Outrageous Request

Although I love the functionality in the new version (been busy entering composer and artist information), I'm not all that thrilled with the look of the new theme (Default V6). I liked the former default theme better (purely a matter of taste). When using the old default theme now, the new fields are of course not accessible.

My outrageous request is: Could the new fields/functionality be added to the old theme, or could the new theme be made to look like the old one?

I at first thought this might not be so hard, so I opened both themes in Daxedit--and then realized that it will require someone who actually knows about programming. But maybe for someone with the skills this would be an easy task? Making a "retro" template would also add more diversity to the world of templates in general, which right now seems only sparsely populated.

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Originally Posted by Charles Litton

Although I love the functionality in the new version (been busy entering composer and artist information), I'm not all that thrilled with the look of the new theme (Default V6). I liked the former default theme better (purely a matter of taste). When using the old default theme now, the new fields are of course not accessible.

My outrageous request is: Could the new fields/functionality be added to the old theme, or could the new theme be made to look like the old one?

I at first thought this might not be so hard, so I opened both themes in Daxedit--and then realized that it will require someone who actually knows about programming. But maybe for someone with the skills this would be an easy task? Making a "retro" template would also add more diversity to the world of templates in general, which right now seems only sparsely populated.

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It's difficult to offer good advice without knowing your experience, skills, etc. However, I can offer this: I have not found the template language difficult to work with. It is basically HTML/CSS. Neither of these is a procedural language, so might find the going easier than you think. The big difference is the dax: family of tags that extract information from the database, and most of those seem straightforward, at least to me.

I don't find this an outrageous request. But the main problem would be to maintain two separate themes, that have so much in common.

The easist way might be to include som "retro" features in the default theme, which could be enabled or disabled by the user.

But what exactly would you like to keep from the old theme?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Charles Litton

My outrageous request is: Could the new fields/functionality be added to the old theme, or could the new theme be made to look like the old one?

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Hi Charles,

What is it specifically that you do not like in new theme? I am afraid at ths point it is far easier to modify new theme than to continue patching old one. The new theme was re-created from scratch, it's more cleanly designed and easier to deal with. And it is also more CSS friendly, so you can modify its look using CSS alone.

The main thing I miss about the old theme is the way the album page was laid out, with the cover picture and selected fields at the top, followed by the tracks. The new theme has the tracks bunched up in a narrow column on the right and instead gives more prevalence to notes and credits.

The old theme presented the information exactly in the order of "priority" in which I want to see it: First the cover with selected fields, then the tracks (across the entire page, so that longer titles don't have to break), and finally credits and notes at the bottom.

Hi Charles

I agree with you. The Tracks are the main feature on the Album Page - not the Credits and Notes.

However, as far as I can recall the old theme (Crisp.dax, which Default V6.dax is built upon) had exactly the same two-column Album Page layout as the new Default V6.dax theme does.

The Crisp theme which I modified and called CrispPlay,

Greetings Paul,

I actually wasn't thinking about the old Crisp theme, but rather about the theme that came with version 5 of OrangeCD as the default theme. That had the single-column layout I described in my earlier post.

It would be wonderful if you would provide the option to switch between one- and two-column layout for your Crisp theme, and the Default v6 theme could benefit from that as well.

Hi Charles

For the time being, here's a simple way to get a single column display:

1. Make a copy of your Default V6.dax file. You could name it Default V6OneCol.dax, for instance.

2. Start the [fixed]Theme Editor[/fixed] (DAXEDIT.EXE)

3. Open the new theme you just created
(Default V6OneCol.dax)

4. Select the [fixed]Album Page[/fixed] tab

5. Search for [fixed]<td class="right">[/fixed], which should be on line 242 (You can try hitting [fixed]CTRL+G[/fixed], and then entering 242)

6. Comment out the mentioned code line and the one preceeding it. The result should look like this:

[fixed]</div>
<!--/td>
<td class="right"-->
<div class="section" id="tracks">[/fixed]

7. Now save the theme ([fixed]CTRL+S[/fixed]).

8. Start [fixed]OCD[/fixed] and select the new theme ([fixed]View &#124; Preferences &#124; Theme tab[/fixed])

You should now have a single-column Album display. The sections are still not in the order you wanted. But that's fairly easy to fix, now that they are all in one column.

If you go back to the [fixed]Theme Editor[/fixed], and the [fixed]Album Page[/fixed] tab, you will see that each of the five sections:

- Line-up (starts on line 149)
- Notes
- Web Links
- Track listing
- Credits

are enclosed in [fixed]DIV[/fixed] tags.

So if you want to reorganize the sections, all you have to do is move (cut &amp; paste) a complete [fixed]DIV[/fixed] tag section

[fixed]<div class="section" id="lineup">
............

</div>[/fixed]

to the desired location.

Just make sure that you don't mess with the first 149 lines (which is everything above the Line-up section). And don't mess with the last 6 lines. They should read:

[fixed]</td>
</tr>
</table>
</div>
</body>
</html>[/fixed]

That's it. Good luck!

Just for the record, I made tracks column wider in next version (6.0.3 or 6.1.0, whatever it will be).

Also I'm looking into the possibility to make the layout flexible and fonts customizable.

Andrei

That sounds great, Andrei!

Paul,

Thank you for the excellent instructions. Based on your advice, I was able to make the album page appear exactly as I wanted. I am really thrilled.

Armed with the knowledge of how to comment out things and bolstered by the success on the album page, I also played around with the start page and removed some links that I didn't need there.

This all just highlights how many possibilities OrangeCd really provides. I know of no other software that would allow this degree of customization.

Thanks again.

"I know of no other software that would allow this degree of customization."

OT, but there is one - CATraxx.

"... but there is one - CATraxx"

...and yet here you are, posting on the OrangeCD forum! What could that possibly tell us? ;)

Hi Charles

I'm glad it worked.

I agree, OCD is very flexible - thanks to Andrei's excellent work. And it's just getting better.

OCD beats anything else I've tried out (including CATraxx...) I'm not saying that there aren't several other excellent programs on the market. But none of them suit my needs the way OCD does.