It would be neat if Mambo could have a feature that lets the user choose between several different "Layout templates" similar to the ones offered in PowerPoint (yes, I do refer to Bills presentation program) or Typo3.

What I mean by Layout template is:
A visual icon that shows the general layout of a page. Such as: 3 columns with pictures throughout. Or 2 colums with 1 image at the end. Or 1 column with 1 picture in the left upper corner...

When creating a new page, the user should be allowed to click on one of those layouts (and be allowed to create his own ones) so the page will appear accordingly.

May be some tools appear that are needed to create a page with that layout, too.

That would make Mambo even easier as users could simply choose a layout visually and then enter the text/images/videos/files...

What do you think?

Thanks

Matt


P.S. I posted this at http://forum.mamboserver.com/showthread.php?t=61595 previously but I guess it applies to Joomla just as much. Lets see who implements this feature first... :-)

When I'm not totally mistaken, this is allready possible and was at some point in a template of Mambo. Its probably a bit different than you think of it, but you could make 3 templates with the same stuff, but with your changes and give the user the possibility to change the template to the design he likes. To give them a ruff review you could edit the thumbnail picture that it looks like your three columns or what ever you like.

Basically this features is already present in Joomla, u can add different templates to different menu items and when present the template pictures give u an idea how the template will look like.

As far as I can see, the feature I describes is not available yet.
I do know that it is possible to assign different templates to different sections or pages. But this is not exactly what I mean.

What I mean has nothing to do with the design template that can be chosen e.g. through the template chooser or the admin menus.

What I described was a feature for content authors: they enter their text, images... and then click on a button which shows different page layouts (e.g. newspaper style with 3 colums) and saves the setting. Then the content of this page (and only this page) will be displayed accordingly.
The template stays the same
The design stays the same
The menu stays the same
The general layout (left menu column, right somethingelse column, center content panel) stays the same

The only difference is that the content of this single page will be displayed in the content pane according to the layout settings chosen by the page author (e.g. as 3 colums like a newspaper)
And this should be done without the need to use any admin function (such as assigning a different template to a page)

Not sure if I make sense. I could draw an explanation if that helps.

Ok, this was some misunderstanding. At the moment this is not possible and I think this is tricky to do, but I do ask myself why you would want such a function. It would, to a degree, destroy your consistent layout. When you have a few pages in 3 columns, others with only two and such stuff, it wont look consistent.
I do understand your idea, but I doubt it will be usefull.
Hackwar

I second Hackwar here. Such a feature is very hard to create and will destroy consistency. The goal of a CMS is just to try and provide the consistency for you by seperating the different tasks.

Can we close down this feature request ?

I would not like to see this suggestion go down. While the 1-colum, 2-column layouts might not be the best idea in terms of consistency, the general idea of "content layout templates" (if we can call it that) is very interesting and something that would make life easier for a lot of people.

Imagine an online magazine where lots of people contribute. Many may not be technical experts but they write damn good articles. So, if you had content layout templates, you could make it easy for them to

- put pictures on a certain position
- put additional links in a box that always resides below the article body
- put author info in a box that always resides beside the article body, etc.

... without the need to fiddle around with the inner workings of the editor, without troubles in having the text flow correctly around an image that needs to be positioned with right alignment, and so on.

That, in my eyes, would lead to *more* consistency throughout the site. And isn't this exact issue what Andrew lined out in this thread? You were quite in favour of the concept yourself then, Jinx.

Maybe I misunderstood the request the above poster made - if so, I apologize. But the idea of content layout templates surely is a very interesting one.

Kind regards,
Zorro

patTemplates.
Already in the next version, if no changes were made..?!
You'll be able to lay out content as you see fit, only thing missing is an admin component to help creating a few basic layouts with reserved spots for intro, main, and media (a bit like Dreamweavers "editable regions"..), and for the authors the possibility either to select one if so allowed by admin/manager/publisher for the category, or to get a visual preview of the final output with the admin chosen template.

Ah yes. Glad to hear that. From reading Jinx' reply I got the impression that things were turning out differently than planned. Thanks Joe.

Kind regards,
Zorro

Sorry if u got that impression. Things are still going as planned. We have added patTemplate to 1.0.x already to allow 3P developers to learn the API and play with it. Joomla will move it's complete core output to templates as outlined on the roadmap. We will further outline the details of the roadmap in the coming weeks.

As for the for the content layout templates, we are playing with the idea to have something like a 'layout'. A layout would be a special patTemplate file that defines the layout of a certain content item as u described. It would define blocks to render the content of other templates into.

Hi,

I found a link to this thread on http://www.nitsche.org/.

If you use the MosCE Editor, then you will have the opportunity to use editor templates.
I have not tested this function yet - but I suppose that this feature can help you?!