Primary etc

[PaulGrimshaw]

Hi,

Just dabbling with v8 and note that my deeply modified v7 themes are not working at all.

Can someone clear up whether the old Act_brochurePrimary etc are still used or not? The reason I ask is that when I look at the source, some of it looks the same, but the HTML is no longer strict, but loose even though I have that nowhere in my files (that I can see). Also, some of my changes appear to be in the source, but someothers are not.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Paul.

[cdicken]

Paul

The upgrader takes your customised code and then replaces the NETQUOTEVARs for v8 variables. Therefore it should still be using your customisations you made in v7 - but if, as you say, it was heavily customised, it may not be able to handle everything.

If you drop an email to v8beta@actinic.co.uk they can take a look at your snapshot and see whether we can improve the upgrader to handle it in time for 8.0.1 - which is the version we will be encouraging existing users to upgrade to.

[wjcampbe]

Paul, there are no Act_BrochurePrimary or any other separate template in v8. That's both the beauty of it, and the hardest thing for someone familiar with v7 to overcome.

Every image, link, product and property on the site is now controlled by a layout or variable or a combination of layout/variable AND condition(s).

Even standard v7 installations will benefit from a rewrite in v8 rather than an upgrade.

If you go to Actinic v8\Upgrades\ folder, you should find a text file with the name of your site and Design somewhere in its name. This will have a listing of the design elements that did not translate and suggestions for how to handle them.

[cdicken]

FYI to view the v8 equivalent of a BrochurePrimary template, go to the 'Design' tab, and select a brochure page in the content tree. Then click anywhere in your design and click the 'Navigate to Parent Layout' (bottom left, yellow spiral with up arrow) button until you see a dotted line going around the entire design in the preview. You should now be looking at the overall page layout and you can check how your customisations have been brought accross.

[PaulGrimshaw]

Aha, I understand now.

I have moved up and seen my layout, however, there is a big difference. I guess a lot of it is down to the way actinic now does the variables and I will have to get into that, but as a quick question, how does 8 deal with includes?

I previously used includes for the header, menu & footer (as they were the same no matter what brochure page I was on). The old html is:

<div id="primary_wrapper" class="primary_wrapper">
<div id="primary_header" class="primary_header">
NETQUOTEVAR:INCLUDE Act_InsertHeader.html
</div>

but the new code is this (I am assuming this is the equivelant):

<actinic:variable name="HeaderArea" value="Header Area - Cart in Row 1 - Search in Row 2" />

I assume this means that I need to edit that variable to show the html that I used to have in my seperate insertheader file?

Incidently, I had a whole load of script in my primary template that checked on browser/screen size and ran a different document.writes depending on what it found. Would this also be in a variable, or is it something that would be in the actual html layout?

Thanks,
Paul.

[cdicken]

Paul

First of all I would suggest having a good read of the 'Design' section of the Getting Started Guide or the 'Read This First' section of the Advanced User Guide.

Basically all your custom code should have been retained. The code which you quote is from a standard overall page layout - and Actinic should have retained your custom code rather than replace it with standard code - i.e. all your 'primary_wrapper' stuff should still be there.

Can I suggest downloading the full production version and see if it's any better at upgrading your design.

WIth regards to the NETQUOTEVAR:INCLUDE tag - the new way to do this is:

1) Go to 'Design | Library | Variables' and create a new user-definable variable (what used to be called custom properties). Read in the getting started guide about how to create your own new variables.

2) Set the 'Type' of the variable to 'File Content' and in the 'Initial Value' and 'Top Level Value' fields, select the file you want included into the design.

3) Then just insert the user-definable variable into your design where you want the file content to appear.

I cannot really advise on the finer technicalities of your upgrade yet. I suggest trying out the production version and if you still get issues, then register an email support query. Do bear in mind though we are not encouraging existing live sites to upgrade until the first maintenance release of v8.

[PaulGrimshaw]

Excellent. Its all working as was now.

Thanks for your help.

Paul.

[jubbbird]

Hi,

I have done some reading and I am quite happy with the new concepts. It seems much improved and I am confident that my previous approximation of the time required to produce my next site was well over what I will actually require - good news.

I am however at a loss as far as understanding where everything comes from, on the topic of this thread:

I understand that all the code can be handled by the surprisingly comprehensive code editor window, however it is not imediately obvious where the fruits of my coding labours will eventually be stored upon exiting Actinic. I have switched themes a few times to find the easiest starting point, and clearly all the layout code is being replaced with each theme. However I would like to know either - where this code is actually stored (taking into account that the advanced guide details how to get an externally editable CSS document) - OR where in the documentation I can read about this in order to save you time typing a reply :)

Cheers

Dave

[wjcampbe]

I think you will find "It's all in the database" or at least everything that is not within the programme code.

[RuralWeb]

I think you will find "It's all in the database" I think you are correct bill - I remember Chris saying something like that in the beta.

[pinbrook]

Yep its all in the database,thus if you really mess up you can take the database from the original folder back into site1 and start again

[jubbbird]

So given that the theme is only the images, and the button set is also only images, and the code is in the database - there must be a link between the three, or at least a link between the theme and the code in the database, and I assume an extra database link to the selected button set...?

I would like to understand the process of creating new theme, with all new images, all new buttons (or no buttons if there's no need) with all new code, all successfully linked in the actinic database.

[RuralWeb]

I would like to understand the process of creating new theme, with all new images, all new buttons (or no buttons if there's no need) with all new code, all successfully linked in the actinic database. Welcome to the club - we are all trying to do this:D

[cdicken]

I think it's fair to say we had never realised so many people would be looking to create custom themes that are colorisable and can be sold onto customers. I would have thought the majority of people would just be looking to create specific designs for their customers. If there really is a lot of people wanting to create and distrubute themes, then we can look at putting in some features to support this. As things stand, http://community.actinic.com/showthread.php?t=22968 provides everything I know on teh subject - and should be a useful place to start (particularly how themes.ini associates a button set, an image set and an overall page layout with each theme.

I also suggest you read the getting started guide (of the first chapter of the advanced user guide) for more of an explanation about how design works in Actinic. It's all in the database now - and you really do need to read up on the design features before plunging in.

[jubbbird]

I'm a little unsure as to what you were expecting us to be doing :)

I'm interested ONLY in producing a specific design for my single client - not to be resold to anyone else - as you seem to be implying that you assumed I would want to do.

However, this functionality (that was very obvious in v7) seems to require that I be able to create a theme, package up, send to my client and have them easilly "import" it into their Actinic installation. Technically, therefore, I COULD go and sell the theme to someone else, although without the ability to colourise it there would be little point. This way, if I alter the design to support another feature, or fix a bug, I can repackage the theme, allowing the client to simply re-apply the theme thus impementing the updated design in about 4 clicks.

Everything that has been said so far is hinting at the fact that we will need to manually arrange alterations to .ini files and images folders, etc. :/

[dscontroller]

If there really is a lot of people wanting to create and distrubute themes, then we can look at putting in some features to support this.

This would be an excellent idea, Chris.

I have tried various custom themes, which in the first instance seem to go very well with the aid of Dreamweaver and CSS. But before finalisation, something appears to go wrong. It may well be me misinterpreting some of the information in the AUG. It's still fairly early days yet to be despondent. I can see that there are more benefits than pitfalls in the new Actinic!

Regards,

David

[cdicken]

I'm interested ONLY in producing a specific design for my single client - not to be resold to anyone else - as you seem to be implying that you assumed I would want to do.This is what I have been expecting everyone to do. What we have here is a terminology problem. You talk about 'themes' - and Jo really is trying to create a theme to sell online to customers - but you are actually looking to create a specific design for a client.

OK - there is a feature to do this - it is called 'Design | Deploy Partial Site Design'. This allows you to export only the layouts that you have designed for your clients from the Library, and also send them any custom images that are used by those layouts. More importantly, it allows you to send the customer the customised 'layout selectors'. Layout selectors are the fields within Actinic such as 'Product Layout' where you can set which layout is used by the store. By sending your clients a set of updated layout selectors with the 'Deploy Partial Site Design', you can set what layouts are used by the store by default.

To do this, you need to create a customised layout, and then edit the layout selector that is responsible for inserting that layout. Generally, you can find the layout selector by locating your customised layout in the library (e.g. customised product layouts are in the 'Products' group) and then double-click on the layout selector that is in that group (e.g. 'ProductLayout). Layout selectors have a round icon. Then you can select your customised layout within the 'Top Level Value' and 'Initial Value' fields so the store will that layout by default. Then when you send the customer your customised layout selector, it will automatically set your customised layouts as being the default ones in the store.

Hope that makes sense. It's a bit 'stream of consciousness' but I think it answers your question.

[jubbbird]

When I started my site (all i've done so far is created a few new layouts, etc) I had a basic example site, with a default theme+colour scheme selected. Clicking the "advanced" button reveals that that theme has a default button set.

If I want to start a new clean site, I have certain things I need to get rid of first. When I "Deploy a Partial Site Design", and the client imports the resulting .acd file, what is created client-side? I would imagine that the codebase (layouts I have included in the "deployment") would be added to the clients database, the images referenced in the design would be bundled in a new folder with the theme name I chose under the "themes" folder, and if I used a button set[s] those dirs would be created too. I assume this because anyone who creates a theme to be used by client[s] COULD intend their clients to be able to choose from a range of compatibile button styles and even image sets.

The only reason I want to understand the button sets etc. is because they seem not only to be a part of the default themes, but a tool for anyone who creates another theme. In the case of my particular client, I don't need to provide swappable button sets so I dont care, but it seems that in creating a theme I MAY HAVE to specify a button set... perhaps not?

To make things clearer, what EXACTLY happens when a partial site design is deployed AND when its imported by a client? I would also like to know how an image needs to be referenced in order to be recognised by Actinic for uploading. In v7, you could include an image in HTML alone and it would find it and take it along, but those invoked purely by CSS would be left behind and would require being atted to the "Additional Files List".

I think one of the problems I have (being a little bit of a perfectionist) is that although I can accept that if I put in all my pics and stuff and deploy the site design, ill end up with .acd file that my client can import, it'll probably all work just fine and his site will be transformed, wahoo. But in the end, will there be a nice tidy "themes" folder with the correct theme name? Will there be a "button set" folder (possibly empty) with the correct theme name? Will the site1 folder only include the files that are actually relevant, instead of the residue of the "Basic Grey Buttons" button set? Will the new layouts be added to his database, the "themes.ini" file updated and default outer page layouts be correctly specified for my new theme? Will it all be added to the themes list such that my client can choose another theme one day, but then go back to mine and automaticlly have the correct button set/page layouts selected just as it does when I change between "Clean CSS Layout" and "Mechanical"?

All in all, I just want to add another theme to my clients list. I want to have the opportunity to give him button sets if I like, but also to specifiy an empty button set (or no button set?) such that the 61 extra images are left out (although I have noticed that if you select the empty "Clean Layout" button set, no image files are swapped and no images files are deleted - so you end up with the old 61 images from the previously selected button set:/ ).

If I was to do it manually I would:

1) Create a new theme folder with my chosen name, whack in my images (perhaps "Save Site Images as Custom Images" is the same?).
2) Add a few new lines to the "themes.ini" file specifying the primary payout names and a conveniantly named button set (can't see a function for this).
3) Create a button set folder, likely empty but with my theme name(perhaps the "Save Sit Buttons as Custom Buttons" is the same?).
4) Create the new layouts which would be subsequenty added to the database (Theres only one way to do this, happy with that).

Then, upon restart, Actinic would - I assume - read the themes.ini file and find my new theme/button set[s], thus adding them to the list. When my theme is selected if would know which layouts to default to, as well as the default button set - which in my case would be empty and aught to result in the button images being removed - which leads back to my previous question: how DO button sets actually function? Just a pre-defined list of named image files that are swapped when a new set is selected? No direct tie to code (given that images names are hard coded in the HTML/CSS and no variables are used...)?

Finally, to *manually* get the theme on to my clients PC, I would have to pretty much repeat the process all over again, including copying and pasting layout code if I didnt decide to simply copy my database thus potentially over writing other peoples work if my client bought two themes from two suppliers for example. However, assumably, I can instead use the "Deploy Partial Site Design" (curious choice of button name) and end up with a .acd file which theoretically has my content (given that I selected all my new stuff in the wizard - would be a nice touch if this was auto, but not sure how complicated that would be to pull off...) and can be imported by my client with as yet undefined results.

Ideally the entire process of exporting and importing a theme should be automated as it was in v7, and modular as it was in v7 such that several designs can be submitted by different people with no fear of overwriting anything. For example, if I simply send my "themes.ini" file to my client, clearly that would overwrite changes made by others. But if a "theme importer" automatically adds only the required lines to themes.ini, that would allow for multiple submissions.

Everything I've written above summarises my current state of mind regarding v8 theme development. I have my intended result in mind, so I understand that if I'm actually barking up the wrong tree, you guys will be trying to convince me that half of what I've said really doesn't matter :) Truth is, i'd like this process to be nice and clean most likely because it seemed to be in v7. I'd like an explanation of the intended Actinic theme development road-map so as I can see if I'm off on a tangent, given that there are only about 2 people on this forum asking questions even slightly related to this topic :/

Finally, to end my babbling, I would like to make sure that anyone who reads this understands that this is all light hearted - i dont intend to come across as "moaning", just documenting my thoughts with the hope that I might make my life easier :) I'm just becoming increasingly aware that I'm repeating myself a bit and don't wish to annoy.

[cdicken]

Right

<fx: flexes fingers, shakes out arms, prepares to write a lengthy response>

One bit of information you might not have - when a customer now purchases an Actinic solution from a designer (like yourself) they will generally purchase a 'Client' version of Catalog or Business. This is a fully functioning version of Actinic except that it has no 'Design' tab or 'Design' menu. Therefore, they have no access to the theme functionality. They will just be able to use the design that you have given them, and select from the range of layouts that you have set up in 'Settings | Site Options | Layouts' and in the 'Layouts' tabs of the products/sections.

This is why design deployment is no longer done as a custom theme - because someone using a 'Client' version will never be able to choose that theme. This is why you now deploy a design as a 'Partial Site Design' - it is not a full design - it just has the bits that you have designed specifically for that client.

This is why the discussion about theme folders and button sets is largely irrelevant. Any images you supply will just be copied straight into the 'Site1' folder of the client installation.

With that in mind, I'll address some of your remaining specific points:To make things clearer, what EXACTLY happens when a partial site design is deployed AND when its imported by a client? I would also like to know how an image needs to be referenced in order to be recognised by Actinic for uploading. In v7, you could include an image in HTML alone and it would find it and take it along, but those invoked purely by CSS would be left behind and would require being atted to the "Additional Files List".What happens is that the layouts you have designed, and the layout selectors you have customised, will be imported into the Client's library. Any layouts that have the same name as one already in the client's library will just overwrite the one in the clients library. Any images included in the site design will be copied into the Site1 folder. By the way, if you put single quotes around any images specified in the CSS file, they will automatically be uploaded.how DO button sets actually function? Just a pre-defined list of named image files that are swapped when a new set is selected? No direct tie to code (given that images names are hard coded in the HTML/CSS and no variables are used...)?That's right - they are just a load of files that are copied into the 'Site1' folder when you apply a theme. The default navigation icon layouts just happen to hard-coded to refer to images with those particular names. This means that there will be images in the 'Site1' folder that are copied in my a theme change, but are never referred to in the layouts. There's no way around that.

To test a partial site design, simply license a new site in Designer (or Business Multi Site) and import the file. You will then see what happens to the site, and whether it is working as you want.

[jubbbird]

Ok that makes some good sense - cheers :)

Three more questions though:

1) When would someone use the "Save Site Images as Custom Images" and "Save Site Buttons as Custom Buttons" buttons?

2) Are you saying that generally, I can manually prune the site1 folder to get rid of any images that I know my theme doesnt use, THEN deply partial and my client won't be bothered with button images that are never used?

3) Having done a bit more work on my shiny new CSS layout, I have run into another issue regarding HTML DTD's - Having established a layout that works in IE and FireFox, I have imported it into a new layout in Actinic and discovered that:

a) Rather to my surprise Actinic no longer rearranges all my code as v7 used to - all good
b) Instead it simply adds a "<SPAN ACT..." around the entire layout.

I would like to know what this does, because it seems to be forcing the HTML DTD to "Strict" thus causing an incompatibility regarding borders and block widths between IE and FF, and now my site only works in one and not the other depending on widths I specify :) I'm assuming this extra SPAN is only added to Outer Layouts...?

[cdicken]

1) When would someone use the "Save Site Images as Custom Images" and "Save Site Buttons as Custom Buttons" buttons?If they had changed the appearance of the buttons or the images in their design and they wanted to make sure they never get lost if they change theme. It also makes them available to other sites they might have licensed in their installation.2) Are you saying that generally, I can manually prune the site1 folder to get rid of any images that I know my theme doesnt use, THEN deply partial and my client won't be bothered with button images that are never used?Yes. The client will have a few images in their Site1 folder from the default theme that Actinic comes with, but these will just be ignored once they have imported your design.
3) Having done a bit more work on my shiny new CSS layout, I have run into another issue regarding HTML DTD's - Having established a layout that works in IE and FireFox, I have imported it into a new layout in Actinic and discovered that:

a) Rather to my surprise Actinic no longer rearranges all my code as v7 used to - all good
b) Instead it simply adds a "<SPAN ACT..." around the entire layout.

I would like to know what this does, because it seems to be forcing the HTML DTD to "Strict" thus causing an incompatibility regarding borders and block widths between IE and FF, and now my site only works in one and not the other depending on widths I specify I'm assuming this extra SPAN is only added to Outer Layouts...?The <span> is just added in the interactive preview (in the 'Design' tab) to put the dotted line around the layouts. It should just be benign - i.e. it shouldn't affect your design - and then when you do an offline preview, the <span>s are removed.

Could you confirm this please? I.e. please do an offline preview in Actinic and see whether the design looks as you need it to look.

[jubbbird]

You will be glad to know that - although I would have done it differently (i.e. the v7 way, but aside from that its a tad odd...) I'm now reasonably happy.

However, that SPAN does in fact BREAK my CSS code by apparently forcing a "Strict" HTML DTD - though I can't confirm THAT detail - either way it causes IE to render blocks differently so its my best guess. Either way, you were right, it did in fact work perfectly when I did an offline preview, so no worries anymore, thats made my day! Wasn't sure what I was gonna do about that one...

[jubbbird]

Actually it would seem that although the site DOES work when previewed "offline", it's impossible to see it working in the "online" preview, which could be rather annoying - if not for me, for my client.

Is it possible that we could have the "SPAN" section relocated AFTER the DOCTYPE line? It works in IE, can only assume it will still serve its Actinic purpose in this position...

[cdicken]

grumble grumble internet explorer grumble grumble

:)

I'll happily report this for you. Hopefully it will make Internet Explorer a bit happier.