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Monday 06 March 2006 5:58:42 pm
First, hello to all :) I've been circling around eZ publish for a while (yeah, like sharks circle around a potential prey ;)) as I'm trying to define the best suited CMS for a website I'm building.
Having toyed a bit with the two, *tried* to read as much as I could about the two solutions, I'm going to choose eZ publish over typo3 for various reasons.
<b>Feel free to skip those paragraphs an head directly to my question (hint: <CTRL+F> "my question")</b>
Those reasons include :
- an apparent lower learning curve - typoscript didn't helped- ;
- a far more intuitive admin interface for computer semi-illiterate (understand : non-developers) AND for the developer/technical admin (understand : me) ;
- a somehow more evident content management system (versioning) ;
- built-in multilingual content management ;
- some nice features : full xml storage (well, I didn't had a look at my MySQL yet to know if it was true :)), the RAD link in setup (I must admit I was impressed :)).
- "killing-app" : "define your content type yourself". Some lower points though, and among them, the ability to easily add highly structured content step-by-step (like in typo : "text with image on the right", "bullet list" etc... Still, I know I'm far from mastering the core of the systems, what I read about the overrides and what I saw from the template ressemble closely to the type of dynamic web sites I'm used to design (ie smarty based). <b>So here's my question</b> (at last) : is there a simple way to set up a "liquid" design with an alternate 2 columns / 3 columns display according to a precise context ?
For instance : on the homepage of the website (fixed width design), I'll need a 3-col design : the header with toolbars, 1 left column with pics or small text panels, 1 main column with various "news" items, 1 right columns with shortcuts to other pages (as it's already available as the "right toolbar").
On another internal page, I'll have to display a big image map (geo map) with dynamic data, so I'll need the "left + center" space to display my content (fixed width design).
Is it possible/simple :
1) to "create" a toolbar out of nothing : hence my "left toolbar" ?
2) to similarly bind this toolbar to display different content according to the node I'm in (and the answer should be "yes" as it is possible with the right toolbar) ?
3) to perform at some stage a conditional switch of page layout between the 2-col or 3-col layout ? Thanks for any guidance/help/"been there, done that"
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