[Zope] Zope site's sidebar

Craig B. Allen cba@mediaone.net
Sun, 11 Apr 1999 23:38:32 -0400


I'm just an aspiring Zopester, but maybe can shed some light.  I expect
the wizards can set straight any misinformation I propagate...  I was
very glad for the link you cited, as the Zope documentation, though
copious, leave some gaps in terms of examples.

> One is the sidebar on the zope site, it is the menu and News column that
> runs down the left hand side. What is a sidebar_contents, is it a object
> type, a folder, or something else?

I'd say it's a method that returns a list, maybe from an internal or
external data store.
You can look at something here:
http://www.zope.org/dtml_source?path=/sidebar_contents&pp=1 but in Zope
it's hard for me to be sure whether stuff is real or virtual.  Anyway,
sidebar_contents seems to do something like I've been trying to
implement on my pages: display 'sibling' links but show the current page
NOT as a link.

> Also what is a sequence-item, is it value stored in a sidebar_contents?

Sequence-item is a byproduct of the <!--#in foo--> tag processing, and
indicates which of the iterations of the list is current.

> The second thing that I had a question about was the navbar that runs
> across the top of each page. Is that a static element stored in the
> highest folder of the different sections or dynamicly created?

You can look at the code for the navbar using
http://www.zope.org/dtml_source?path=/pathlinks&pp=1 which I discovered
after following the link you provided to the sidebar code.  My python
skills are as yet almost nonexistent so the meaning of the code I can
only guess at, but I'd say it is generated dynamically.

So, folks, how can we get more code and commentary posted for beginners
like me?