V7 but not with V8.

[cdicken]

Sorry Malcolm, I don't follow.

The quote you mention was about if you wanted to change the selection in the customer's 'Product Layout' or 'Overall Page Layout' drop downs - this isn't something you could do at all in v7.

If you just want to send a customer a set of updated layouts, you still can - and it will overwrite the layouts in the customer's library. If you want to send someone your entire design, you just do a 'Deploy Partial Site Design' and send them your entire library.

I'm keen to find out exactly what you would like to do with v8.

[RuralWeb]

I'm keen to find out exactly what you would like to do with v8.

I simply want to be able to send a design/template to a client which will on import update thier site - to date I have not been able to do it. A partial site snapshot with all options selected when imported to an upgraded V7 site does nothing

Am I missing something - currently I am upgrading snapshots and sending them back, which if I remember was your reccomended method. This is ok if they can be emailed but if they need to be posted then its a pain.

[cdicken]

Hi Malcolm

OK, I need to do some more work on this, but I know that if you set the top-level value of a layout selector to a particular layout, and you set the 'Initial Value' to be 'Use Parent', when you send that layout selector to a client and they import it, it will basically reset all their layout selection dropdowns (e.g. all their product layouts) to use the new layout you've defined.

There is a known bug though with sending layout selectors via a partial site design - you need to import the snapshot twice - the layout selectors don't import correctly the first time.

[RuralWeb]

OK, I need to do some more work on this, but I know that if you set the top-level value of a layout selector to a particular layout, and you set the 'Initial Value' to be 'Use Parent', when you send that layout selector to a client and they import it, it will basically reset all their layout selection dropdowns (e.g. all their product layouts) to use the new layout you've defined.

This does not seem to transfer all layouts. Some such as those in html within fragments do not work and the best sellers layout seems to revert back to the default whatever its set at.

There is a known bug though with sending layout selectors via a partial site design - you need to import the snapshot twice - the layout selectors don't import correctly the first time

Im doing this but it dose not always work - in my mind when you select the designer snapshot option and create a design snapshot then client/catalog should recognise this and set everything as per the snapshot without us having to check layputs etc prior to creating the snapshot. Personally - most of the time I dont really know what I am altering! so getting it right is going to be hard. Once its in client there is nothing you can do to change things other than keeping sending snapshots until it works or testing it prior to sending - but its all extra work that could be done without.

[completerookie]

these "known issues" with deployments, - will they be corrected in 8.0.4 ?

[cdicken]

Hi there

It looks like this issue will not be fixed by 8.0.4.