Saw your response to my post, so came and read yours. I have no clue how to "address an array element" -- hence my own problem with formatting a textarea. For whatever it's worth, that string you want to replace is in the search.module, line 1063. Hard-hacking stuff like that is my own way of dealing with it, since I don't know any other way of doing it. That's what I wanted to do with the $cols or #cols or whatever, for the textarea, but couldn't find the instance where it appears in order to change it to my liking.
However, I suddenly recalled that when specifying columns for a textarea, the size of the box is sensitive to the particular default font and font-size -- and it occurred to me then why textareas are almost always given a monospace font! (that was truly a smack-self-in-head moment). So I went into my style.css and set textarea to 1.3em and monospace, and lo and behold, the textarea stretches nearly the full width I wanted it to, without having to hack into the core, the pesky arrays or $elements which I don't grok in the first place. :-D :-D :-D See those happy smiles!
With a far more aesthetically pleasing textarea,
Andria
I do see your point, if for no other reason than that upgrades make those core-hacks of time-limited value, and with a new version there are bound to me 'fixes' like this very recent upgrade to 6.2, just 'cuz some goober finds a new way to wiggle in where he shouldn't. And yeah, there really ought to be a lot more documentation, but I suppose that is one of the downsides of open-source stuff; I've been messing with Drupal for about 2 months now and just TONIGHT found that drupal API site; if I were a "real" programmer, the stuff I found there would probably even have helped me.
It occurs to me that I've seen a module that does for forms what ConTemplate does for nodes; basically it lets *you* decide what your forms will say and how they'll look; however I don't know if there is yet a version of it for 6.x; I went thru the entire list of modules the other day doing a search for 6.x, and though there are a fair amount, both new and upgraded for 6.x, there's still a long way to go. I suppose you could find it, though, and if no 6.x version yet, start harassing the author of it to hurry up and make one. :-D
...But I found that I spent more time chatting/fending off mashers (it's really *heck* being a female geek, all the mashers think you MUST be a pushover, nevermind that 20+ yr happy marriage I have! heh heh) and spammers than in getting any work done -- in fact this is the first forum I've taken much part in for about 5+ yrs now. But I spent 6-7 yrs becoming an "expert" (HAH!) on HTML/CSS and making very little $$$ from it, so I thought to myself, self, you've got to find some other way of doing this. So I started checking out the diff CMS thingies, and Drupal seems about the best. Joomla is real pretty, lots of gorgeous templates (that's what they call themes) for it, but on the whole, it doesn't seem terribly functional for anything except plain old blogging -- most of the high-function modules are THAT close to actually working, and the authors claim "coming soon", but it appears to me that to actually get anything useful done (other than blogging), Drupal is the one. But I guess, different strokes and all that.
At the moment I'm putting together some custom Drupal themes for a theme site I'm going to start; seems most (maybe all?) of the new and updated themes for 6.x are all-CSS, and all those divs just give me a headache, you can't figure out where anything is by the order of the code, or where to put anything, no logical order (logical a la HTML tables), so I figured some 6.x HTML-table themes were a niche that desperately needed filling, for HTML-geeks like me that really LIKE tables. Just got them (3 so far; 3 more coming up in the next couple days) all XHTML 1.0/Transitional and CSS 2.1 validated, which, yes, did give me a warm fuzzy feeling inside; then my host decided it had been running altogether too well for the past week and so it must be time to crash (again). I think I jinxed it this morning when I sent the host admin an email telling them that everything was swell. ARGHH WHEN will I learn to just shut up and enjoy it!
So I guess I'll play with Photoshop for a while, since I can't do anything with my sites till the server is feeling cooperative. *sigh*
The last design/CSS book I read was HTML Artistry: More than Code, which I suppose is grossly outdated now. Other than that, I started off in 1999 with a Webmonkey tutorial by Steve Mulder about CSS, which is where I learned probably 99% of it, it's such a great tutorial -- and then, other than that, just plain site-building. I spent about 7 yrs making adult sites, before I suddenly realized (eureka!) that porn is just plain boring, same ol over-made-up barbie dolls all the time, nothing new going on there, and there's too much competition anymore to make it worth your while. So I figured I'd zero in on pure web design for a while, get my interest in all this back -- and it's working, thanks to Drupal (and somewhat to Joomla, though I'd like that a lot better if their modules actually worked). There's also the issue that adult sites can't realistically go into any sort of serious portfolio, for showing prospective employers -- unlike mainstream sites, custom CMS themes, etc, even if those sites are for purely entertainment purposes -- much more socially acceptable. :)
I suppose if I keep hammering at it, I can probably learn to do CSS layout, but it seems like reinventing the wheel, to me; HTML is stupendous for layout; CSS picks up the slack for typography and formatting. Seems kinda, I dunno... silly? to use a formatting tool for layout when such a great layout tool already exists. For a while, a few years ago, I went nuts with absolute positioning, and it does have some interesting uses, but it's kinda over-the-top for most applications.
One thing I've noticed lately (in Joomla sites -- not sure if it's possible with Drupal menus, haven't tried it yet) is having one image, divided into multiple sections, for link hovers, and specifying percentages to indicate which portion of the image to show, rather than just having separate images. An interesting idea, though I'm not sure it's really superior to separate images, given file-size considerations of images; but if the image is a palette-optimized gif, then it might be better, since the same palette would apply to the whole image, rather than having sep images with each having its own palette. Still debating this to myself.
Just posted this on another thread, but may be helpful here too. I was looking to change the "Search this site" and discovered the simplest thing was to create this function in my theme's template.php file. I referenced this article: http://www.lullabot.com/articles/modifying-forms-5-and-6
/**
* Override the search block form so we can change the label
* @return
* @param $form Object
*/
function phptemplate_search_block_form($form) {
$output = '';
// the search_block_form element is the search's text field, it also happens to be the form id, so can be confusing
$form['search_block_form']['#title'] = t('some crazy search title');
$output .= drupal_render($form);
return $output;
}
I've stumbled across at least 3 threads with the exact same problem. Somebody needs to write a module for modifying the search form.
See this thread also.
Comments
btw that was a typo missing
deleted
those pesky $elements
Saw your response to my post, so came and read yours. I have no clue how to "address an array element" -- hence my own problem with formatting a textarea. For whatever it's worth, that string you want to replace is in the search.module, line 1063. Hard-hacking stuff like that is my own way of dealing with it, since I don't know any other way of doing it. That's what I wanted to do with the $cols or #cols or whatever, for the textarea, but couldn't find the instance where it appears in order to change it to my liking.
However, I suddenly recalled that when specifying columns for a textarea, the size of the box is sensitive to the particular default font and font-size -- and it occurred to me then why textareas are almost always given a monospace font! (that was truly a smack-self-in-head moment). So I went into my style.css and set textarea to 1.3em and monospace, and lo and behold, the textarea stretches nearly the full width I wanted it to, without having to hack into the core, the pesky arrays or $elements which I don't grok in the first place. :-D :-D :-D See those happy smiles!
With a far more aesthetically pleasing textarea,
Andria
yeah man... sigh. I don't
delete
doing things the 'right' way
I do see your point, if for no other reason than that upgrades make those core-hacks of time-limited value, and with a new version there are bound to me 'fixes' like this very recent upgrade to 6.2, just 'cuz some goober finds a new way to wiggle in where he shouldn't. And yeah, there really ought to be a lot more documentation, but I suppose that is one of the downsides of open-source stuff; I've been messing with Drupal for about 2 months now and just TONIGHT found that drupal API site; if I were a "real" programmer, the stuff I found there would probably even have helped me.
It occurs to me that I've seen a module that does for forms what ConTemplate does for nodes; basically it lets *you* decide what your forms will say and how they'll look; however I don't know if there is yet a version of it for 6.x; I went thru the entire list of modules the other day doing a search for 6.x, and though there are a fair amount, both new and upgraded for 6.x, there's still a long way to go. I suppose you could find it, though, and if no 6.x version yet, start harassing the author of it to hurry up and make one. :-D
Andria
sounds like me and you are
deleted
Used to use ICQ
...But I found that I spent more time chatting/fending off mashers (it's really *heck* being a female geek, all the mashers think you MUST be a pushover, nevermind that 20+ yr happy marriage I have! heh heh) and spammers than in getting any work done -- in fact this is the first forum I've taken much part in for about 5+ yrs now. But I spent 6-7 yrs becoming an "expert" (HAH!) on HTML/CSS and making very little $$$ from it, so I thought to myself, self, you've got to find some other way of doing this. So I started checking out the diff CMS thingies, and Drupal seems about the best. Joomla is real pretty, lots of gorgeous templates (that's what they call themes) for it, but on the whole, it doesn't seem terribly functional for anything except plain old blogging -- most of the high-function modules are THAT close to actually working, and the authors claim "coming soon", but it appears to me that to actually get anything useful done (other than blogging), Drupal is the one. But I guess, different strokes and all that.
At the moment I'm putting together some custom Drupal themes for a theme site I'm going to start; seems most (maybe all?) of the new and updated themes for 6.x are all-CSS, and all those divs just give me a headache, you can't figure out where anything is by the order of the code, or where to put anything, no logical order (logical a la HTML tables), so I figured some 6.x HTML-table themes were a niche that desperately needed filling, for HTML-geeks like me that really LIKE tables. Just got them (3 so far; 3 more coming up in the next couple days) all XHTML 1.0/Transitional and CSS 2.1 validated, which, yes, did give me a warm fuzzy feeling inside; then my host decided it had been running altogether too well for the past week and so it must be time to crash (again). I think I jinxed it this morning when I sent the host admin an email telling them that everything was swell. ARGHH WHEN will I learn to just shut up and enjoy it!
So I guess I'll play with Photoshop for a while, since I can't do anything with my sites till the server is feeling cooperative. *sigh*
Andria
wow sounds like we were both
deleted
No books for a while now
The last design/CSS book I read was HTML Artistry: More than Code, which I suppose is grossly outdated now. Other than that, I started off in 1999 with a Webmonkey tutorial by Steve Mulder about CSS, which is where I learned probably 99% of it, it's such a great tutorial -- and then, other than that, just plain site-building. I spent about 7 yrs making adult sites, before I suddenly realized (eureka!) that porn is just plain boring, same ol over-made-up barbie dolls all the time, nothing new going on there, and there's too much competition anymore to make it worth your while. So I figured I'd zero in on pure web design for a while, get my interest in all this back -- and it's working, thanks to Drupal (and somewhat to Joomla, though I'd like that a lot better if their modules actually worked). There's also the issue that adult sites can't realistically go into any sort of serious portfolio, for showing prospective employers -- unlike mainstream sites, custom CMS themes, etc, even if those sites are for purely entertainment purposes -- much more socially acceptable. :)
I suppose if I keep hammering at it, I can probably learn to do CSS layout, but it seems like reinventing the wheel, to me; HTML is stupendous for layout; CSS picks up the slack for typography and formatting. Seems kinda, I dunno... silly? to use a formatting tool for layout when such a great layout tool already exists. For a while, a few years ago, I went nuts with absolute positioning, and it does have some interesting uses, but it's kinda over-the-top for most applications.
One thing I've noticed lately (in Joomla sites -- not sure if it's possible with Drupal menus, haven't tried it yet) is having one image, divided into multiple sections, for link hovers, and specifying percentages to indicate which portion of the image to show, rather than just having separate images. An interesting idea, though I'm not sure it's really superior to separate images, given file-size considerations of images; but if the image is a palette-optimized gif, then it might be better, since the same palette would apply to the whole image, rather than having sep images with each having its own palette. Still debating this to myself.
Andria
If you're still looking
Just posted this on another thread, but may be helpful here too. I was looking to change the "Search this site" and discovered the simplest thing was to create this function in my theme's template.php file. I referenced this article: http://www.lullabot.com/articles/modifying-forms-5-and-6
Simpler method
An even simpler way is to use the stringoverrides module that I was just pointed to:
http://www.lullabot.com/articles/replace-any-string-drupal-5-6-without-l...
Search form modifications
I've stumbled across at least 3 threads with the exact same problem. Somebody needs to write a module for modifying the search form.
See this thread also.
http://drupal.org/node/232874
String Overrides
String Overrides
http://drupal.org/project/stringoverrides
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Darly