UBB.Developers Forums UBB.threads 7 Development How Do I? Alt tags for preview of thread....?

Has anyone done something simliar to:

http://www.eclipseforums.org/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=15

where the alt tags are set to the first 100 characeters of so of a post to "preview" it before clicking on it?

I did it here, pretty easy actually. Just add $Body in postlist.php and then add a title tag to the a href line.

I did add something to clean up the $Body (strip_tags and htmlspecialcharacters) and then chopped it off at 100 characters.

http://www.viperalley.com/postlist.php?Cat=&Board=offtopic

Looks great. Can you tell if it slows down the page?

Not at all - no additional queries are done and it just adds a title tag to the a href link. I only had to add like 5 lines to postlist.php:

[]SELECT t1.B_Number,t1.B_Parent,t1.B_Username,t1.B_Posted,t1.B_Last_Post,t1.B_Last_Number,t1.B_Last_Name,t1.B_Last_Approved,t1.B_Subject,t1.B_Main,t1.B_Status,t1.B_Approved,t1.B_Icon,t1.B_Reged,t1.B_Counter,t1.B_Sticky,t1.B_Replies,t1.B_Rating,t1.B_Rates,t1.B_RealRating,t2.U_Color,t2.U_Status,t1.B_PosterId,t1.B_File,t1.B_Body[/]

[]list($Number,$Parent,$Username,$Posted,$Last_Post,$Last_Number,$Last_Name,$Last_Approved,$Subject,$Main,$Open,$Approved,$icon,$Reged,$Counter,$Sticky,$Replies,$Rating,$Rates,$stars,$Color,$PostStatus,$posterid,$file,$Body) = $dbh -> fetch_array($sth);

// -------------------------
// Standard icon is the note
if (!$icon) {
$icon = "book.gif";
}

$Body = strip_tags($Body);
$Body = htmlspecialchars($Body);
if ( strlen($Body) > 100 ) {
$Body = substr($Body, 0, 100);
$Body .= " ...";
}[/]

down a bit where $postlist is being set, add this above the line that sets $Subject:

[]$postrow[$i]['Body'] = $Body; [/]
then this to postlist.thtml:

[]<a href="{$config['phpurl']}/$mode.php?Cat=$Cat&Board=$Board&Number={$postrow[$i]['Number']}&page=$page&view=$view&sb=$sb&o=$o&fpart={$postrow[$i]['fpart']}{$postrow[$i]['jumper']}" title="{$postrow[$i]['Body']}">[/]

Cool! Does it grab the body of the first post? Or the first unread post? It's really cool anyhow it be.

Okay we sure there is not a step missing

I did these simple couple lines and I get no box that comes up when I mouse over them like I see on the example forum.

I double checked my copy and paste hacking. Everything was copied right.

Oh, yes, one more thing.... Down below where the $postrow gets setup; above the $Subject, put this:

$postrow[$i]['Body'] = $Body;

I seem to be the one who finds the missing parts

Thanx Michaels works very well now.

haha wow, that's too cool

Very Cool!!
This coming out as a finished mod? Seems pretty basic but could use some documentation.

For idiots like myself

Ok got it working.. took me a bit to catch the bold changes

This is a cool one for sure!!
TY TY TY

This only works properly in flat mode... when it expanded mode it translates the tags to the wrong threads. still like the hack but a fix? or did I miss something

flat mod threaded mod. No such animal here. This is the postlist screen

This is not designed to work on replies. (expanded mod)
It will work for about two and break.

I will look into it and see what I can come up with but all in all Michael did a great job. Quite a small mod but very useful and teasing.

I added this alt text code to the search area here while adding another modification. Hope you don't mind.

Slightly off-topic, but is there any limit to the length of the alt or title text?

I looked around w3c.org briefly and didn't find any specific references to the length.

Just playing around I believe I got over a 1000 characters into it. (IE 6.0)

I added to the code a bit. I replaced the <br /> tags with new line characters \n before stripping the html so that the tool tip/title display looked more like the actual post.

Scratch that. Only IE seems to be able to use the new line characters. Mozilla/Netscape and Opera do not.

Dave_L the size of the "tool tip" varried between IE/Mozilla/Opera. IE was able to display the most.

Thanks, I was just curious. I'm working on something that may put a lot of text there, and I was wondering if there were any sort of specified limit.

It seems about a 100 max or so for Opera/Mozilla.

Thanks

[]Just playing around I believe I got over a 1000 characters into it. (IE 6.0) [/]


I believe the limit is 1036 (though I can't remember where I saw that now! ). Of course that doesn't necessarily mean a browser will display 1036 though, as you've found out. (oops, it's 1024)

[]I looked around w3c.org briefly and didn't find any specific references to the length.

Just playing around I believe I got over a 1000 characters into it. (IE 6.0) [/]

Ah ha! (Trying to find it was driving me nuts )

from w3c: The preliminaries are taken from the HTML DTD and declares the character set as Latin-1, disables markup minimisation and sets limits for tag/attribute names to 34 characters, and attribute values to a maximum of 1024 characters.

I was off by 12.

Go Lisa!

Hi extremebikini

[] down a bit where $postlist is being set, add this above the line that sets $Subject:



Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

$postrow[$i]['Body'] = $Body;

[/]

I have looked for 2 hrs now and can for the life of me find the place to add the above ....

down a bit....how long is your string.......

can't you do it like the other parts and put in the addition in bold

Has anyone out there guessed where this goes, if so could you let us in on the secret....:)

I apologise for my thickness but I don't want to %^%$^%$ up my site with trial and error with one line.

Could it be this bit which is a long long way down?
// Setup the postrow array
$postrow[$z]['color'] = $rowcolor;
$postrow[$z]['indentsize'] = "0";
$postrow[$z]['icon'] = $icon;
$postrow[$z]['imagesize'] = $imagesize;
$postrow[$z]['Number'] = $Number;
$postrow[$z]['Subject'] = $Subject;

Thanks

LoL you must have some great study habits Lisa!

I didn't spend to much time scanning their site. I do recommend it to those that can't sleep though... LoL

Thanks for finding the specs!

Hi anybody that's got this working

I still can't get this to work, can anyone explain more what has to be done, as I think I have got lost somewhere on the lines..........

1.....
down a bit where [:"red"] $postlist [/] is being set, add this above the line that sets $Subject:

$postrow[$i]['Body'] = $Body;

And this.............................

2.......
Oh, yes, one more thing.... Down below where the [:"red"] $postrow [/] gets setup; above the $Subject, put this:

$postrow[$i]['Body'] = $Body;

Are these the same and if so where do they go???
and if not then where do they both go???


Also I take it ....this

"then this to postlist.thtml"

should read .......this

"then this to postlist.tmpl"

Hi

To late

Done it

At least you gave it a try and it worked out in the end. I personally like it when that happens. It gives me more satisfaction.

Sorry that I was late George

Thanks anyway Nikos

Any luck with (expanded mod)?

Oh boy... replaced one of my files with a original. Whoops..

Now I can't get this one working again. I look forward to some better documentation on this one. Will try again tonight if nobody gets to this one. Perhaps the adjustments to the search page could be added too. Thanks for all the hard work and creativity.

I installed YASM and it put the alt tags in the search.

SmilesforU,

The way this hack is designed it will work for expanded view or flat. However the way its coded the default number of entries that this handles is your postlist default each user or the board has as a default. If you have it set to 20 posts on the postlist screen it will do 20 at a time. So the problem is when you go to expanded it will do the first 20 then stop. So it is not a bug when you switch to expanded.

Maybe one of the guru's can think of a better way to get more but like extremebikini said this is a quick and dirty hack that does exactly what it was designed to do.

thanks Chuck... I just need to get it working again.

Having trouble finding the right lines to insert... ugh

(Scripts Removed)

Sorry, we can't post whole threads scripts here on the board as they are copyrighted.

my bad sorry..

Has anyone written anything about this so dummies like me can install it??