Customize the Plone "add portal content" menu
Project description
Summary
This product make possible the customization of the Plone “Add new…” menu, commonly filled from the Plone available content types.
This is designed for avoiding useless content types but, at the same time, help UI experience of non-technical users.
You can use this to add new non-standard stuff to the menu (like JavaScript links). See below.
Idea behind this
The case is related to developed content types that gets added to Plone only for usability enhancements.
One example: have you ever used Plone4ArtistsVideo, or collective.flowplayer? In those products users that want to add new video to a site must use the “Add new…” menu and select the File content.
So the editor (that is never a developer in real life… you must accept it) must know that when he add a new file, it magically became a video… This is not so simple to understand; also is impossible to understand it without a training or by past experience. Can’t be better if the user could read “Add new video” in the menu instead?
Right now the best usability choice is to add a new content type to the menu, or develop a new helper portlet that show some links like “add a new video here”.
In the first case, just copy/paste the original used content if enough (copy/paste the File content type and rename it in something like “Video”). But you know… we don’t really need those new content types.
In the second case all is ok, but what Plone users know is to look at the right menu to search for addable types, not to look in a menu and also in another place.
So:
user know that for adding new content types, they must use the “Add new…”
users often ignores the magic behind Plone (like the File that became a Video)
developer don’t like to add new silly content types only to help end users (no, the are not bad guys).
The problem above is related to the not-customizable state of the “Add new…” menu: the editor and the developer will be both happy if a new, fake entry could be added to this menu. Going back to the video example:
the classic File entry (that point to http://myhost/mysite/createObject?type_name=File)
a new “Video” entry (again pointing to http://myhost/mysite/createObject?type_name=File)
This products is designed only for this or similar usability issues, however can help you to customize existing elements of the menu on context (for example: the action of adding a new “News Item” content in a folder can be customized to be an alias for another content type, but only for this special folder, or you can disable with a falsy espression a content type in a folder, …).
How to use
Installation
Simply add the egg to your buildout, and re-run it.
[instance] ... eggs = ... redturtle.custommenu.factories ...
Remember to add also the ZCML slug and overrides if you are testing this on Plone 3.2 or lesser.
After this, install the new product in Plone.
TALES expressions
In the TALES expression above, you can use those variables:
- context
The current context, as Plone normal meaning
- container
The container of the current context, or the context itself if the context is a container. This is useful when writing expression that keep in mind the default document in a folder.
- portal_url
The portal_url tool, taken from the Plone site.
Generic setup support
Juan. [nueces] provided Generic Setup support for this package:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<object>
<property name="inherit">True</property>
<custommenu>
<property name="element-id">pdf-file</property>
<property name="element-name">PDF Document</property>
<property name="element-descr">A file content to be filled with a PDF document</property>
<property name="icon-tales">string:$portal_url/pdf_icon.gif</property>
<property name="condition-tales"></property>
<property name="element-tales">string:${container/absolute_url}/createObject?type_name=File</property>
</custommenu>
<custommenu>
...
</custommenu>
<object name="documents">
<property name="inherit">True</property>
<custommenu>
...
</custommenu>
<object name="ebooks">
<property name="inherit">True</property>
<custommenu>
...
</custommenu>
...
</object>
...
</object>
...
<object>
For a complete code check collective.examples.custommenufactories.
Dependencies
All Plone versions from 3.3 to 4.3 has been tested.
TODO
JavaScript features for managing entries
code needs refactoring
think about inherit customizations not only from portal root
subsites testing needed
Changelog
0.3.0 (2013-07-10)
provided Generic Setup support [nueces]
now can’t no-more manage menu without installing the product [keul]
disabled useless JavaScript [keul]
now works also with single entry menu (close #1) [keul]
now supporting Plone 4 style icons [keul]
0.2.0b - (2010-02-17)
now local customizations must be enabled and disabled per-context [keul]
fixes to XHTML structure and validation [keul]
fixed CSS class names to be camelCase as Plone does [keul]
added tests [keul]
fixed templates to be test compatible [keul]
fixed a bug on entry deletion [keul]
added missing check on required element for entries (in facts were optional) [keul]
added egg support for z3c.autoinclude [keul]
now False condition for an element with id hide inherited element with same id [keul]
added Plone 4 compatibility [keul]
0.1.0a - (2010-01-04)
initial release
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