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Key Lotus Web Content Management definitions - Other components
This article describes the following components within
Lotus Web Content Management. All examples are based on the River
Bend Tea and Coffee Company Web site.
Text component
You can use text components to store text or HTML as reusable text modules.
For the River Bend Web site, you can create text components to describe
standardized processes for coffee and tea production, such as roasting or
picking. (Tea picking is different from coffee picking.) You can use the text
components as standard text blocks in the Coffee and Tea product description
pages.
Rich Text component
The Rich Text component is very similar to the text component. However, Rich
Text components can reference one or more components using tags and also
provide a Rich Text editor for formatting text and HTML. You can use a Rich
Text component on the River Bend Web site on the Coffee and Tea product pages
to provide a standardized form for rating the products. The Rich Text component
references the form and its components (design, buttons, and so forth).
File resource component
File resources are components that provide a central repository for files,
images, stylesheets, and so forth. Authors and site designers can reference the
file resources. The River Bend Three Column Table presentation template
references the Riverbend.css stylesheet as a file resource component as shown
in the following example:
<link rel="stylesheet" href='<Component
name="Riverbend.css"/>'>
Another example of a file resource component is graphics that are used to
polish the River Bend Web site. The navigators do not use any symbols (such as
arrows) to indicate activated sections. You could store a graphic as a file
resource to serve as indicator for an activated selection.
HTML component
You can use an HTML component for almost any purpose. An HTML component
contains HTML code and often references items, content fields, and components.
The River Bend Web site uses the following HTML components:
The navigator on the left side, NAV-Left, displays its elements in
alternating designs. Activated elements appear in bold layout, while other
elements use the default layout.
The bold layout uses the HTML-Layout-Main Nav Bold component:
<a href='<Placeholder tag="href"/>' >
<b><IDCmpnt context="autoFill"
type="sitearea" field="title"/></b>
</a><br>
The default layout uses the HTML-Layout-Main Nav Plain component:
<a class="norm" href="<Placeholder
tag="href"/>"><IDCmpnt context="autoFill"
type="sitearea" field="title"/></a>
Figure 23 shows the result of applying these layouts.
Figure 23 Navigator element defined in different HTML components
(31_23)
This HTML component can be used across the web site.
Image component
You can insert images that are used throughout the Web site directly into
image components fields in the authoring templates. In this case, the author
has the option to define the size of the image, which might or might not fit
the overall design. Defining images as image resources provides
identical images for re-usage.
The River Bend Web site uses eleven image components as consistent design
elements in the presentation templates. These are the home page logo, the
inside logo, news home page image, food home page image, beverages home page
image, company home page image, the brown line separator, and background image
The images are re-used in the different components and presentation
templates.
JSP component
JSP components store the path to a JSP and the content of a field for an
error message in case the JSP is not available. An extended discussion on JSP
in combination with the API is found in section 4.3.1
Taxonomy component
Taxonomy components relate often to personalization where lists of
categories are presented to the user to select categories of interest.
Alternatively, you can use the taxonomy component to display categories for
navigation instead of site areas. However, be aware that this option works only
for authenticated users.
If your site requires this option for anonymous users as well, the
implementation is more complex. In this case, you need to create a JSP for an
imaginary user for which the component is displayed.
The taxonomy component displays a list of categories, starting with the
selected start area (in this case, a category), and displaying the depth
according to the Depth field. You can define further selection criteria by
using a Profile Search Rule.
You can use the remaining fields to format the displayed categories with a
header and footer. The Unselected Components and Selected Component fields
contain special layout for selecting categories, which could be checkboxes.
User name component
You use user name components to display components for anonymous users or
authenticated users and to create different design experiences based on user
names. The logic for a user name component is as follows:
If an anonymous user is using the site, then it displays the Anonymous User
Design, or else the User Component Design, where Anonymous User Design
and User Component Design are the fields that are available in
the component form. These fields contain designs that are based on HTML code or
component references.
A good example for a user name component is a welcome message on a Web
site's home page for an authenticated user. The anonymous user does not see a
welcome message.
Authoring Tools component
WCM allows site designers to add direct access to some authoring functions
inside the rendered web pages to:
- Create new content items
- Perform inline editing of the content item displayed in a Web page.
- Delete the content item displayed in a Web page.
- Approve or reject the current content being previewed. These are only
visible to approvers who open a draft content item from a URL sent by an email
workflow action used in a workflow stage.
The River Bend Web site uses the authoring tool component for the
"Edit" and "New" functionality, see Figure 24
Figure 24 Authoring tool in the coffee site area
For more details on Authoring tool refer to section 4.1.1 In-line editing
Link component
A link component stores a link to a web content management item or to an
external web site.
In the River Bend web site, a link to the home page is created. See Figure
25
Figure 25 Link component in the General Presentation template
(31_25)
The link component links to an already existing item which is the site area
Home. By clicking on that link, it gets the user back to the home page.
Page Navigation Component
The page navigator provides the control to navigate between a set of pages
created as a result of a menu component, search component or a navigator
component.
A page navigation component provides the following options:
- Shuttle control related to current page. For example, next page, previous
page, go last, and go first
- Paging control. Showing an index for all the available pages or a
continuation link for the pages
- Jump to page, displaying a text box, where the user can enter the page
number if known beforehand
Refer to Figure 26 for the available options for the page navigation
component and the result in Figure 27
Figure 26 Page Navigation Options (31_26)
The following html could be added to the footer to display the current page
number and the total number of the pages.
Ex: Page 2 of 10
Page <PageInfo value="currentPage"/> of <PageInfo
value="unknownPages" knowntext=""
unknowntext=""/> <PageInfo value="totalPages"/>
Refer to 3.2.7.6-creating-the-page-
navigation-component for a complete example of the page navigation
Figure 27 Page navigation controls
Style sheet Component
The style-sheet component is used to store a cascading style-sheet file. Style
sheet components can not be referenced in authoring templates, sites, site
areas or contents
See
3.2.8-using-stylesheets for more information on using Style Sheet
components in WCM.