i3Theme mod - wide entry display

[akremedy]

I've come up with a simple mod for the i3Theme, ported by yellowled, that gives the reader the option to open the post in a still-appropriately-themed fluid "wide view" - in other words, no sidebars, no search, no extra "stuff", just a content window with main menu which fills the browser window.

I'd be interested to know if something like this already exists within the theme (I don't think so), and/or if there is a plugin which does the same thing, if not, I'd be interested to know if this type of thing could be achieved purely as an _event_plugin? I can't really envision how a plugin could achieve this, but S9Y continues to surprise me with its extensibility on almost a daily basis

What I've done should be easily transferable to other fixed-width narrow themes as it touches only the existing index.tpl and entries.tpl, and requires an additional CSS include based on the theme's style.css, and possibly some images (would depend on the theme). I've tested in FF3 and IE6 for layout and function.

An example can be found here.
The modded .tpl's, .css and .png's can be found here.

Best Regards,
Adam

[yellowled]

I'd be interested to know if something like this already exists within the theme (I don't think so)

You're right about that

and/or if there is a plugin which does the same thing, if not, I'd be interested to know if this type of thing could be achieved purely as an _event_plugin?

I don't think there is a plugin which does this. Dunno whether it could be archieved, though.

Some ideas on this:

a. I don't think "Go wide/slim" is a good description for this. Maybe it's just too brief to get what it's actually doing. My suggestion would be "Wide/slim view (of this entry)" or something, but maybe someone else can come up with something better.

b. You really shouldn't use a table for the content, even if it's way easier.

c. You do realize that this will expand to any browser window's width, right? Might become unreadable in bigger browser windows.

YL

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

An event plugin could only hide the sidebars, but not anything other template related stuff. This could only work if the template used specific event plugin hooks, and they would need to be added to each template that should work together with the plugin. Bottom line, such functionality would better fit inside the template configuration, not a specific plugin.

Just wanted to add that, I don't know anything else about i3, so I'll leave it up to YellowLED

Regards,
Garvin

[akremedy]

Bottom line, such functionality would better fit inside the template configuration, not a specific plugin.

Thanks Garvin, that's pretty much what I figured - otherwise, why have Smarty at all right?

Thanks,
Adam

[akremedy]

a. I don't think "Go wide/slim" is a good description for this. Maybe it's just too brief to get what it's actually doing. My suggestion would be "Wide/slim view (of this entry)" or something, but maybe someone else can come up with something better.

b. You really shouldn't use a table for the content, even if it's way easier.

c. You do realize that this will expand to any browser window's width, right? Might become unreadable in bigger browser windows.

YL

Thanks for the feedback YellowLED - I was hoping you'd spot this post and have a look at it

Item a: yeah, good point, I wasn't feeling too creative when I came up with that one...that will change I think in the very near future to something a lot more descriptive, such as what you've suggested.

Item b: I put fought a good battle against the i3 layout, trying hard to be as unobtrusive as possible, as cross-browser friendly as possible, and introduce as little (or no) browser-specific CSS as possible. Surrounding {$CONTENT} in a table was an unfortunate means to an end, and my last ditch effort to get it done, and move on.

I'm totally open to suggestions - the problem (trying to remember here...) was that I could achieve a fluid layout in FF, but the post heading (the stuff inside of .post.date and .post.title) ended up behind #content in IE6 - or - .post.title refused to stretch the full width.

The only way I could get .post.date and .post.title to show up in IE6 on top was to give #content a fixed width. Setting z-index, etc made no difference. Likewise, I got a great layout in IE6 by floating .post.title and .post.date, setting width:auto and doing one other thing which I can't remember now, but then FF completely blew apart.

There were about 1000 iterations tested, and finally resorted to stuffing $CONTENT into a table. I'm sure there is a better, pure CSS way to achieve this - I just didn't find the right combination of properties.

Item c: Yes, the fluid width (fit to browser) effect is what I was after. Mainly, I was getting frustrated by the fact that code snippets in my posts were wrapped, making them hard to read - you see that sort of thing all over the Net and it really bugs the hell out of me. So, without messing with overflow and scrollbars in narrow columns of content, I wanted something that gave me "the big picture".

Thanks for the feedback, it's much appreciated!

Adam

[yellowled]

Item b: I put fought a good battle against the i3 layout, trying hard to be as unobtrusive as possible, as cross-browser friendly as possible, and introduce as little (or no) browser-specific CSS as possible. Surrounding {$CONTENT} in a table was an unfortunate means to an end, and my last ditch effort to get it done, and move on.

Well, I have to admit I didn't really take a closer look at the code you used or even play with it myself since I've been way too busy lately. I'll see what I can do to catch up on it next week.

Mainly, I was getting frustrated by the fact that code snippets in my posts were wrapped, making them hard to read - you see that sort of thing all over the Net and it really bugs the hell out of me.

Yeah, but you also see lots of solutions to this. I can't recommend any because I currently don't have much use for it, but there's always Geshi, and I think I remember seeing some javascript thingy on smashingmagazine.com the other day ..?

YL