Oracle of ONE1

A number of my clients use Remository within Joomla for document management. The QuickDown plugin, available from the same site, is used to insert document information within an article. While I have been very satified with Remository, I have not found that QuickDown matches my clients’ needs.

QuickDown basically creates a link to the Remository page along with a variety of document information formatted within a table. Instead, I am usually interested in having a direct download link inserted inline with the article’s content.

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Joomla uses a MooTools lightbox in the administrative backend, called SqueezeBox. By default, SqueezeBox is not available to frontend sections, categories, and articles. It is a relatively simple matter to include squeezebox onto the frontend and improve your visitors’ experiences.

It is not required to understand what MooTools and Squeezebox are nor how they work in order to successfully create a wonderful lightbox effect. A lightbox may be used to display a large picture from a thumbnail or any link. Additionally, any web page may be displayed within the lightbox (a great way to display a map or directions).

This article has three parts:

1. Template setup (not required for GGIS clients)
2. Using SqueezeBox

Update:

See comment #6 and #7 for a patch to modal.js that makes this work for multiple images on the same page. Without the patch clicking on the next image displays the first image in the lightbox.

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I regularly develop GPL open source plugins, modules, and widgets for Joomla and WordPress. On ocassion, a users has asked if a donation would help support this development. The comment alone is a great compliment and incentive. Cash is always greatly appreciated but in this case, if you find one of my plugins useful please make a donation to one of these great organizations instead.

American Red Cross in Southeastern Wisconsin – Provides relief to victims of disasters and helps people prevent, prepare for, and respond to emergencies in Dodge, Kenosha, Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Racine, Walworth, and Waukesha Counties.

Milwaukee Achiever Literacy Services – Inspires and empowers adult learners to gain the skills necessary to enrich their lives through education and training in an atmosphere of mutual acceptance and respect.

A 1.5 native plugin enabling you to display section or category descriptions within content. This is a very simple, single purpose plugin that does only and exactly what it claims. On occassion, an article may wish to include the description from a section or category. Copying that description means it may need to be updated in multiple places if changes are made. With this plugin, just update the section/category description and all of the articles remain current.

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Module ggis-tabnews is a module developed for Joomla 1.5. Basically, it takes all articles in a category or section and outputs them to a tabbed box. It depends on the Joomla Works Tabs & Slides plugin for the tabbing javascript. A future release may remove that dependency.

Where to get it?

This is currently not a public release but if you are interested in it, please drop a comment on this article.

Expected Usage

This module was developed for a very specific usage and has not been developed or tested beyond that. I do however, see a wide variety of applications for this module. A client wished to display offsite class locations by county in a tabbed box. Additionally; the person editing the locations, while familiar with the basic editor interface on the front-end, was not expected to handle much complexity in layout.
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Problem statement: I have inserted an image using the TinyMCE editor in a Joomla 1.5 article. How do I get the image to display both a caption and a border? I do not want borders on all images but only those I specify.

At first glance, the solution seems as though it would be simple and straightforward but it actually requires some tricks. This article will approach the issue in a somewhat backward approach; starting with what is required of the end-user editor, then going to changes required of the administrator, and finally touching on a little of the why.

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What is it?

ggis Iframe gives authors an easy way to insert an iframe into a Joomla content item.

Features and Requirements

• Joomla! 1.5 or greater

Setup

Using ggis_iframe is a very simple matter of performing a short setup and then inserting a simple code in your article.

1. Download and install plugin using standard means. Download here.
2. There are really no plugin options to set, everything is controlled by the insert tag.
3. Publish the ggis_iframe plugin

Usage

The subscription form may be inserted on a post, page, or text widget by including the following code in your text.

{ggis_iframe %param0="val" %param1="val"}

http://iframe.url{/ggis_iframe}

The insert tag starts with {ggis_iframe} and ends with {/ggis_iframe}. A number of parameters may be set in the openning tag. The URL of the iframe to insert goes between the tags.

Another example with all parameters set:

{ggis_iframe id="mine" width="100%" height="650"
frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true"
scrolling="auto"}http://mydomain.com/page{/ggis_iframe}

Parameters

• id – identifies your iframe (text)
  • default = random number
• width -sets the iframe width (% or px)
  • default = 100%
• height – sets iframe height (% or px)
  • default = 650px
• frameborder – border width around iframe (low integer)
  • default = 0
• allowtransparency – iframe background transparency (true or false)
  • default = true
• scrolling – set iframe scrolling (auto, yes, or no)
  • default = auto

To Do

Join me at the showing of the Sweet Land movie on July 21. This is a ‘Spotlight on Literacy’ fundraiser for Milwaukee Achiever Literacy Services.

Please see comments.

Some of my Joomla! sites use Facile Forms to manage their forms. This extension is getting a little aged and the developer has indicated he might not upgrade the code for new versions of Joomla!.

Recently, a Facile Forms user complained they were receiving form spam. (Form spam is similar to email spam only the spammer uses website forms to insure delivery to real users.) Facile Forms has a security code CAPTCHA to block form spam but obviously it was not working. So I removed the Facile Form CAPTCHA and implemented a different CAPTCHA.

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