Updating the form on the Full text search pane

This forum is for discussions on the Help & Manual Premium Pack and the Premium Pack Toolbox configuration utility introduced with Premium Pack 3

Moderators: Alexander Halser, Tim Green

Post Reply
Sonia Guimond
Posts: 79
Joined: Fri Oct 27, 2006 7:16 pm

Updating the form on the Full text search pane

Unread post by Sonia Guimond »

Hi,

Is there a way to reorder the elements on the full-text search pane?

Our UX designer would like it if I could change the layout of the form.

I know that I can change the instructions located at the top (Number 1 in the screen capture below). In the Premium Pack Toolbox, there is an option called SEARCH_HOWTO that I can use for this. Great!
Pardon my French!
order_element_search_form.png
The current order is:
1. Instructions (SEARCH_HOWTO)
2. Search box with Search button
3. Number of results per page
4. Match on any words or all words
5. Category (we’re implementing the Professional version of Zoom Indexer).

Our UX designer would like one of the following displays:

Display 1
1. Category
2. Match on any words or all words
3. Instructions (SEARCH_HOWTO)
4. Search box with Search button
5. Number of results per page

Display 2
1. Instructions (SEARCH_HOWTO)
2. Search box with Search button
3. Category
4. Match on any words or all words
5. Number of results per page

Additional information:
[Version of H&M = 8.4.4 build 5960
Generating the project with a skin “Boxed_Plain_Grey_WebHelp”
Version of Premium Pack = 4.4.0

Please let me know if you need extra information.

Regards
Sonia Guimond
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
User avatar
Tim Green
Site Admin
Posts: 23153
Joined: Mon Jun 24, 2002 9:11 am
Location: Bruehl, Germany
Contact:

Re: Updating the form on the Full text search pane

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Sonia,

The problem here is that the skin layout has to deal with the layout that is auto-generated by the Zoom web search application that is integrated in all Help+Manual WebHelp and eWriter skins. In addition to this, the Premium Pack skins also have scripting to hide and show a group of the elements on mouseover to reduce space. To change the order of the auto-generated components you would need to edit the Zoom script that generates them, and then also change the skin scripts and CSS that manage those things, taking the contents of the show/hide group into account.

You can see what is part of the actual search page in the Search Template. Everything from Zoom is inserted on the fly by the Zoom script, with code inserted on publishing by the <%SEARCH_SCRIPT%> variable. The skin scripts are merged into the page on publishing, with the two HMINCLUDE placeholders. The hm_searchprescript.js code is page management performed before the Zoom scripts load, the hm_searchscript.js code executes after the Zoom scripts.

A slightly modified version of the JS Zoom script is still stored in the skin as zoom_search.js but this is a legacy file that is not actually used, because Help+Manual puts it in the \js subfolder that is not accessed by Zoom. You need to check for the script files added by Zoom in the output folder.

You're welcome to try this, but be warned that it will be complicated and time-consuming. Also, any modified Zoom script files would have to be added to the output folder every time you publish, because Help+Manual would put them in the /js subfolder. :?
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

Private support:
Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
Sonia Guimond
Posts: 79
Joined: Fri Oct 27, 2006 7:16 pm

Re: Updating the form on the Full text search pane

Unread post by Sonia Guimond »

Tim,

Thank you for the quick response. I’ll pass down your answer to our UX designer.

For a start, I’ll change the instructions in the SEARCH_HOWTO (it’s a quick fix). I doubt that we will have the time/budget to change the script coming from Zoom and tweak the skin scripts and CSS.

Regards,
Sonia
Post Reply