siteContents
Page Updated: 12/10/97
Now part of the webExtras v 1.5 suite.
Introduction
The siteContents macro was inspired by the outlineSite macro that ships with Frontier. Like outlineSite, siteContents builds an html "contents outline" of links to pages on your site. Unlike outlineSite, however, siteContents generates links based on an existing nextPrevs outline. This give you a great deal of control over the appearance the contents outline.
For example, pages are listed in the order that they appear in the nextPrevs outline, not in alphabetic order by title or object name. You can control how much of the site is shown by collapsing and expanding portions of the nextPrevs outline. You can even use different nextPrevs outlines to display the contents of other parts of the site or even other sites.
The siteContents macro works with the same directives as the outlineSite macro. For example, you can specify subtext to show beneath a link in the contents outline by adding a #subtext directive to that page. You can also use the #siteOutlineSubtextFont and #siteOutlineHeadFont directives to control the heading and subtext fonts used in the contents outline. For more information on these directives, check out the in the Site Outline and NextPrev Discussion Frontier Web Tutorial by Matt Neuburg.
The siteContents macro works with two additional directives, #tableName and #exclude.
In typical operation, the siteContents macro, acts like the outlineSite macro and uses the object name when listing a subtable. Alternatively, the siteContents macro allows you to provide a name for a subtable by using the #tableName directive. In example 1, the user.websites.ESD.examples subtable contains the directive #tableName "Example Applications". As a result, "Example Applications" is used instead of "examples".
Also, you can exclude pages from the content outline by using the #exclude directive. Pages that contain #exclude NPadr (where NPadr is the address of a nextPrevs outline) will not be listed when that outline is generated by the siteContents macro.
In its simplest form siteContents will produce a outline of links that is nearly identical to the one produced by the outlineSite macro.
Example 1
siteContents():
In the above example the nextPrevs outline shows the following structure:
user.websites.ESD.index
user.websites.ESD.about
user.websites.ESD.news
user.websites.ESD.products
user.websites.ESD.examples
user.websites.ESD.download.index
user.websites.ESD.download.addressList
user.websites.ESD.download.listcommands
user.websites.ESD.download.poptocs
user.websites.ESD.download.webtools.index
user.websites.ESD.download.wsannounce
user.websites.ESD.download.formobjects
user.websites.ESD.download.autosave
user.websites.ESD.tutorials
user.websites.ESD.links
By expanding or collapsing the levels of the outline, you can show or hide different portions the site.
Example 2
siteContents(NPadr:@user.websites.esd.tools.nextPrevs2):
In this example I used a copy of the nextPrevs outline that shows the following structure:
user.websites.ESD.index
user.websites.ESD.about
user.websites.ESD.cvs.trc
user.websites.ESD.news
user.websites.ESD.products
user.websites.ESD.examples
user.websites.ESD.download.index
user.websites.ESD.tutorials
user.websites.ESD.links
Both the outlineSite macro and the default form of the siteContents macro do not show the top level of the site. If you want to show the complete site structure including the top level, use the showTopLevel parameter.
Example 3
siteContents(showTopLevel:true):
Details
siteContents v1.5b1. See script comments for version history
The siteContents macro uses six parameters in building an outline of links. The syntax is:
siteContents (tableadr, NPadr, maxwidth, indentpixels, showTopLevel, glossTitles)
tableadr is the address of the subtable containing the pages that will be included in the contents outline. tableadr defaults to the root table of the page being rendered.
NPadr is the address of the nextPrevs outline that you are using to build the site contents outline. Note, any outline build by structuredNP (or flatNP) can be used. It does not have to be named nextPrevs. This allows you to build and use multiple outline structures (see Example 2 above). NPadr defaults to the address of the nextPrevs outline stored in html.data.page.nextPrevs.
maxwidth is a number value that controls the maximum cell width of items in the html table that forms the contents outline. It defaults to 400.
indentpixels is a number value that controls the how many pixels to indent each sublevel of the contents outline. It defaults to 25.
showTopLevel is a boolean value that controls whether the top level of the site is shown or not. Example 3, above shows how this parameter affects the contents outline. The default is false to match the output of the outlineSite macro.
glossTitles is a boolean that controls whether the navigation bar is build from glossary entries as titles or as object names. Since the nextPrevs outline lists object names, you need to resolve these to page titles to work with glossary entries generated by the stock Frontier pageFilter. glossTitles allows for this resolution. The default is true.
The siteContents macro builds the contents outline based on a structured nextPrevs outline. The order which items appear in the nextPrevs outline determines the order that links are shown. Your links do not have to be in alphabetic order.
You may take a nextPrevs outline generated by Frontier's "Build nextPrev List..." and add structure to it, or you may use the webExtras v 1.5 suite's "Build Structured NP..." command (which will do most of the work for you). You can also use the structuredNP script, to generate a structured outline of your site. The outline structure does not have to mimic the site structure (though it is a little hard to imagine a why you would build an outline structure that wasn't at least a little similar to the site structure).
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