[quote name='Spylon']Cornelius, I am happy to create tools that are useful, but I am not quite sure what you mean by this? Can you add more details?
- I think you want a form on the current deals or unidentified deals page where you can check offers and then get code only for those offers?
- What I can do quickly is make each offer have it's own code snippet and you can copy paste one at a time?
Remember the tables are sortable so you may be able to group things for easy copying. After this I could try and write some JavaScript that does the first one, grabbing each snippet and making one list.
I can do server side PHP but client side JavaScript is new so it would take some time to ramp up, it is something I need to learn thou.[/QUOTE]
#2 is definitely more what I was thinking, since it's less work for you, and leaves the person completing the form in control of what goes into the blanks.
Here's my basic thoughts on the form:
- Heading text field, 3 checkboxes, and a 2nd text field afterwards:
- The 1st field is to type the list heading, such as "9/25 - 10/1 ... Marvel-ous Sale!" for example.
- The checkboxes are provided to enable any or all of bold/underline/italic. When the form is compiled, the formatting tags are simply added before & after the heading string.
- The 2nd text field is for a color string. I'd say leave it open & not validated, rather than screen for 6-digit hex, so that users can still enter a string like "white", "gold", "lime", etc.
- List of many rows of 10 text fields (5 pairs). The user enters the URL in the left field of the pair, and then the string in the right pair. In our current format within the OP, it would be:
- game URL
- game title
- (optional) price in points (optionally including a USD$-converted value)
- (optional) % off[/color]
- xbldb URL
- "xbldb"
- Metacritic/review URL
- "Metacritic(XX)" or something like "EastX review"
- Quick Look / YouTube URL
- "Quick Look" or "Trailer" or whatever.
- At the end of each row of text fields, you might include a checkbox to include a footnote, since so many deals now have restrictions, notes, info, etc. After the checkbox, include 2 more text boxes:
- 1 text field for footnote symbol
- 1 text field for color, and like the heading string, don't need to parse for valid values.
- At the very end, include room for 1 footnote as 3 text fields:
- 1 text field for footnote symbol
- 1 text field for color
- 1 text field for the footnote itself.
- And when the user hits "Create!", it will produce the header text at the top, followed by a bulleted list of the rows, and optionally the footnote at the end.
If any rows or URL/string pairs are left blank, then simply skip the rest of the fields & stop parsing the row from there (except for the footnote, I guess). Use simple hyphens (-) to separate items, without worrying about the
italics we're using in some of the items.
As a Program Manager, I really like simplicity in design, and don't try to overthink or constrain the user. Using this method, we would be able to reproduce just about everything in the OP by repeatedly filling out the form for each section. The key here is to simplify the creation of the items, and if someone wants to get fancy with other formatting (like size, picture, more text), they can manually add those features. For now, let the user filling out the form generate their own URL's, because what takes a surprising amount of time is having to enter 4 URL's with their text, along with the bullets, and hoping that your footnote didn't leave a color or
BOLD mistakenly enabled.
What do you think? I'm frankly happy for anything, and would even spit out a form of my own, but if someone has a "standard" form to complete, then we can make this available for everyone.