Add Search Bar to Home Page in Tri-Pane?

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DougieChimes
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Add Search Bar to Home Page in Tri-Pane?

Post by DougieChimes »

Hello,

I've been trying, without success (and using David Lee's tutorial), to move the Search Bar to the center of the header in the Tri-Pane skin.

After working on this for hours - I have another question:

Can I add a Search Bar to my Home Page, like in TopNav, but in Tri-Pane?

This would also solve my issue.

Thanks in advance!
NorthEast
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Re: Add Search Bar to Home Page in Tri-Pane?

Post by NorthEast »

It's absolutely positioned, and defaults to something like {right: 14px}, so you really just need to mess around with the left and right properties; e.g.

Code: Select all

.search-bar { right: 35%; }
kwag_myers
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Re: Add Search Bar to Home Page in Tri-Pane?

Post by kwag_myers »

DougieChimes wrote: Can I add a Search Bar to my Home Page, like in TopNav, but in Tri-Pane?
Yes. You can insert a Search Bar Proxy in either the Topic or Master Page and set the properties for MadCap|searchBarProxy in the CSS. I use the Master Page for my topics so the Search Bar is available in the header of every page.
"I'm tryin' to think, but nothin' happens!" - Curly Joe Howard
NorthEast
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Re: Add Search Bar to Home Page in Tri-Pane?

Post by NorthEast »

kwag_myers wrote:
DougieChimes wrote: Can I add a Search Bar to my Home Page, like in TopNav, but in Tri-Pane?
Yes. You can insert a Search Bar Proxy in either the Topic or Master Page and set the properties for MadCap|searchBarProxy in the CSS. I use the Master Page for my topics so the Search Bar is available in the header of every page.
No, you can't use a search bar proxy in a tripane skin - it only works for the top nav skin (or no skin at all).

It's in the help: http://webhelp.madcapsoftware.com/flare ... ht=tripane
DougieChimes
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Re: Add Search Bar to Home Page in Tri-Pane?

Post by DougieChimes »

Dave Lee wrote:
No, you can't use a search bar proxy in a tripane skin - it only works for the top nav skin (or no skin at all).

It's in the help: http://webhelp.madcapsoftware.com/flare ... ht=tripane
OK - Dave Lee - the link you have above - that's exactly what I need! (The skin, at least.) I need a big central search bar, and I still need the side menu. That link is the exact layout I need.

What is it? Is that a topnav with a side menu added? How do I get that? Is that tripane with a custom search bar?
NorthEast
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Re: Add Search Bar to Home Page in Tri-Pane?

Post by NorthEast »

DougieChimes wrote:
Dave Lee wrote:
No, you can't use a search bar proxy in a tripane skin - it only works for the top nav skin (or no skin at all).

It's in the help: http://webhelp.madcapsoftware.com/flare ... ht=tripane
OK - Dave Lee - the link you have above - that's exactly what I need! (The skin, at least.) I need a big central search bar, and I still need the side menu. That link is the exact layout I need.

What is it? Is that a topnav with a side menu added? How do I get that? Is that tripane with a custom search bar?
That is the top nav skin: http://webhelp.madcapsoftware.com/flare12/Default.htm
The menu at the side is a menu proxy.

That template used by Flare's help is provided with Flare - have a look at the supplied top nav templates.


Tripane looks like this: http://webhelp.madcapsoftware.com/flare10/Default.htm
DougieChimes
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Re: Add Search Bar to Home Page in Tri-Pane?

Post by DougieChimes »

David Lee - Thank you!

You helped solve my dilemma. I'm now switching over to top nav. Spent too much time trying to get tripane to look and act like topnav, when I should have just converted.

Thanks again.
jobo
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Re: Add Search Bar to Home Page in Tri-Pane?

Post by jobo »

Can you call/use/enable a different search engine instead of the default Flare search engine for TopNav (but still use the pretty-looking GUI)?
John
NorthEast
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Re: Add Search Bar to Home Page in Tri-Pane?

Post by NorthEast »

jobo wrote:Can you call/use/enable a different search engine instead of the default Flare search engine for TopNav (but still use the pretty-looking GUI)?
Flare only provides one search engine, and there's nothing built-in which allows you to connect Flare's GUI to a third-party search engine.

You can use a third-party search engine, e.g. Google Custom Search, but the GUI will be whatever is provided/possible with that.
JvdB
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Re: Add Search Bar to Home Page in Tri-Pane?

Post by JvdB »

Dave Lee wrote:ou can use a third-party search engine, e.g. Google Custom Search, but the GUI will be whatever is provided/possible with that.
Does anyone know how I would go about using/embedding a 3rd party search engine into a Flare project? I am particularly interested in Apache Solr (mostly because it's open source :) ).

We have an issue where legacy products currently only exist in PDF format, which we display on our top-nav help as links. (We have a Resources/Files folder where all PDFs exist, but also have links to these files within a Resources topic, amongst other places.) The content in these files was created before my time, and we haven't had a chance to pull it all into Flare yet. We're also expecting a replacement product in about 6 months' time (it's currently in development) so the current thinking is to document the new stuff only (which isn't available yet).

In the meantime, Flare's search engine doesn't pick up the PDFs, let alone search the text within them. We can't use the IIS workaround, as our site is hosted on an Amazon S3 server.

And I have had two people contact me this week in frustration because they can't find what they're looking for (even though the information exists within the project, just not as XML).

Any thoughts?
JvdB
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Re: Add Search Bar to Home Page in Tri-Pane?

Post by JvdB »

bump! Surely someone out there has experience with this? :?:
NorthEast
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Re: Add Search Bar to Home Page in Tri-Pane?

Post by NorthEast »

You'd integrate it with Flare in the same way as a regular website.

As mentioned though, Flare doesn't have the facility to connect the search box in its skin to a 3rd party search engine (just the different engines supported by Flare).

If you wanted the search box for your 3rd party engine in the skin/header area, then it's fairly easy to add a small script to move it there and replace the existing search box.
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