recent article plugin format

Creating and modifying plugins.
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rj
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recent article plugin format

Post by rj »

I think something happened with the upgrade to the RECENT ARTICLES plugin. It used to look like this...

John Oliver Agrees with Fox News that Obama is Hitler November 14 2008

now it looks like this

Daily Show John Oliver Agrees with Fox News that Obama is Hitler
November 14 2008

It just doesnt look right.. You get a sense that something is wrong

I would not mind having no date at all, but when I delete the code in the plugin box it comes right back when I save.

http://rackjite.com

tkhanx
Don Chambers
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Post by Don Chambers »

It appears to have been changed from <a>TITLE</a><br />(possibly more than a single br)<div>DATE</div>. It is now a definition list. Many plugins were changed in 1.4 to remove forced markup, such as the line breaks, because that effect should really be achieved through style (css). Yellowled spent a good deal of time editing every plugin he could find that used markup to achieve an effect best presented by css, and I believe all CORE templates were revised to include css that, at minimum, restored the plugin appearance to its original format prior to modifications.

I checked bulletproof, and at the bottom of its base.css stylesheet are all the 1.4 compatibility styles. This is what exists for the recent entries plugin:

Code: Select all

.serendipity_recententries_entrylink { margin-bottom: 2px; }
.serendipity_recententries_entrydate { margin: 0 0 4px 0; }
You might want to start by adding those styles to your template, and modify to taste.

Personally, I would love to see that plugin modified to use smarty templates as an option.
=Don=
rj
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Post by rj »

I take it those would be put in my blogs style.css file?

And is there any way to just totally elimate the dates from the plugin window in that code box? Like a special character to put in DONT PRINT!
that would be cool...

Thanx

RJ
Don Chambers
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Post by Don Chambers »

rj wrote:I take it those would be put in my blogs style.css file?
Yes.
rj wrote:And is there any way to just totally elimate the dates from the plugin window in that code box? Like a special character to put in DONT PRINT!
that would be cool...
Well, you can modify the plugin code to not emit the dd, or you could use simple css .

Code: Select all

serendipity_recententries_entrydate { display: none}.
By modifying the plugin, the date is never emitted. By using the css code above, it is hidden. If you hide it, you are probably going to want some top or bottom margins on the entry link.
=Don=
yellowled
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Post by yellowled »

Don Chambers wrote:Yellowled spent a good deal of time editing every plugin he could find that used markup to achieve an effect best presented by css, and I believe all CORE templates were revised to include css that, at minimum, restored the plugin appearance to its original format prior to modifications.

I checked bulletproof, and at the bottom of its base.css stylesheet are all the 1.4 compatibility styles.
You're perfectly right: All core plugins and templates in 1.4 (i.e. all plugins and templates shipped with the s9y distribution) were updated to emit sensible, semantically correct HTML (that refers to the plugins, of course) yet display it without any optical changes.

Now, of course I cannot update every template there is, especially if it isn't in a public repository :) But yes, the additional styles necessary to compensate the HTML code changes should be easy to find: Just look at the very bottom of /template/default/styles.css - those should be all the styles which need altering in s9y >= 1.4.

Depending on the way your template deals with margins and padding, you might want to use non-px values for those.

Hope that helps :)

YL
rj
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Post by rj »

That last one did the trick, eliminating the date stamp. No need for that. The real point of recent articles is SEO related. Lots more titles and keywords... Secondarily its a boon to visiters...

Thanx, I learned alot... I can now apply what I learned to other plugins and css issues.
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