question regarding the search facility

[skinnybloke]

hi - I have a question surrounding Actinic Business version 5 and the simple search facility.

My client currently has a simple word search which works well and to his liking.

What he would like to be able to do is add additional words to a product for the search engine to produce results for. These words would be misspellings and variations on a word and hence cannot be part of the name or description.

This would allow the search to produce results for misspellings and variations on a word.

Is there any way of doing this? Using custom properties maybe? Any help would be appreciated.

[Darren]

Hello there,

Hello Bernie

I have passed your query onto our development team for a look. I will inform you of progress....

[Darren]

Hello there.

I have tried this by embedding HTML into the product description, but unfortunately the search does not pick this up. I have also created a custom variable and entered a few values but the search is not picking them up.

However, there is a new feature in version 6 that allows extended information to be entered, i.e. you could enter your misspelled words in here and these would be hidden but still picked up by the search.

[Darren]

Hello again.

I have a workaround for your version 5.

Double click on the product for which you want to add the hidden words in.

Now in the description, enter the following:

!!<<FONT COLOR="Colour">>!! Enter your words here !!<</FONT>>!!

You can specify the colour as being the same as the background. The best way to do this is to view your website through the browser, then right click and select view source. In notepad, search for bg. The line should read something like:

BGCOLOR="#6699cc"

The #6699cc denotes the colour in this case. Copy and paste the "#xxxxxx" from here and use it for the font colour.

Your final string should look something like:

!!<<FONT COLOR="#6699cc">>!! Your text here !!<</FONT>>!!

Unfortunately though, the search will highlight this hidden text, so you will need to go to view search settings and disable Highlight Search Text under the Results tab.

[skinnybloke]

Hi Darren - thanks for your replies.

A question regarding this workaround:

Will this introduce hidden text on the page? i.e. lets say for argument that I added 10,000 words inside the tabs . Would this display on the screen as multiple blank lines?

My client has a set number of lines to display the description so that a customer does not have to scroll the screen vertically when viewing within 1024 x 768 screen.

[Darren]

Hi David

Yes, I am afraid it does insert blank lines.

[skinnybloke]

Would the search facility pick up the words if I enclosed them in HTML comment fields which I assume would not introduce additional lines?

[cdicken]

No - I've tried that already and it didn't work. I'm afraid clear text is the way to go. You could always make the font very small.

[skinnybloke]

ok - thanks Chris...

[NormanRouxel]

Hidden text will probably show up when the viewer prints the page. I managed to find two alternative ways that work.

One (needs JavaScript - that's just about everyone these days)

!!<<script language=JavaSscript>document.write('<!--')</script>>!!
Zaphod Beeblebrox
!!<<script language=JavaScript>document.write('-->')</script>>!!


Two (will show the text on Non Javascript browsers)

!!<<noscript>>!!
Norman Rouxel
!!<</noscript>>!!

Anyone fancy finding ways three, four,...?

Norman

p.s. I'd add something like "Common misspellings:-" to the hidden text so as to make some sense should anyone manage to view it.

[skinnybloke]

Thanks Norman - I'll give that a go...