Matchbox RC2

[eluser]esra[/eluser]
I got a couple of emails with questions from people who wanted to see what the Complex layout looked like and about the code in the partials. Below is a link to the EXT JS page where the sample is shown.

http://extjs.com/deploy/dev/examples/lay...mplex.html

The partials are simple to duplicate. Just download a copy of EXT JS 2.0 from here. It's currently in the release candidate stage, but the final version should be available shortly (slipped a bit in schedule). Look in the examples directory under layout/ for the Complex example. You can cut and paste the div containers for each partial into the view files West.php, North.php, South.php, East.php, Center1.php, and Center2.php. The Viewlibrary handles the loading of the partials but EXT JS handles the presentation.

The components directory structure for West is as follows:

Code:

components/west/controllers/
components/west/models/
components/west/views/west.php

West would be stored in components/west/views/west.php and North, South, and East are stored in other directories using the same naming convention. Center1 and Center2 are tab panels. They are stored in modulename/views/. Additional tab panels could be created for west, east and center by modifying or creating new files and modifying the javascript to load those files. Also note that Center1 and Center2 could have been a single file with multiple tabs.

Where I was originally headed with the MVC code was to transparently load a controller from the view method in MY_Loader.php from the corresponding controller directory for East, West, North, or South. In the case of the Complex layout example, these four components should be considered containers for loading other components defined in an ini file. Maybe someone else can follow through with that approach for PHP4/PHP5. I'm using an entirely different approach in my own project, but need to return at a later date to add the above mentioned functionality to the MVC architecture for my current project.

Where I'm headed with my current project is to use the EXT JS Desktop layout which is progressively becoming an actual windowing environment based on EXT JS user contributions. The desktop layout would be used for Admin only, and alternate templates would be used for the frontend. There are actually several of these contributions in the works and some mimic OSX and Unix windowing environments. Keep in mind that these are implemented as reusable templates and the templates are themeable (i.e., the color schemes and graphics in the templates can be changed based on themes). A sample contribution by mxracer is here:

http://qwikioffice.com/desktop-demo/login.html

Just click the login button using the sample user credentials to see a sample desktop for the quikioffice application by mxracer. You could imagine the windows loaded from the Start menu in this sample as Matchbox modules but in our case, the modules would have the characteristics of an application because of the Matchbox directory structure with optional subdirectories. Windows can be minimized, maximized, dragged and dropped, etc. Thus a Matchbox module, or rather Matchbox application, could have modules of its own based on whatever controller is loaded in the controller url segment.

EDIT: for the South partial, use the following if you want to display the page rendering time.

Code:

<div id="south"><p>South Panel<br /><br />Page rendered in {elapsed_time} seconds</p></div>