Adding Access Keys

[darrentickle]

Hi

I've just started using Actinic Version 7 tonight and I'm wondering if anybody knows how I can add an access key to top level pages. Is this something people have done in the past?

I'm also having to write all the templates from scratch, as I'm try to use my style sheet to control most of the layout. This is very time consumer has anybody got an easy way of doing this or do I have just have to keep going.

Any help or advice would be great.

Cheers

Darren

[sabbie]

designing

I don't know about Access Key but you can easily change a template in dreamweaver

In actinic if you start with the blank tempaltes located at Design > Themes > Clean Layouts choose one that matches what you need

Close that window and go to Advanced > Template Manager > Editor and choose Dreamweaver if thats what you use ..

Unless you have choosen otherwise your sites overall layout is controlled by 2 templates .. under the tab Brochure choose Primary and under Main choose Primary .. These will open in dreamweaver with the CSS loaded in the design palette ready for modifying ..

[I-CC]

For Access Keys it is not possible to do it so that they are available for all of the Navigation buttons, because they are all generated from a single template for the nav buttons, and as such no means of isolating which access key is defined for which in use button...

Same is true for adding it to the section text links, as a custom property assigned to the section being shown as a sibbling is not picked up in time and as such can not come into play, so a no goer there I am afraid at present...

[darrentickle]

Hi

Thanks for that. Can't I do this by adding a Custom Properties called access key and assign different keys to my top level section, or does this not work this way?

Cheers

Darren

[I-CC]

Error, sorry. In previous versions when we tried it, it would not work as the custom property was not picked up for some reason, however....

Go into: Advanced | Custom Properties and add a property called "AccessKey".

Then, go into Advanced | Template Manager | Section | Child Sections button which will bring up the template....

Where you have the <A HREF="NETQUOTEVAR:SECTIONLINK"> for the text link, amend to: <A HREF="NETQUOTEVAR:SECTIONLINK" accesskey="CUSTOMVAR:ACCESSKEY">

Then for each section assign the property of ACCESSKEY with its unique accesskey... i.e. do not duplicate access keys on the same tree branch...

Also, you will need to add in some way of letting people know that the AccessKey functionality is available, so add in a TITLE="Access key: CUSTOMVAR:ACCESSKEY" inside the href..

That should do it...

[darrentickle]

Hi

Thanks for this. I started to work on this method so it's nice to know that I was heading down the right path.

Cheers

Darren

[darrentickle]

Hi

I'm back on the access key issue. Does anybody know how to include a Custom Properties within Javascript. The code I'm using is as follows:

<!--@act NETQUOTEVAR:SECTIONTREE_RAW -->
<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">
<!--
function YahooSections(ar)
{
var strIDs = '';
for (var i=1;i<=ar.length;i++)
{
if (ar[i].sURL != null)
{
strIDs += '<div class="LeftNavBackground"><div class="LeftNavContent"><a href="' + ar[i].sURL + '" class="nav" title="' + ar[i].sName + '" accesskey="">' + ar[i].sName + '</a></div></div>';
{
if (ar[i].pChild)
{
for (var j=1;j<=ar[i].pChild.length;j++)
{
if (ar[i].pChild[j].sURL != null)
{
strIDs += '<div class="LeftNavBackgroundList"><div class="LeftNavContentList"><a href="' + ar[i].pChild[j].sURL + '" class="nav" title="' + ar[i].pChild[j].sName + '">' + ar[i].pChild[j].sName + '</a></div></div>';
}
}
}
}
strIDs += '<div class="BlueBoxLine"></div>'
}
}
return strIDs
}
//-->
</script>

Any help with this would be great as I really want to be able to use access keys in my top level navigation.

Cheers

Darren

[cdicken]

I take it you want a different Access kwy to appear in each link generated by the JavaScript?

This is not possible as the JS section lists cannot pick up custom property values defined for individual sections. You only have the data fields you can see within Act_section_tree.js available to display in the JS section list.

[darrentickle]

Hi

This is a problem because I'm trying to make my site reach the RNIB guidelines. Surely their must be a way around this. I only want the top sections to have this on.

Cheers

[cdicken]

Unfortunately, the only variables available to the JavaScript section lists are:

sName
sURL
sImage
nSectionId
nImageWidth
nImageHeight

These are the values you can see defined in Act_sections.js within your 'Site1' folder. If you want to use any of these (e.g. 'sName') as your 'accesskey=' value then you can do it with a line such as:

strIDs += '<div class="LeftNavBackground"><div class="LeftNavContent"><a href="' + ar[i].sURL + '" class="nav" title="' + ar[i].sName + '" accesskey="' + ar[i].sName + '">' + ar[i].sName + '</a></div></div>';

But that's all I can recommend outside of completely manually typing the code for the section list into your HTML.

[darrentickle]

Hi Chris

Thanks for this. I can't use the name as it needs to be a single key so that people can get to the page with typing 1 key and pressing enter.

If I want to hard code these could I make three different template for each of my sections then. It goes back to my question earlier about having only the childern show under each section. If I have to do this to get my access keys to work what templates do I need to be able to do this.

I hope this make sense.

Cheers

Darren

[cdicken]

Rather than put your access keys into the navigation at the side, you could put them within the sub-section links that appear within the main body of the page. These are the links that are inserted via the variable NETQUOTEVAR:SECTIONLISTTOP in Act_ProductBody.html, their default placement settings are in 'Design | Options | Sections' and they tend to use Act_SectionLine.html as their default layout template.

If you go to 'Advanced | Custom Properties' you can create a new custom property called 'ACCESSKEY' and then set a value for this in the the 'Properties' tabs of the sections in your store.

You can then customise the section link layout template (the default one is set in 'Design | Options | Layouts') and wherever you see

<A HREF="NETQUOTEVAR:SECTIONLINK">

change it to read

<A HREF="NETQUOTEVAR:SECTIONLINK" accesskey="CUSTOMVAR:ACCESSKEY">

[darrentickle]

Hi Chris

Thanks for this, but this doesn't really fit in with the RNIB guidelines. It seems that the easiest way to get this to work is to hard code the left navigation into the template.

Could I raise this as a wish list to be added into a future realise as this is becoming a lot more important for sites these days.

Cheers

Darren