Fragment Layout

[madboyo]

I'd like to change the way Actinic arranges the fragments on a Brochure Page.

The code to do it exists within Actinic it's just I have no idea where it is.

On the first page of the catalogue (www.mxbits.com) we have the top level section listings. Within Design>Options>Section we can control the number of items on the rows we want to display the sections heads. Currently we use 2 but have been looking at other numbers etc.

I'd like to take that code or similar and apply it to stacking my fragment images on our front page. Can it be done?

[leehack]

With V7, i reckon you are probably best to create your own html outside of actinic, then paste it into a 'text only' fragment and get actinic to process it as html. V7 is just not user friendly like v8 and v9 in this area, it's a seriously old piece of software nowadays.

[madboyo]

With V7, i reckon you are probably best to create your own html outside of actinic, then paste it into a 'text only' fragment and get actinic to process it as html. V7 is just not user friendly like v8 and v9 in this area, it's a seriously old piece of software nowadays.

Hi Lee

I know V7.x is "old" but it does what it needs to. I'm afraid we are probably in the lower end of the users who make the most of all the functions. It doesn't seem to make any financial sense to upgrade unless of course you can tell me that this can be done and that the world of layout changes is significantly improved and far more flexible that is is in V7.x

I like your thinking of html inside a text only fragment. It will make frequent fragment changes a little more involved given we refresh the front page quite often. I'll take a look though and see what happens.

[leehack]

Depends on the aim of the site and the site owner's aspirations in all honesty. If it's a pocket money website that just ticks along in the background, i fully understand sticking with V7, although i'd say an ebay shop would be a better idea probably in that situation. If the site is anything more than that, then with it being on V7 and without having even seen it, one can almost guarantee, it's woefully behind nowadays standards in ecommerce, it probably looks tired and dated and achieves little of what it could.

These are generalisations of course and this site may buck that trend, but there's an overwhelming sway towards those points. People on V7 aren't looking forward or in tune with the web in general IMO, not cos they're on V7, it's more the mindset in my experience. Grabbing every last breath out of anything will never put you towards the front, you'll generally be going backwards and falling behind each and every day.

I think your own html is probably the better idea, V7 won't upgrade to V9 and you don't want it to anyway. If you've been on it that long, it wants a refresh both for your eyes and more importantly your customers. V9 would provide a much easier vehicle to do what you want though that's for sure.

[Rollerboy]

it wants a refresh both for your eyes and more importantly your customers

What are the differences, from a customers point of view, between a v7 and a v9 site?

I know theres a bar telling you how far through the checkout you are..
and also a 'best seller' upsell..

Is there more?

[madboyo]

Depends on the aim of the site and the site owner's aspirations in all honesty. If it's a pocket money website that just ticks along in the background, i fully understand sticking with V7, although i'd say an ebay shop would be a better idea probably in that situation. If the site is anything more than that, then with it being on V7 and without having even seen it, one can almost guarantee, it's woefully behind nowadays standards in ecommerce, it probably looks tired and dated and achieves little of what it could.

These are generalisations of course and this site may buck that trend, but there's an overwhelming sway towards those points. People on V7 aren't looking forward or in tune with the web in general IMO, not cos they're on V7, it's more the mindset in my experience. Grabbing every last breath out of anything will never put you towards the front, you'll generally be going backwards and falling behind each and every day.

I think your own html is probably the better idea, V7 won't upgrade to V9 and you don't want it to anyway. If you've been on it that long, it wants a refresh both for your eyes and more importantly your customers. V9 would provide a much easier vehicle to do what you want though that's for sure.

Fair enough Lee. You are entiled to your own opinion of course.

Not sure you are qualified to pass judgement on site owners as to whether they are "forward thinking / looking" amongst some of the other comments you made. If I was a sensitive person I might actually label you as something as well.

Bottom line is your first reply was incorrect. Not only have I worked out what html code is used to control whether items appear next to each other or above each other I also failed to do something I should have done at the very beginning, looked in the Advanced Userguide, template editing section. More specifically page 19 "Laying out Brouchure Fragments in columns"

It clearly tells you it is possible and gives the code required and the locations it is to be inserted in as well as creating custom variables.

Just so that I am fair to you (and your insistance that V9 is the way to go) and anyone else who may read this. The following article does show just how easily the change is achieved in v8 or later as opposed to everything I will show in further replies in this thread.

Had you actually come back with this as the example of why v9 is better rather than sounding like any software retailer i.e. you must use the latest and greats version ...BECAUSE! then your comments may have been better received and more constructive.
http://community.actinic.com/showthread.php?t=45311

[madboyo]

Moving on to the problems the code has bought about.....

I've now implemented the code on a test pc and it does work. It does appear to have a few bugs in it. These may or may not have been induced by myself. Hopefully someone will have an opinion on that?

I had to be careful when copy and paste out of the pdf as it wrapped lines. That gets fixed easily enough or better still copy and paste the code out of the knowledgebase document instead.

I have found with this code is when you use the Fragment layout "Image and Title" you get a NETQUOTEVAR:BROCHURE_TEXT displayed where you would expect text to be shown had you used one of the layout options using text. Not sure this is a big problem as I don't expect to use just the Image and Title on its own.

I've attached a Frag_in_Col.jpg file to show how the final layout looks when you set Fragments to display using two columns. You will see that the first row sets it self out ok although doesn't set it self out so that each Fragment is 50% of the total width (including padding and spacing etc).

The other issue is you will see subsequent rows seem to align left and right.

[madboyo]

Moving on a stage further to the most likely layout we were looking for was probably 4 fragments across.

Again you will see the 4 fragments do not get spaced evenly across the total width.

[peblaco]

I have found with this code is when you use the Fragment layout "Image and Title" you get a NETQUOTEVAR:BROCHURE_TEXT displayed where you would expect text to be shown had you used one of the layout options using text. Not sure this is a big problem as I don't expect to use just the Image and Title on its own.

You could enter a space in the text field?.

[madboyo]

You could enter a space in the text field?.

Yeah I though of that as well.. honest Thanks anyway as it may come to that if we want that layout.

[madboyo]

Moving on to the problems the code has bought about.....

I've now implemented the code on a test pc and it does work. It does appear to have a few bugs in it. These may or may not have been induced by myself. Hopefully someone will have an opinion on that?

I had to be careful when copy and paste out of the pdf as it wrapped lines. That gets fixed easily enough or better still copy and paste the code out of the knowledgebase document instead.

I have found with this code is when you use the Fragment layout "Image and Title" you get a NETQUOTEVAR:BROCHURE_TEXT displayed where you would expect text to be shown had you used one of the layout options using text. Not sure this is a big problem as I don't expect to use just the Image and Title on its own.

I've attached a Frag_in_Col.jpg file to show how the final layout looks when you set Fragments to display using two columns. You will see that the first row sets it self out ok although doesn't set it self out so that each Fragment is 50% of the total width (including padding and spacing etc).

The other issue is you will see subsequent rows seem to align left and right.

Thanks to another reply a space in the text field even though you don't use text gets rids of the variable shown.

Incorrect positioning of the fragment on the second row was due to a format error in the code due to the way the pdf wrapped the lines. I found it after comparing existing code.

So the outstanding issue is the spacing of the fragment. The table size is set by the actinic variable width value but the line of code used then does not set the fragment width to exactly a quater of that value which seems weird.

var colwidth = Math.floor(100 / CUSTOMVAR:NUMCOLS);

I'd expect the above code to create fragment or fragments to the value set in NUMCOLS i.e. 100/4= 25% width or 100/5=20%

From the picture with a small image the fragments are definately not a fixed width of 25% using 4 fragments per row.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

[leehack]

What are the differences, from a customers point of view, between a v7 and a v9 site?

I know theres a bar telling you how far through the checkout you are..
and also a 'best seller' upsell..

Is there more?

Four new marketing lists were added in V8, new products, best sellers, related products (massive one this) and also bought (business only). The interface and control of the design became much easier (as this thread is illustrating very well). New themes were added, i think the design wizard was added in V8 too.

The best thing reported almost across the board was improved SEO and results in the SERPS. So you had a better looking site, easier to manage, achieving greater results and when those improved results got people to your site, they were presented with upsells and began to be engaged by the site. Pre V8 sites just don't do this and have fallen a long way behind.

CSS layouts were introduced and a considerable amount of the nested tables that just bloated V7 (and still do) were removed. The design tab was introduced with a much more user friendly design library. Blocks and BlockIfs have become immense in the building of a site too, with their true potential only really being seen about a year into their release.

The functionality and the inbuilt php engine also opened up many avenues for exterior addons, we can now have product pages with this sort of functionality - http://www.atlanticshopping.co.uk/ac...ool-Black.html - all added in a relatively small amount of fuss.

There are still some successful V7 sites of course, without an inordinate amount of money/time being thrown at them, they simply cannot keep up with things usually, it's all moving too fast. Ecommerce has moved so fast over the past 2 years, it really has, it's incredible if you look back just that amount of time. From 5-6 years ago (v7 territory), it's unrecognisable IMO.

One only has to look at the successful sites around, no need to listen to anyone's opinion, visit a hundred successful sites and every bit of evidence you could ever need is presented for free in front of you.

[Rollerboy]

I've noticed from other threads that LeeHack certainly has a nack of winding people up.
Is it intentional or just a badly considered email tone?

Most of Lees points about v8 and v9 are pointing to advantages for designers.
From a customers point of view, theres very little difference between v7 and v9.
and a when I'm shopping, I personally dont like upsells anyway... they annoy me.
I help run 3 very successful, nice and stable and simple v7 sites.
To be honest, v7 is much easier to use for the layman... v8 and v9 are a lot more complicated and less intuitive... theres a big learning curve. Theres a lot of work to had for designers getting people to upgrade without considering what my be best for the shop owner. We will all need to upgrade eventually, yes, but if your shop is working now, concentrate on your images, stock control and pricing. and upgrade at leisure when you have time.
Thats my opinion.

[Rich Brady]

I personally dont like upsells anyway... they annoy me.

Then you are missing a trick.

You need to look at eBay, Pay and Amazon and see their upsell techniques. I' wager they have a much bigger research budget than anyone on this forum.

You may not like what Lee has to say, but he has a lot of experience in this industry and I guarantee that any of his clients will tell you that listening to Lee's advice was one of the best things they ever did.

Thinking that V8 & V9 only advantage the designer is a very ill informed view if you ask me and suggests that you have not fully explored their advantages.

Are you still using the PC that you first installed V7 on?

[leehack]

You've spectacularly missed the point there i'm afraid Martin (it's almost a 100% user-centric list), many of the advantages mentioned are not actually used or benefitted by a designer, they are put in place to improve a site, which rarely lines a designer's pocket. Design wizard, marketing lists and stock layouts are often void when a designer is employed. You will note that i never mentioned the Dreamweaver interface at all either, this is the single most important and best thing from a designers point of view in V8. But it is pretty much exclusive to a designer, hence no mention!

Don't ask questions if you don't want answers, it's pointless. I find it incredible that a piece of software that improves SEO which in turn improves sales is seen as an advantage to designers only, surely that is the single most important factor to any site owner? If V9 outperforms V7 considerably across the board, unless you have a site turning over less than 25k a year, it's a no-brainer to upgrade IMO.

I've used V6, V7, V8 & V9. I've worked on well in excess of 100 actinic sites, i've seen a number of multi-million pound sites, i've also seen a number of dribbling wrecks. I also won best actinic site of 2008 on here. Whether you want to take on board my experiences and thoughts is inconsequential in reality, but i never asked you for your thoughts, you asked me for mine remember.

Never build a site for your tastes Martin, much better to focus on your users, they're the transactions you are after.