How can I widen a Product column?

[Jayling]

I bought the Version 7 some years ago and only got round to using it due to recent unemployment. I find the structure difficult to understand. My main problem is the product page - I am using the ‘curves theme’ and the pictures I want to use are 4 times larger than the sample Actinic use. Also my description needs to be more detailed. Currently my preview has a picture 4cm wide and the words are squashed into a thin column 2cm wide ! There is loads of room for another 3 to 4cm on the right hand side which is blank. How do I move the table width / column to increase it into the blank area? only affecting product page.

I have tried looking for this simple question here but drawn a blank. I even bought dream weaver thinking this would help but only shows the whole page and tables from preview, this clearly is not how actinic works and the closest I got to an answer was this thread
http://community.actinic.com/showthread.php?t=22914

In the 'Design' tab, change the 'Select Page Type' drop down to read 'Actinic Stylesheet'
In the 'Layout Code' panel at the bottom, scroll down to line 348.
Change this line to: padding: 10px; (from padding: 10px 0px 0px 0px
Change line 352 to width: 100%;
Change line 358 to width: 22%;
Change line 363 to width: 70%;
Click 'Apply'.

But my version is older and don’t have this layout only themes:colourptions:text
Is this a simple fix?

[Duncan Rounding]

First use Firefox with Firebug to view the page offline. Preview and then copy the URL into Firefox). You can then Inspect the page and make live changes to table widths, css etc to see what needs to be changed.

Once you know what needs changing you will need to find which template to make the change to. The Advanced Template Manager in Actinic will help you with this.

We could help you more specifically if yo upload the site and give an URL.

[Jayling]

Thank you for your input – I loaded Firefox and the Firebug and while that is interesting but it doesn’t give me a clue as to what to alter. I have done a screen print to show the current situation and I understand that there are various template but I kind of need to hone in on the one that affects this column.

While I had the page on preview the Firebug, it outlined “<span class” actxsmall” > that is when highlighting the area I want to expand to the right. On Dream weaver its easy to pull on the boarder and just make it bigger. I wish it was that simple. But I tried some experiments while the firebug showed the HTML and no amount of adjusting of the “cols= “ whatever value ” seemed to make any difference. Only when I adjusted the table width did anything happen. I do understand it’s a table within a table so the big question is what template affects that right-hand column of title and words and which bit needs adjusting?

Currently I am using template
Act_ProductLine.html=One product per row, image on left
But have used
Act_ProductLineLarge.html=Large image on the left

[Duncan Rounding]

It's not always easy to find which template to alter if you're not used to Actinic (v7). If you can upload the site and give a URL it would be easier. Alternatively what you could do is temporarily add some comment text to the templates that you think my be contenders.
Such as
<-- start Act_ProductLine -->
.....existing code......
<-- end Act_ProductLine -->

Then in your design previewing using Firebug you will see the comments and know which template you're looking at.

You should be able to make changes using Firebug and see the live results on the page then go to the same place in the template.

[Jayling]

Well this has been a steep learning curve. I was looking in the wrong place for the templates. I did what you said but used dreamweaver to find the text which found two templates that affected/showed the same thing
P_index.html and Items_for_Sale.html as seen below.I then changed the border area that needed to be adjusted which was at 500 and increased to 800 to allow room for the words on the right side. That looked great but there are snags. It looks alright in Dreamweaver but in Actinic preview it still looks the same? I realised that one mistake I had made was to alter the PreviewHTML Template. So I cleaned these out and amended the SiteHTML Templates. I thought that was it but it had no effect. I then flushed out the cache on the Explorer (deleted history etc) also did a sweep of temporary files and history and rebooted the computer.

It seems as though something is holding things back. Is there some other restriction like the amount of columns or width? – I have run out of ideas.

Enclose a shot of how it is shows up in Dreamweaver





P_index.html
P_index.html"> <BR><TABLE WIDTH="800" COLS="3" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="10" CELLSPACING="0" ALIGN="CENTER"> <Actinic:SECTION BLOB="A0001.cat"/> <tr><td rowspan="2" valign="TOP" align="CENTRE"> <IMG SRC="../ProductPictures/woodstock-pus.jpg" style="float:right" ALT="Second-hand Lindy Frailin Woodstock Pickups" title="Second-hand Lindy Frailin Woodstock Pickups" BORDER=0 HEIGHT=450 WIDTH=300 > </td><td valign="TOP" align="LEFT" colspan="0"> <a name="aWoodstock_20PUs"><span class="actregular"><b>Second-hand Lindy Frailin Woodstock Pickups</b></span></a><span class="actxsmall"> <br> The Lindy Frailin Woodstock <-- start Act_ProductLine --><BR>.....existing code......<BR><-- end Act_ProductLine --><BR>Pickups are make to emulate the equivalent of the Jimi Hendrix LH situation on Right Handed guitars. This means that they are created for Left Handed players so you could use them as normal or by purchasing these you can achieve/get closer to the Hendrix sound on a right ………………


Items_for_Sale.html
Items_for_Sale.html"> <BR><TABLE WIDTH="800" COLS="3" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="10" CELLSPACING="0" ALIGN="CENTER"> <Actinic:SECTION BLOB="A0001.cat"/> <tr><td rowspan="2" valign="TOP" align="CENTRE"> <IMG SRC="../ProductPictures/woodstock-pus.jpg" style="float:right" ALT="Second-hand Lindy Frailin Woodstock Pickups" title="Second-hand Lindy Frailin Woodstock Pickups" BORDER=0 HEIGHT=450 WIDTH=300 > </td><td valign="TOP" align="LEFT" colspan="0"> <a name="aWoodstock_20PUs"><span class="actregular"><b>Second-hand Lindy Frailin Woodstock Pickups</b></span></a><span class="actxsmall"> <br> The Lindy Frailin Woodstock Pickups are make to emulate the equivalent of the Jimi Hendrix LH situation on Right Handed guitars. This means that they are created for Left Handed players so you could use them as normal or by purchasing these you can achieve/get closer to the Hendrix sound on a right …………………

[Duncan Rounding]

Woah! Actinic uses templates to generate the site files that are then uploaded. The files that are generated ready for upload by Actinic are stored in SiteHTML. Changing those files is not correct as they will get overwritten again when Actinic generates the page. You need to modify the templates only which are in the Site1 folder. These modified templates will then be used by Actinic to generate the pages.

[Jayling]

Thanks, that makes sense as to why I thought I was getting paranoid, when I went back the one file had changed back by itself! – I am getting terminology wrong sorry -. So I will change the HTML files back and keep on looking for the illusive template.

[Jayling]

In the first place, I hadn’t altered any of the Templates in the Product Pages since starting the Actinic Catalogue up. So was like it was as new. I cant believe how complicated it was to understand and how difficult the instructions are.
I went back to the instructions and it says click on the Template Manger. But had to use the Idiots View because Template View (looks like junk to me) so I clicked on it in the areas which want to affect and came up with Product Image and Product Layout. But I still didn’t see that illusive 500 wanted to change to 800. I changed to Template Manager view again and looked to see where the trail went = ProductBody HTML and there it was !!!!!
I changed the value to 800 and its all sorted.

Thanks for heading me off at the pass – no damaged done ! but it could have been – haha !