I'm using umbraco 4.7.1 and the Repetable Custom Content Pacakge. My questions are:
I see questions that are saying that this package is not compatible with umbraco 4.7.1, but it is working fine for me... is the package compatible with umbraco 4.7.1 ?
When should I choose repetable custom content over creating nodes of a certain datatype ? Which option is better for performance ?
Is it possible to index/include repetable fields in examine search ?
Thanks.
Repetable Custom Content
Repeatable custom content is very useful if the number of fields you have is small and they are logically part of the content node you are editing. By this I mean a collection of content that is part of the page you are editing. An example of which may be a list of links with a description, name etc.
Child nodes make most sense if the content is related but not necessarily part of the same page. Or if the content in question has lots of data. The trade off with child nodes is that they are slightly slower to add.
Another benefit of child nodes is that they are selectable and sharable amongst nodes easily. For instance a content panel that can be shared amongst pages.
There is no right or wrong way to use either nodes or repeatable content, however the main thing to consider is the ease of editing experience. As from a developer perspective it doesn't make much difference.
In terms of compatibility if you know that the package is working in a version of Umbraco that is not listed as compatible on the Package page on our.umbraco.org, then you can click the Report Compatibility link to indicate which version of Umbraco you have tested it with. This will ensure that the information is up to date.
Related
I am trying to create a new project with the new GUI BUilder (I've already made hand-coded project). I watched Steve Hannah's tutorial about creating a sign-in form. If the sign-in form was hand-coded then it would have to use eg a Y-BoxLayout Manager. However in the tutorial everything is laid-out without resorting explicitly to this layout manager what I understand because the designer provides the layout.
But I wonder why new the GUI Builder offers such containers with specific layout managers ? What are the use cases when they should be used, and are they meant to be used as is (as ready-to-use examples) or the designer should remove the components inside with custom ones ?
Thanks in advance for the shed lights ;-)
The current version (3.7.2 and earlier) works best with a flat layout (i.e. not nesting subcontainers). The next release will include improvements that make it easier to work with nested layouts.
There are many reasons why you might want to use a nested layout. A couple of use-cases that come to mind are:
If you're laying out a form that has more than one logical section and you want to be able to lay them out independently. In this case using a couple of sub-containers that both use LayeredLayout themselves can make things a little easier.
If the layout has a nested list (i.e. box-layout-y) that you will populate in code at runtime with content that you load from a web-service, etc..
I am developing a Drupal 7 site with a home page that consists of 5 regions. Each region will need to be editable within the Drupal admin system. Each region at a minimum will need to have an image upload and a text/body field. There may be other additional fields for certain regions. In other words not all of these regions will need the exact same fields.
I am not sure what the best way to set this up in Drupal is. I looked at Blocks but they don't have the ability to customize the fields. And I need my image field to be separate because it will be used as a background image for the region, not displayed inline.
I considered creating a custom content type but I wouldn't want the content editors to be able to create multiple nodes for a given region which would likely cause confusion.
I did see a module Node Limit that seems to limit the number of nodes that can exist for a user or content type but it is still listed as an alpha module.
What have you done to deal with a similar situation?
It sounds like creating a custom block would serve you well. It's very easy to do, you can add your own form/fields with hook_block_configure() and hook_block_save(). Here's one of my module files that includes custom block with a config form.
You could also possible use the Display Suite module to add fields into a region, as explained here.
Display Suite is good for configuring a node's fields in a presentation layer.
But your problem could be on the top of that... Maybe your problem is content building, and one of your most powerfull & flexible options is the paragraphs module.
With paragraphs you must create a content type, with the paragraphs bundles inside of it as a field, then create a page and set it to be your front page. Then customize these node types presentation with Display Suite as you need.
I know a content type for a page sounds too much, but depending on your situation this could be your best choice.
Paragraphs module and the Display Suite Module are very powerful together when you need powerful content creation and advanced theming.
If you have any doubt just ask.
Hope that helps.
When I think of reports I think of banded reporting. Tools like Microsoft Access, Crystal Reports, SSRS and even VisualFox use this. Dynamic behavior must be anticipated in advance and is controlled through conditional fields, subreports and parameters. These reports are perfect for financial reports or lists of things where anytime you run this (typically between some date range) the look and feel is predetermined and expected by the user.
However our company requires a solution where any user should be able to change any aspects of the report. Fields, formatting and layout are all changed anytime a report is run. It's not a traditional "report" if you will since it's not a somewhat static output.
Resorting to banded reporting in this case would banish some developers to the world of crystal reports since we generate 2-6 reports on any given day. I can't imagine a typical user being happy with having to learn how to use crystal report designer either.
What are some alternative reporting solutions that allow you to build reports without being at the whim of learning an entire reporting suite such as Crystal Reports? I've added an answer of my own to show a great alternative that we're currently using and hope to get some good input for future use. The point of this post however is to collect some alternative solutions to the one proposed.
DevExpress Snap
With some digging we discovered DevExpress Snap which allows you to build reports using a Word Processor much like Microsoft Word by dragging fields from a fields toolbox right into the document! It feels exactly like Microsoft Word with data field drag and drop capabilities. Fantastic!
We've already created a Template structure so users can save their predetermined layouts as "general" templates to start work off of but nearly every report generated contains different fields and formatting. Sometimes even images are dropped into the document to illustrate a point.
Now I don't have to be banished to the land of SSRS! This is an amazing solution though I still generate certain reports (P&L for example) through SSRS since it should be a pre-set reporting style, with it's fields and design locked away from the user.
The other solution I found that looks pretty powerful and easy to use is Windward Autotag. It's an actual plug-in for Word that just adds an extra tab at the top of the ribbon for all your report options. So you can literally design all your reports right in Word. You put your data wherever you want by going to the Autotag tab added to the ribbon and clicking a button to insert your data where you want it. I haven't tried it yet, but the website and demo video look pretty impressive.
I'm trying to figure out what would be best solution to the problem I'm facing. I have a Silverlight application which should be composed from different modules. I can use Prism, place regions and load modules and fill regions with loaded modules but this is not enough in my situation. Here's what I want to accomplish:
For most views that gets loaded from different xap files, I should place an element somewhere in the shell, which will perform navigation to the dynamically loaded view.
That element (which links to dynamically loaded view) should support localization and should have dynamically assignable data templates, different module links should have different content/data template (I'm thinking writing data templates in xaml files on the server and reading them from silverlight via XamlReader, maybe there's a better way?).
Uri mapping and browser journal should work with navigation. Silverlight default navigation mechanism better suits my needs than the one found in Prism.
The architecture should support MVVM.
I think thats all. I just couldn't think of a good architecture which will satisfy all my needs. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I do not know of a single product/solution that would cover all your requirements, so here are some comments on each:
If one area of the shell has a region that supports multiple items, you just register a control of type link/button etc with the same region name in each module. For example we register views based on the Telerik TadRibbonTab (instead of UserControl) with a region named "views" which is a RibbonBarTab with a region named "views". Every module then adds its its own button to the list. You can do the same thing with any multi-item container.
Localisation is a completely different issue and can be solved in a number of ways. See my answer here: Load Resources ".resx" from folder in Silverlight
A custom navigation mapper can be made to behave like the standard one, without messing up the support for Prism regions. The one we created encodes GUI information such as current selections (current view and item selections etc) into the URL. That means we are in total control of the state and the URL controls the state.
Hardly anything stops you using MVVM as that is one small feature for separating views from code-behind data.
I will be interested in what other solutions are proposed as we are always looking for new ideas too.
I am required to use the Extjs framework in my next project. So what features are available in it? There are so many javascript frameworks available in the market like the DOJO framework.
In my opinion, the principale avantage of ExtJS is the Store mecanism. you can have a store which hold your data (as a database table) and tell some UI widget to display data from the store.
this is great because:
you bind your widget to a store, then it automatically update it's ui when element in the store are added/modified/deleted
you can easily display your data in multiple form without worrying about updating echa place (each widget update itself automatically)
others thing done right:
event
ability to extend ExtJS classes
How it stands up to competition...
To see how Extjs stands up to its competitors, you could review the impressive comparison chart hosted on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_JavaScript_frameworks
Where to get it...
I'm sure you could find tons of information on http://www.extjs.com/. Keep in mind that you're going to pay a handsome fee to use Extjs.
How to learn it...
If your initial impression is good, you could peel into the Learning Center where you'll find API documentation, tutorials, and more.
To learn about different features, just have a look at the ExtJS Examples page. It should give you a good initial impression of what's available. There are grids, editable grids, tabbed views, trees, windows and other dialogs, menus, toolbars, etc.
Be aware that all of the functionality shown on the examples is not available out-of-the-box, though - some of them require you to include extensions (plugins) developed by the ExtJS user community.