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Date Posted: 16:15:39 12/11/00 Mon
Author: Brandon
Subject: How to use the new Table Settings...
In reply to: Karen 's message, "Re: Added note..." on 15:11:34 12/11/00 Mon

>I'm curious as to why there are two fields for HR
>lines. The second one doesn't seem to have any effect
>no matter what info I put in. What is that used for?

When designing the new formats, and reprogramming to handle the new range of possibilities (we can add other styles other than Text and Table 1) we planned on supporting two different HR lines, perhaps one for the top and bottom of the forum and another for inbetween threads. Since we weren't sure where these would really be best used, we just left it alone for the time-being.

Probably we will use the HR line 1 as the normal line, and HR 2 will be used to separate threads for those who use lines between threads. If you have any other ideas, please let us know, although this is not one of the more important issues, of course. :)

>Thanks very much for the HTML tutorial URL. I'll check
>that out. Maybe some day I can figure out what all
>that stuff in the tables configuration does!

The information in the table configuration is very complicated but, as usual, we figured we'd not hide it from those users who wished to access the innards of their forum.

There are basically two or three types of configuration options to keep in mind:


  1. Attributes for putting in the TABLE tags (this makes a global change to a table, like bgcolor="#666666" to set the entire table dark grey).
  2. Attributes for placing within the individual cells (the current "Color Layout" method labels the top line of the message tables #1 (the subject, author, etc.), the box with a message #2, and the box with followups #3. This is slightly different for the tables viewed when visiting the URL of a single message, but the general idea was numbering top to bottom, left to right, then adjusting if we needed to make it look good. :)
    These attributes go into the individual TR or TD tags within the table, so you can set the aspects of the individual cells.
  3. Something start and Something end: These options are used to place some text/html before and after specific locations (like at the beginning and ending of each cell). That is, if you wished to make all the text in area #1 (the location of a message) you could put the <B> tag in the "Start text" option, and the </B> tag in the end text option.

Basically that's it -- the only problem being the huge increase in hidden HTML code sent out to the user when VoyForums must output text for each and every table cell, and even worse when outputting additional text at the beginning and end of every cell.

This means care must be taken to try to do it "right", that is, the most efficient way. For instance, setting and using the standard global Text color (available in the General Config and repeated in the Table Config) as the color for the text in your tables means that color does not need to be sent out at the beginning and end of every cell. The alternative is to place your font color changes in the text-start and text-end options of the cells of choice, and this has the adverse effect of transferring huge quantities of data to a user.

This then means you may need to set the color of fonts outside the table (because the global change means they will appear in the color you wished for text within the table). So we provide the "Outer text" options in order to allow a global change, and then just one output of font settings to cover the normal text on your page (outside of any tables).

I know it all sounds complicated, but that's why we released themes in the same version -- Once configured, we use the themes ourselves! :)

Well, I hope this helped.

Sincerely,
Brandon
VoyForums Staff

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