Block If unreadable

[jont]

Lee.. take the green pill >< and view it all in lovely compacted brunette mode.. if you are editing in Dreamweaver ditch the carrot top and edit the brunette inside Actinic (the Matrix analogy is drifting!)

[leehack]

I'm aware of that Jonty, i regularly switch to and fro trying to ascertain wtf i am trying to read. Zoltan's tip on hovering is something i had not noticed, so that's good, but when you paste some code into the forum here for example, it is unreadable as you do not have the facility to shorten it.

In fact, i think you will find Bruce maybe agrees as i recall seeing one of his posts the last few days, where he took the time to replicate the code in here as it looks compressed in actinic. He underlined text and chose pink as the colour etc.

On first viewing i thought wow it can be done and then i realised he was trying to make it easier for people to read.

This:

<actinic:block if="%28%3cactinic%3avariable%20name%3d%22PageType%22%20%2f%3e%20%3d%3d%20%22Section%22%20AND%20%3cactinic%3avariable%20name%3d%22IsStoreFrontPage%22%20%2f%3e%20%21%3d%20TRUE%29%20OR%20%3cactinic%3avariable%20name%3d%22PageType%22%20%2f%3e%20%3d%3d%20%22Brochure%22">

is of no use to anyone, remove it or improve it IMO.

It's like trying to a see a 3D picture when you only have one eye. We need the autistic kid off that Mercury Rising film sitting here helping us.

[wjcampbe]

Lee - want to learn how to use code blocks to control the width of yur posts?

Please edit the last few - I will read them if I don't have to scroll horizontally, and you might be making a valid point - I just can't see it in the portion of the post tha fits on screen.

[leehack]

Sorry Bill it breaks nothing on my 1024 screen, so was unaware of it.

[jont]

He underlined text and chose pink as the colour etc.

That is what I do when replying to the forum of for ease of readability and when sending emails. If someone posts an expanded code block I simply paste it into Actinic and see the brunettes... then reply back in compacted "Bruce" mode.

[jont]

Sorry Bill it breaks nothing on my 1024 screen, so was unaware of it.

It broke my lovely new 1280 dektop .. had to scroll 4 minutes to find the quote button

[leehack]

Strange, i occasionally get a broken layout on other peoples posts, but have never seen it on mine, huh? I always wondered why after having seen their post, they did not adjust it. Why would it show fine for me and not you guys?

At least i understand why it happens now, the original poster has no idea when his post does this.

[wjcampbe]

Basically, if it's code - put it in a [ code ] block and you'll never have to worry about it

Now I can go back to page 1 and read the thread.

[zmagyar]

Zoltan - I am impressed you are now a "Super Administrator"

I'm since the beginning. Actually I was the first user on this forum being the person installing and configuring it. So I granted the highest role to myself although I don't use it quite often.

If i have an image called 'Actinic Variable.jpg', i'd expect to see 'Actinic%20Variable.jpg' online, not always but you catch my drift I'm sure.

For online file names we used to replace spaces with underscores. If it is not consistent then it is a bug. It can be used for file names and URLs but unfortunately it can not be used in case of the markup language. We are trying to follow the XML standard and there are lot more charaters to encode than the space.

So when i try to read a condition full of junk, to my simple way of thinking, it has been poorly thought out and the end user has been disregarded to some degree.

Actually you are not supposed to see the internal representation of the conditions (there is the condition editor and the mouse hover). We really left that bit in to make advanced user's life a bit more simple (otherwise the internals could only be seen by opening the DB). If you are using the editor in default mode then you do not see all this mess.

Anyway as far as I understood there are two points what would make you feel it more user friendly.

1) Displaying the condition itself in the editor in understandable language after the block if instead of a separate dialog.

2) Allow copy and paste the conditions on similar way.

For the first I'm sure Bruce happily updates the wishlist for you. There are some usability improvements planned for v9 and it may fit in.
For the latter I'm not sure there is an easy solution due to the technical issues I mentioned before.

If I misunderstood your comment or you got any exact suggestion just let me know and I will check what can be done.

[leehack]

For online file names we used to replace spaces with underscores. If it is not consistent then it is a bug. It can be used for file names and URLs but unfortunately it can not be used in case of the markup language. We are trying to follow the XML standard and there are lot more charaters to encode than the space.

If the XML Standard limits what you can do, then fair enough, nothing that can be done about that. You commented earlier on that you didn't have enough time in this area, it would have been interesting to see what happened with more time. As they are, i love them, one of my favourite features of V8 along with the design library and variables, i just felt they could have been awesome instead of very good.

Actually you are not supposed to see the internal representation of the conditions (there is the condition editor and the mouse hover). We really left that bit in to make advanced user's life a bit more simple (otherwise the internals could only be seen by opening the DB). If you are using the editor in default mode then you do not see all this mess.

I don't think that anything but a robot off star trek could successfuly and easily read them on a regular basis, an advanced user certainly wouldn't, they would have the brains to double click and read the conditions instead. I guess i couldn't quite picture why we were allowed to expand them, but it made them unreadable. The hover state you alluded to is good, i had not seen that before (never hung around enough for it to pop up i guess), however that fails if you have a long condition, as it goes off the edge of the screen. So we have the option to either expand the conditions or to hover over them, both of which are not the best. The way forward is obviously to click on them and open the editor, i cannot imagine anyone not doing this, if they want to read one currently, although the hover state can certainly cater on some short conditions.

Anyway as far as I understood there are two points what would make you feel it more user friendly.

1) Displaying the condition itself in the editor in understandable language after the block if instead of a separate dialog.

It would be nice to work in "expand" mode and be able to read the conditions, if the language used forbids this, so be it, i'd much rather have them in this state, than not at all.

2) Allow copy and paste the conditions on similar way.

There are 2 main issues here, when pasting outside of actinic, they are unreadable, i can't see how you can address that, now you have explained the limitations, as the conditions behind are paramount for them to work.

Secondly, because of the Partial Design Snapshot mallarky, we are forced to create copies of work we do and the reapply to a new snapshot off a client, once we have finished their redesign. I would like to be able to open up a layout in notepad for example and be able to see what i am looking at. Common sense makes me paste into actinic, just so i can read them - that's not user-friendly, especially as i'm having to do it because of a flaw in the software, no doubt this will be solved soon and remove this annoyance.

Anyway, thank you for taking the time to explain, at least i can now appreciate why they are so difficult to read when expanded.

[Bruce]

Just to update, I have added the important parts from the rest of the conversation on this thread to the wish list.

Kind regards,