Making a simple site, having issues with a text boxes and hyperlinked drop-down lists

doodah · 27 May 2010 at 10:37

Excuse my blatantly noob question but I am having problems with text boxes in PageBreeze. I am trying to make a really simple website (minimal experience, many many years ago hence why I am using a wysiwyg editor) and part of it is converting a PDF (currently in RTF format) onto the page. I have a main page with a 'blog style' front, each blurb/story having a hyperlink to the appropriate article.

I have done the title page and having problems with replicating the formatted text from the PDF article. It has two columns of text down the page separated by an invisible split down the page. I can't seem to do this in PB. If I use a text box or text area, I get visible borders which looks silly. Next I tried a hidden field which seemed to work but when I paste the text over - it is one giant line and it requires me to press enter over and over again to format it. There must be a more simple way to do this?

Another slightly more complex question (well for me). I am going to have "previous page" and "next page" at the bottom of each page of the article but would like to do a drop-down menu so you can quickly jump to a page. How do I hyperlink each separate page within the drop-down list? Final question, is PB a decent editor? Are there any better programs? I downloaded TinyMCE but couldn't get it work.

Thanks

AHarvey · 27 May 2010 at 12:00

I have no idea about pagebreeze, is it a WYSIWYG editor??

If you were hand coding this in something like CSS you would make 1 div to encompass 2 more. Each of those would be 50% the width of the container div and 1 aligned left and one aligned right.

I guess the only way you could do it would be to see if you can edit the properties of the text box/area and turn the border off.

Tripnologist · 27 May 2010 at 12:09

If it's a wysiwyg editor, you should just be able to plop them down on there I would think?

In all honesty, your best bet is to see if pagebreeze has user forums or something and ask there. The majority of people here hand code so will have no experience with PB.

btw, tinymce isn't an editor you'd download and use, it's something you would integrate into a website, much like the little editor you typed in to post your message on here.

doodah · 27 May 2010 at 12:16

Lol a typo, my bad. I meant "wysiwyg". The properties for the text box are very basic; field type, field name, initial value, height and width.

I might try and find a more advanced editor after looking at PB user forums.

GravyMonster · 27 May 2010 at 13:17

They're basic as that's all the options a textbox has in HTML

To create a two column text layout is quite tricky to do. There is a new CSS3 property to achieve it though - although it's not widely supported yet.

Also, TinyMCE is a javascript based WYSIWYG editor for use on websites in forms, it's not intended for actual site development.

Tripnologist · 27 May 2010 at 13:36

I think you're getting confused over what a text box actually is. It's a form element and should be used in forms, not for laying out page content.

doodah · 27 May 2010 at 13:59

Tripnologist - that would explain a lot

I wasn't aware

EDIT - So how exactly am I meant to input large amounts of text correctly?

Just giving Expression Web 3 a go (trial)

EDIT 2 - Not my day. What am I missing? Using Expression Web 3, all I want to do is paste two chunks of text on each page and for both of those chunks of text to run side by side down the page. Driving me insane.

EDIT - NM, think I have solved text issue in PB. For you coders, I am trying to do a drop-down list hyperlink and found this code
<script>
function goToPage(url)
{
if (url != "")
{
.open(url);
}
}
</script>

"And here's the dropdown. Note that the form tag is necessary for the script to function properly"

<form>
<label><u>S</u>earch Engines</label>
<select accesskey="S" onchange="goToPage(this.options(this.selectedIndex).value)">
<option selected>Please select one</option>
<option value="http://search.msn.com/">MSN Search</option>
<option value="http://www.google.com/">Google</option>
<option value="http://www.search.com/">Search.com</option>
<option value="http://www.dogpile.com/">Dogpile</option>
</select>
form>

Just tested it but the script won't work correctly. Should the last form> not be closed properly (tried </form> but no luck)? Any ideas why the script errors?