XH 1.5.7: Default Content and menu_levels > 3

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cmb
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XH 1.5.7: Default Content and menu_levels > 3

Post by cmb » Sat Mar 23, 2013 5:05 pm

Hello Community,

if a user set menu_levels > 3 while he still has the default content, and goes to "Pages" he gets a warning regarding an irregular page/site structure. This might be quite irritating.

The reason are the headings of the news pages, which are formatted as <h4>. We could simply change these headings to <h6>. Shall we?

Christoph

PS: If we do, we should consider to do it for 1.1.7 and 1.4.5 as well. I don't expect that anybody uses these versions for a new site, but we deliver a full installation package anyway.
Last edited by cmb on Sat Mar 23, 2013 5:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: added PS
Christoph M. Becker – Plugins for CMSimple_XH

svasti
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Re: XH 1.5.7: Default Content and menu_levels > 3

Post by svasti » Sat Mar 23, 2013 6:04 pm

It is a pain if you want more than 3 level in CMSimple, because only 2 headings are left. I had a client/friend who wanted to change from 3 levels to 4 levels. Not that easy: I had to change all <h4> headings to <h5 class="something">.

Increasing your levels messed up content. Content should better be independend from CMS settings.

I wouldn't do anything to the old versions. Who is gonna use them for new sites?

But for future versions I'd rather like to have CMS setting and content a bit more independent.

What can be done? CMSimple basics, not to be changed:
  • A new page by adding a new headline
  • A page can be appended to another page by changing the headline formatting
So what about assigning <h7> to <hxx> for new pages?

svasti

cmb
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Re: XH 1.5.7: Default Content and menu_levels > 3

Post by cmb » Sat Mar 23, 2013 7:14 pm

svasti wrote:It is a pain if you want more than 3 level in CMSimple, because only 2 headings are left. I had a client/friend who wanted to change from 3 levels to 4 levels. Not that easy: I had to change all <h4> headings to <h5 class="something">.
Are more than two heading levels on a single page frequently required? For long pages I can imagine so, but having long pages in combination with 4 menu levels should result in a really large content.htm.
svasti wrote:I wouldn't do anything to the old versions. Who is gonna use them for new sites?
Then we should consider to offer only the upgrade packages for 1.1.x and 1.4.x to make it clear users, that they should use 1.5.x for new installations exclusively.
svasti wrote:So what about assigning <h7> to <hxx> for new pages?
This would make editing the content file in an offline editor harder. A good editor will complain about invalid <h7> tags, and the structure would be messed up. Personally I nearly never edit content.htm offline (even if there wouldn't be the problem with synchronizing pagedata.php), but some users seem to like it.
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svasti
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Re: XH 1.5.7: Default Content and menu_levels > 3

Post by svasti » Sat Mar 23, 2013 8:13 pm

cmb wrote:Are more than two heading levels on a single page frequently required?
Designers may feel the need, especially former type setters. You don't have to use all heading levels on every page, it's just that there are these headings available. It's like in music, you have pp, p, mp, f, ff, fff.

<h1/h2/h3>Subject of page
<p> introductory sentence
<h5> bold statement
<p> further text

<h4> secondary subject
<p> text
<h5> another bold statement
<h6> subline to that statement
<p> text

So the headings are used as a design element even on short pages. Using classes is a bit more work with the editors. On my download pages I use all these headings and I don't think that the pages look wild.

It doesn't really matter how one does it, <h7> was simple meant to put something in the discussion, but it would be nice to separate content and cms page level setting while keeping some compatibility. What about <h1 class="newpage">?

snafu
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Re: XH 1.5.7: Default Content and menu_levels > 3

Post by snafu » Sun Mar 24, 2013 9:04 am

Alles hat seinen Preis, wer einerseits eine Verschachtelungstiefe von 4 Ebenen benötigt und dann jenseits der Titelgebenden Überschrift mehr als zwei Überschriftenformatierungen benötigt, muß sich was einfallen lassen. Das ist aber kein Problem, dessen Lösung cmsimpel am Bein hängt, da es doch eher selten auftritt ... wobei die Lösung an sich auch trivial ist.
Ich sollte kürzlich ein cmsimple aufsetzen, daß die max. Ebenetiefe von 6 ausnutzt ... wie bekommt man da noch Überschriften irgendwo im text hin. Die Lösung war trivial, auch wenn der Textersteller ein bisschen mehr nachdenken muß.
Ich habe einfach die entsprechenden css Einträge für h1-h6 kopiert, ihnen neue Namen gegeben .t1-.t6, dadurch erscheinen sie im Editor unter der Formatauswahl und sind bequem benutzbar.
Ob das nun so "richtig" ist, keine Ahnung, dafür hab ich zuwenig Ahnung von css und wie man dem Editor konfiguriert, aber meine Lösung funktioniert. ... ohne Änderungen am System. Wenn den Profis kein struktureller Fehler dazu einfällt ... oder eine elegantere Lösung, könnte man diese ins readme oder faq setzen.
lg.
winni

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svasti
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Re: XH 1.5.7: Default Content and menu_levels > 3

Post by svasti » Sun Mar 24, 2013 9:40 am

Hallo Winni,
snafu wrote:Verschachtelungstiefe von 4 Ebenen ... da es doch eher selten auftritt
stimmt schon
snafu wrote:ihnen neue Namen gegeben .t1-.t6, dadurch erscheinen sie im Editor unter der Formatauswahl und sind bequem benutzbar.
ja, das ist die richtige Methode, und die könnte tatsächlich ins Wiki.

Mein Argument ist, dass es konzeptmäßig und in anschließender Bedienung besser wäre, Überschriften und Seitenerzeuger zu trennen. Bei der Lösung <h1 class="newpage"> würde man eine neue Seite statt wie bisher bei Format dann bei Style einstellen und hätte dann wieder alle Überschriften für den Text zu Verfügung. Änderung der Menütiefe wäre ohne Textänderung möglich. Man müsste Neulingen auch nicht mehr umständlich erklären, dass <h1> eine neue Seite erzeugt, sondern bräuchte nur zu sagen, dass zum Erzeugen einer neuen Seite einfach einer der Stile "newpage" zu nutzen ist (oder der Pagemanager etc.).

Die Idee ist also, ein Stück Flexibilätät zu gewinnen und die Bedienung einleuchtender zu gestalten.

svasti

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Re: XH 1.5.7: Default Content and menu_levels > 3

Post by Tata » Sun Mar 24, 2013 10:30 am

svasti wrote:Man müsste Neulingen auch nicht mehr umständlich erklären, dass <h1> eine neue Seite erzeugt, sondern bräuchte nur zu sagen, dass zum Erzeugen einer neuen Seite einfach einer der Stile "newpage" zu nutzen ist (oder der Pagemanager etc.).
Ich überlege, ob der Pagemanager nicht unter einem neuen Reite liegen. So würde es kaumer ubersehbar. Und entw. nur in Doku oder (ich weiss nicht, wie) Neuen Seiten Einlegen nur durch Pagemanager ermöglichen. Sonst würden die Überschriffte nur als die "Highlights" auf einer bestehenden Seite genommen.
Oder ein selbständiges CorePlugin unter dem Reiter
Neue Seite
Ebene: H1 - H2 - H3 - H4 - dropdown oder einfache Buttons
Einlegen? JA / NEIN - Submit Buttons
Speichern
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cmb
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Re: XH 1.5.7: Default Content and menu_levels > 3

Post by cmb » Fri Mar 29, 2013 1:35 am

Hmm, where to start?
snafu wrote:Alles hat seinen Preis, wer einerseits eine Verschachtelungstiefe von 4 Ebenen benötigt und dann jenseits der Titelgebenden Überschrift mehr als zwei Überschriftenformatierungen benötigt, muß sich was einfallen lassen. Das ist aber kein Problem, dessen Lösung cmsimpel am Bein hängt, da es doch eher selten auftritt
ACK.

About the structure of the content: of course this is questionable, and hard to grasp for an end-user having no knowledge of HTML. OTOH it's a very nice feature for power-users, and I believe it is one of the most outstanding features of CMSimple. Consider classic CMSimple: all content is in a single file content.htm, that can be edited offline with a good HTML editor: great! If this editor allows to show an outline of the page splitting headings: awesome! One is able to insert, delete, move and edit pages in one go. All this is possible only, because of the very structure of CMSimple's content. CMSimple_XH poses some restrictions, as pagedata.php has to be kept in sync, but this will change in CMSimple_XH 1.6, when the pagedata will be included in content.php (split for each page). IMO we should not remove this feature (not even in the long run).

But indeed all that is not useful for typical end-users. These are not interested in editing content.htm offline and will probably have a hard time to really grasp, what that's all about. Consider the quite common situation that an experienced webmaster/-designer sets up a CMSimple site, and than hands this site over to the end-user, who will only edit it (i.e. modify existing pages, and insert/delete a page from time to time). My experience with this situation is very limited, but I'm quite sure, that it's really hard to explain to somebody, that formatting some text as "Heading 1/2/3" will create a new page, with this heading. IMO that's extremely counter-intuitive. And it get's even worse, to undo an inadvertently inserted page: one has to select the new page from the TOC first, and then change the formatting of the heading---huh? Or consider another probably not unusual situation: the user feels, that an existing page heading is to "big", and so changes it to another heading level. Save---where's the page gone?

Of course all this can be explained with the book metaphor (what basic CMSimple is all about), and the simple statement, that level 1-3 creates new pages, and level 4-6 is for dividing content on a single page. But still it remains somewhat counter-intuitive. That was the reason I wrote Nope. About a dozen LOC, and the issue is gone. One simply can't make changes to the page structure from the editor; this has to be done with a page management plugin. Quite intuitive: manage your pages with the page management tool; edit a single page as you like.

Well, that doesn't solve the issue of needing more than 6 levels. But I'm not sure, that this is actually necessary at all.
svasti wrote:Designers may feel the need, especially former type setters. You don't have to use all heading levels on every page, it's just that there are these headings available. It's like in music, you have pp, p, mp, f, ff, fff.
IMO it's best to separate concerns here. Using heading levels for design purposes is dangerous. Most users will perceive it as intentioned, but not all (visually impaired using a screen reader, some old fashioned ones using a text browser); and there are many "users", who are not actually persons: bots, which will most likely ignore the CSS completely.
svasti wrote:Using classes is a bit more work with the editors.
I see! So IMO this should be improved. In the default configuration tinyMCE as well as CKEditor are scanning the stylesheet for classes, which offers not necessarily reasonable results (IIRC CKEditor is better than tinyMCE in this regard, but still far from being perfect). However, both editors allow to define the styles manually, and this might be a reasonable starting point.
snafu wrote:Ich sollte kürzlich ein cmsimple aufsetzen, daß die max. Ebenetiefe von 6 ausnutzt
6 menu levels!? Having only 5 items for each level results in 19530 pages (!), what I wouldn't call a small site (besides that even an average page content of 1KB will result in 20 MB of content, what might be too much for CMSimple at all). Of course one may argue, that it's not possible to structure the site so uniformly, but at least that should be considered. Even large sites, as e.g. http://www.heise.de/ seem to use only 3 or 4 levels.
Tata wrote:Und entw. nur in Doku oder (ich weiss nicht, wie) Neuen Seiten Einlegen nur durch Pagemanager ermöglichen.
See Nope.
Tata wrote:Oder ein selbständiges CorePlugin unter dem Reiter
Neue Seite
Ebene: H1 - H2 - H3 - H4 - dropdown oder einfache Buttons
Einlegen? JA / NEIN - Submit Buttons
Speichern
Fabien suggested something like this a long time ago. However, I'm not sure, if that is as intuitive as desired.

IMO we should compare (not necessarily mimic), how that's handled by other content management systems.

To summarize: I consider the classic content structure of CMSimple as outstanding for power-users. For end-users the situation has to be improved. I see great flexibility, if we can offer a cleaner API to the system, so that completely different requirements/desires could be implemented as alternatives (amongst others eeeno's suggestion to read only the necessary parts of content.htm). We have to keep in mind existing extensions, which may depend on the current structure.

Christoph
Christoph M. Becker – Plugins for CMSimple_XH

cmb
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Re: XH 1.5.7: Default Content and menu_levels > 3

Post by cmb » Fri Apr 26, 2013 2:37 pm

I have had a closer look at the issue. Changing the headings of the actual headings of the news pages will only solve half the problem (besides introducing another one: the delivered templates are optimized for 3 menu levels). The main problem are the <h4> headings on the "Menu levels & headings" <h2> pages; these will cause similar problems when switching to four menu levels, but changing these headings does not make sense.

So I suggest we stick with the current content for XH 1.5.x and tackle the issue later.
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svasti
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Re: XH 1.5.7: Default Content and menu_levels > 3

Post by svasti » Fri May 29, 2015 11:52 pm

cmb wrote:6 menu levels!? Having only 5 items for each level results in 19530 pages (!)
Actual use is probably not a equal distribution of levels but rather that the webmaster want only under some subpages a few additional levels. The number of pages stays managable, only they want to order some pages in more than 3 levels.

h1 Welcome
h1 x1
h2 x11
h2 x12
h1 x2
h2 x21
h2 x22
h3 x221
h3 x221
h4 x2211
h4 x2212
h4 x2213
h1 ...

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