Tables not confirming to configured width

PXLSparky · October 3rd, 2007, 12:49 PM

Certain ReviewPost tables do not seem to conform to the width configured under Admin in Edit Settings->Layout Options->ReviewPost main table width, percent or pixels.

Specifically we have done some investigation and found that tables generated by revshow.php have a width of 96% when we configured 72% in the admin settings. Further investigation revealed that the fault in this case appears to be in revshow.tmpl where the table definitions are hard coded at 96% rather than referencing width="{$Globals['tablewidth']}".

This is a problem as it means that these tables have an inconsistent width compared with the menu bar and also because they are wider than our configured setting they overlap onto areas of our website they should not.

We have observed the same effect in certain tables generated by:

showproduct.php -the table to review and rate a product is wider than the main product details table (which correctly displays to our configured width).

uploadproduct.php - when logged in as Admin the advanced Admin product upload options table is wider than the main product details table (which correctly displays to our configured width).

We are not sure if the cause of the error in the above two examples is the same as that found in revshow.php/revshow.tmpl.

This bug is serious as it is preventing us from properly integrating ReviewPost PHP Pro with our website and maintaining a consistent and professional look and feel.

We can provide screenshots that demonstrate each of the individual issues if required - let us know where to email them.

Thank you for your help and assistance.

Matt
PXL Graphics

Chuck S · October 3rd, 2007, 01:29 PM

You may report any issue with specific links so we can see your site. There are alot of instances when you set a site width to a restrictive width you will not fit all the data in one specific width.

I can confirm revshow is an issue. I will update that one. However every other template in our script that I look at the tables open and close with a variable called $ppopen or $ppclose which call opening and closing tables which have the global width in there. Thus on the other two pages I would suspect you need to turn off specific options to constrain to a page width especially showproduct.

PXLSparky · October 3rd, 2007, 01:49 PM

Revshow is the one that is causing the most immediate problems. So thank you for confirming that this template needs modifying (How will we get the update - from the members download area?).

I take your point about showproduct (and uploadproduct) and I also saw the use of $ppopen and $ppclose so did not think the problem was the same in these templates.

Now I look at those tables again I can see they are not resizing to our chosen width because they are constrained by their contents as you suggested.

Thanks again for your help.

Matt
PXL Graphics

PXLSparky · October 4th, 2007, 01:15 AM

I have established that the reason for the review ratings/comments table produced in showproduct.php not resizing to our desired table width is that the textarea used to take the review comments is defined with cols=80.

If not considered a bug, this is cetainly an inconsistency as I cannot find any other textareas that are so wide (For example, the textarea that takes the product description in uploadproduct.php is defined with cols=50).

I can't see any good reason for the review comments textarea to be so wide that is means the table it is contained in is constrained from taking a reaonable reduced width setting of 72%.

This textarea is defined in quickcom.tmpl - perhaps this file could also be updated as an official update with a reduced number of columns (my testing shows 60 columns works well and allows most reasonable reduced table widths)?

Even better, perhaps textarea columns could also be made configurable from Admin settings in a future release of ReviewPost?

Thanks for your assistance.

Matt
PXL Graphics

Chuck S · October 4th, 2007, 11:15 AM

You may of course edit your templates and change the sizes of boxes etc but as stated that does not appear to be related to your arguement that we are hard coding bigger tables in there. We can add add a size box for comments in future versions sure. The revshow template I can confirm is an issue but the rest as stated we open and close tables based on widths but as I also noted if you try running your site at fixed small width there could be other issues like number of preview photos showing across the page there are many reasons why a page can not stay constrained so without links to your site I can not comment.

PXLSparky · October 4th, 2007, 12:32 PM

I only claimed you are hard coding tables in revshow.tmpl (which you admitted to). I did not make this claim about showproduct.tmpl or quickcom.tmpl.

We are not specifying a small fixed width. As I stated we are using a table width of 72% of browser width which is.....relative (not fixed) to the width of the browser window.

We have no problems with any other forms (as we have fixed revshow.tmpl locally whilst we wait for the official update to become available), and using a width of 72% of browser width everything else including the number of preview images across the screen works fine.

Ok, it is not really a major problem that you don't want to make the change to this inconsistency in the textarea width, just a shame. So we will have to maintain our own version of some of template files as you suggest.

Thanks for your assistance

Matt
PXL Graphics

Chuck S · October 4th, 2007, 01:12 PM

I know what your saying and as I have said without you posting a link to your site I can not make any comments on what I see. Make Sense? There can be numerous things you can try to do depending on what the site looks like and what is not making it constrain.

PXLSparky · October 4th, 2007, 01:45 PM

The problem is simply this: In quickcom.tmpl the textarea used for review comments has 80 columns. This textarea is so big that it prevents the table it is contained in from taking our (very reasonable) tablewidth setting of 72% of browser window width.

In every other template file (including review.tmpl - the main template file governing the form to accept review comments) no other textarea exceeds 50 columns in width, hence why no other tables with textareas suffer this problem.

My point is: why the inconsistency in quickcom.tmpl? Why make this textarea so big that your user configurable tablewidth setting doesn't work properly? There does not seem to be a good reason for it. Why bother making tablewidth configurable at all if this is the policy?

I can't post a link to the site as it is under development and for commercial reasons cannot be made accessible outside our company at the moment.

But you don't need to look at our development website to verify what I have told you above - you could look in the ReviewPost v3.33 source code files I have referenced and search for "textarea".

Anyway, as I said, we have fixed it locally and I was hoping you would take this comment on board such that other ReviewPost customers who might want the tablewidth config setting to work properly, might benefit from an official fix, and that we at PXL Graphics are spared the necessity of maintaining local versions of some of the ReviewPost source files.

Thanks for your assistance.

Matt
PXL Graphics

Chuck S · October 4th, 2007, 02:25 PM

There is no inconsistency there. You can edit the columns and rows as you wish. This is not a admin configurable option but we can look at adding one.

The reason we ask for urls is because this is a support site. You say something breaks out of your widths well quite simply there can be way more reasons why this happens than the one thing you post here. You meantioned showproduct and uploadproduct. Depending on your site the reason why things break can be different from one site to another so just me looking at source code does nothing.

PXLSparky · October 5th, 2007, 12:02 AM

Chuck, the problems with quickcom.tmpl and uploadprod.tmpl (when logged in as Admin) I refer to are present in the "out-of-the-box" ReviewPost installation with an Admin tablewidth setting of 72%. We found the problems before we began to integrate ReviewPost with our own code. You don't need our website to see the effect of the problem.

I guess I could create a new ReviewPost installation on another server set the tablewidth to 72% and post a link for you to see the problem but to be honest I am too busy with my own work and really you should have your own support system where you can recreate such problems.

We will maintain our own versions of these template files so the problem is fixed for our website, and we will just have to hope you decide to include configurable textarea columns in a later release of ReviewPost.

Thanks for your assistance.

Matt
PXL Graphics.