Textpattern QuikPik 2.0
UPDATE May 8, 2005: QuikPik 3.0 will no longer be supported. You can find the same functionality in the newer rss_admin_quikpik plugin.
Well, three days after all the positive feedback I received on the QuikPik TXP Menu Hack I tried to think of ways to improve on it. While I accomplished my main goal of working around the tedious tabbed navigation scheme in Textpattern I wasn’t crazy about the use of a select list. While much simpler to use than the tabs, a select list still requires you to click on it before making your selection. So the first step I decided to take was to convert the select list to an implementation of the ALA Suckerfish Dropdowns. I also decided that the tabs now took up unnecessary space so I hid them. Don’t worry, if you were really attached to the tabs and still like to see them you’ll only need to delete one line in order to re-enable them. Here’s what QuikPik 2.0 looks like.
You’ll notice that in addition to the QuikPik menu now providing one click access to any area within the Textpattern administration interface, there are now 4 additional menu options: Recent Articles, Styles, Pages and Forms. These 4 new menus provide the same one click access to content within those areas. Selecting an article, stylesheet, page or form will directly open it in edit mode.
In order to install you’ll need to download rssQuikPik2.zip which contains 2 files. As always, before replacing your own file make sure you have a clean backup copy. First take the txplib_head.php file and replace your existing file in the lib directory. You’ll also need to place the qpmenubg.gif file in the txp_img directory. And thats it! You’re ready to roll.
If you’d still like to see those trusty old tabs, just remove line 127 (.txptabs { display: none; }) from my txplib_head.php file.
This has been tested successfully on Firefox and IE6 and it will only work on Textpattern RC1 and later. If there are any issues, browser or otherwise, please let me know.
Comments
7. November 2004
awesome. i hadn’t gotten around to installing your earlier versions of this hack, but i had been very much looking forward to it. *so happy* to have it now.. i’ve been very much needing this functionality, as i’m sure everyone has. thank you for doing it.
8. November 2004
One comment – I’m new to TXP, but I’ve found the experience with Firefox is a bit better if I bump up the text size a notch, especially when editing pages.
However, once I do this the QuikPik menu runs off the side of the screen.
Is this just me, or is there a better way of doing this?
Otherwise, nice neat solution – much easier to access every otpion.
Anura
8. November 2004
Hi Anura. The reason the menu runs off the side is because the width of the menu items is relatively sized. So when the text gets bigger, the menu gets bigger. If you want to modify that, look for the #nav li element in the CSS and change it to use fixed sizing such as 100px instead of the current 17em.
I’ll have to play around with that and would consider changing it in a newer version.
10. November 2004
Thanks for that. I think I can handle the CSS side of things, so I’ll have a play around.
In fact the real issue is the size of the page template coding. Maybe there is someway to fix the CSS to ensure that text is larger?
Anura
11. November 2004
By the way, have you seen the gazingus menus >== http://gazingus.org/html/menuDropdown.html
I prefer these over the suckerfish menus mainly because clicking the top-level menu item forces the sub-menu to stay visible until another one is clicked – less ‘flickering’ as you move your mouse.
I might have a go at implementing gazingus, just as a little personal project and certainly not to take away from your great work!
Anura
3. December 2004
Oh wise and wonderful Rob, you can’t just change this magic code of yours and not change the version number. I really like the new add and view menu options.
I’m lucky to have stumbled onto the upgrade.
Richard
4. December 2004
Richard – Mostly because you’re the only person other than my wife and parents to ever refer to me as wise and wonderful, I’ve posted QuikPik 2.5 with a listing of the updates that I’ve made. Thanks for prompting me to get my butt in gear.
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