Heya Gavin!
I don't have all the answers to your questions as I've been pretty focused in my testing of Fab 2 for a specific project, but I'll give a shot to what I can answer... I'm sure Hugh will blow though with better answers, but maybe this'll save him some typing
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I will say that Fab 2 has a fantastically extensible setup and it's looking very likely that anything you run up against a wall on can be worked around by Rob/Hugh. There's nothing like it out there, it's like a RAD (Rapid Application Development) tool for Joomla. The flexibility of the tool is amazing, and it's only going to get better and better with the new plugin system that Rob has implemented.
If you're willing to work with this for a bit and go back and forth on the subscriber support forum threads you can probably get it to do *almost* anything you need.
1. Can results show the name of the element?
(ie LOCATION: Shrewsbury)
1. Yes. In fact if you enable the right settings you can use the wysiwyg to specify an html snippet to display as the element lable, so it could be something like:
Location: ::image of Shrewsbury town seal:: Shrewsbury:
2. Can a result show an image?
(ie if I click on a HONDA checkbox then a pre-assigned HONDA logo comes up in the results)
2. Yes. You can even have the image (or a thumb? I think hugh updated the thumbs system for Fab 2) show up in both form and table view. I'm pretty sure that could be tied in with the checkbox element, via scripting if nothing else.
3. Can sections of the table be show in different places on the page
(ie story in middle div, name and date in left div and additional info/downloads in right div)
3. This would probably need some custom template work, but the nice thing is that the templates are pretty stright forward and it's easy to specify individual templates for individual forms/views.
4. I am the only one who will input data to build the site - is this always done at the front end?
4. No, you can enter data though the backend either via CSV import or by going to Forrms, clicking the "View Data" then picking "add listing".
5. Of my three groups (story, additional info, downloads)...the downloads section is very inconsistent...sometimes I will have 30 pdfs, 20 jpegs...other times nothign at all - can you see a problem in this?
Unless I'm reading that wrong, I can't see why it would be a problem?
6. Can the 'tables' produced be 'tableless' in regards to the coding?...can I have control over how the page looks 100% with css? This is really important to me - can anyone let me know?
Good question. From what I understand that's doable, and IIRC the templates are actually all done in divs rather than tables. You can specify CSS individually for each group, and as mentioned above you can customize templates on an individual basis. Now in the default layout, the elements will all be in a single column, but I'm sure you can work around that if you're willing to put in enough work. It's also quite likely that there are improvements on the list for post stable release Fab 2 that would make flexible layout placement a lot easier.
7. Can I implement a search where viewers can search on elements...ie search by date, number of 1st places, bike etc?
I think so?
8. Although I am using the same 3 groups across all meetings within all years...I am guessing I will need to reproduce a copy of the table for every year because the LINK TO MENU will be different?
Not absolutely sure about this one, but I'm *guessing* that you could have just one table and use different forms that share/are based on that table?
Again, I'm just a happy customer with big goals but a less than sufficient grasp of php/MySQL to make them happen directly
, so I'd wait to hear from Hugh/Rob, but that's my top-of-head responses.
James and Susan
