Customizing "Refine your search by category"?

[MergeThis]

Many of our searches will return up to a few dozen categories with results, so the default "Refine your search by category" single bulleted list will usually take up too much vertical space. Therefore, I'd like to be able to customize:

• The location of the "Refine your search by category" block (in an upper-right corner <div>?)
• The list layout (2-3 columns?)
• The look of the list elements (no bullets?)

Actually, the "inline" zoom_categories example that you show in the help is what I think would work for me (multiple category...list to be horizontal without list bullets), such as:

Trading (2) System Diagnostics (4) User Administration (1) etc.

If there's no current workaround, please add this to the wish list.


Thx,
Leon

[Ray]

This is all achieved via CSS.

Please see this FAQ:
http://www.wrensoft.com/zoom/support/css.html

Both the category summary ("Refine your search by category: ...") and the category checkbox list are marked up as <UL> and <LI> items. Their appearance (whether bulleted or not, and whether listed an item per line, or inline) are all controlled via CSS in the same way.

In fact, I believe what you are asking for is the way we have the search setup here on our very website (wrensoft.com). If you goto the top right corner and search for "zoom", you should find the category summary as you describe. Right click and select "View source" and have a look at our CSS. You'll see the following:

  .cat_summary ul { margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline; }
  .cat_summary li { display: inline; margin-left: 15px; list-style-type: none; }

Refer to other online sources and tutorials for more information on CSS properties you can specify and change.

[MergeThis]

Ahhh, I see the cat_summary class listing in the help, now.

What threw me was that the only class listing in the JavaScript default search.html was the zoom_categories class, which of course is only used to replace the Category drop-down.

Well, I've got work to do!


Thx,
Leon

[MergeThis]

OK, that's working (I switched to customizing the search.html with the FormStart & FormEnd calls, for better control).

Now, how do I get the user from a "Refined" page back to the "All" page without having to give them instructions on switching the drop-down back to All and clicking the Submit button? (The "javascript: history.go(-1)" you suggested in another post doesn't work in this environment. The browser doesn't seem to recognize these Zoom pages; that is, you are sent back to the page prior to the opening of the search page.)


Thx,
Leon

[Ray]

What threw me was that the only class listing in the JavaScript default search.html was the zoom_categories class, which of course is only used to replace the Category drop-down.

It should have been in the default "search.html" file, but if you had carried across a template based on an older version of Zoom (before we added the category summary) then it would certainly be missing.

Now, how do I get the user from a "Refined" page back to the "All" page without having to give them instructions on switching the drop-down back to All and clicking the Submit button? (The "javascript: history.go(-1)" you suggested in another post doesn't work in this environment. The browser doesn't seem to recognize these Zoom pages; that is, you are sent back to the page prior to the opening of the search page.)

Yes, "history.go" won't work here because Javascript doesn't treat each submitted query as a page.

Ultimately, it is up to the end user to realize they have selected a category, and the dropdowns should reflect that. I'm not sure what you are exactly hoping for.

Having said that, in the PHP/ASP/CGI versions, there is an additional suggestion that occurs when there are less than 3 results found and a category has been selected. This tells them that "You can possibly get more results searching for all categories" where the underlined is a link to submit the same query with "All" categories selected. We should add this to the JS version, it seems to have been accidentally omitted (and nobody ever asked for it). But note that this doesn't appear unless there are less than 3 matches. Would this be sufficient for what you are after?

[MergeThis]

Yes, Ray, it was brought over from a V5 configuration.

As to the Category issue, we're using the Category to identify each of 42 separate RoboHelp projects in a merged WebHelp system. If the user chooses to refine by one category and realizes that's the wrong one, I would like to easily send the user back to the original search results page, on which the user could choose another category.

If not, I'll add some text to explain it in the "Category" drop-down that describes the Category function.


Thx,
Leon