Would this component be possible?

asked 2006-05-07 02:49:23 +0800

admin
18691 ● 1 ● 10 ● 130

Orignial message at:
https://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=3717303

By: mrhatken

Howdy All,

ZK looks like a fantastic framework - congratulations to all those involved in developing it! I am currently considering ZK for a future project - I am reading through the documentation and forums, but I have one specific question that would be good to find an answer for sooner rather than later (e.g. after we have started the project ...)

I wonder if any of you more experienced developers here could please give me an indication as to whether or not it would be possible to develop the following component using the ZK framework. I don't anticipate it being easy, quite the opposite, but just practically speaking would it be possible to build such a component and for it to work well enough?

I would like a component that can render basic XHTML (or more specifically, basic XHTML with inline CSS code). I would like to think of the XHTML as a series of CSS boxes (probably <P> with CSS specifications, mostly inline but some positioned absolutely etc. No headers, no tables, etc. I'm not thinking the display would be too much of a problem for a component.

However, I would like the Web content to now be directly editable, e.g. double clicking on a <P> CSS box (inline or absolutely positioned) would make that text content editable. When editing was finished and the CSS box lost focus then an event would be sent to the server for synchronisation of the changes with the server-side model.

To even go further, I would like to be able to drag-and-drop the inline CSS <P> boxes within and to other in-line content, and move the absolutely positioned CSS boxes. Again when focus was lost from the particular item, an event would be sent to the server for synchronisation of the changes (e.g. move the content or update the absolute positioning of the box).

In some sense, this would be like a simple layout editor (although, as I mentioned, I don't think I will need tables or other layout constructs - I just want a series of inline or absolutely positioned <P> CSS boxes). I guess some of the rich client-side Ajax editing tools allow something like what I have specified (at least wrt the direct editing/styling of content).

I hope what I have suggested is understandable, although I am not sure it is technically correct or even sensible, but for now I would just like to know if it would be possible. I guess it may need some extra client-side (Javascript) code but, of course, the less of that the better. Of course, if something like this already exists that would even be better ;-)

Thanks in advance,
Ashley.

--
Ashley Aitken
mrhatken at mac dot com
Perth, Western Australia