Brand New To Zoom... Basic Initial Question

[Ztrains]

Hi,

I've downloaded the free version just to see how well it works prior to going with a paid version. It looks great so far but I have what I'm sure is a pretty simple question.

BTW... I make CSS work (hunt and peck method) on my site, but really am a novice to it.

Question:
How exactly do I simply incorporate the search results page into my own template?

What I've done:
I took a standard template page design from my site (linked to my own external CSS), then saved that as the "search_template.html" page on my server, effectively overwriting the stock "search_template.html" page,

Now when I try to do a search... I get this:
http://tinyurl.com/4ca9g5

The bulk of the page looks good, as my own page template appears properly, but the search portion appears outside of all my table cells at the very bottom of the page.

I'm hoping this is a simple error on my part.

Any help greatly appreciated.

John

[David]

You can either add your code to our template file, or you can add some of our code to your existing template (you need to do the later). If you owverwrite our file, the code you need to add is the <!--ZOOMSEARCH--> tag and the Zoom CSS.

But I just looked at your site and it seems you have fixed the problem yourself.

The trick is the positioning of the <!--ZOOMSEARCH--> tag in the template file. This determines where the results appear (for example in your table).

The ZOOMSEARCH tag marks the place where your search form and search esults will be inserted when you run the search script. Also note that the ZOOMSEARCH tag should be on a seperate line of its own in the template file.

There is also a lot of details about CSS in the template here.

[Ztrains]

Ok...

I've opted to add your code to my page file... I'm making some progress but now have an odd problem that's making me a little crazy.

If you look here:
http://tinyurl.com/6c6hhu

Right under the search box on this page of results you will see:
"Search results for: abutment"

In Firefox this line of text is jammed right up under the search box, In Internet Explorer there is maybe a 100px (estimate) space between the search box and this line:
"Search results for: abutment"

The rest of the page renders similarly in both browsers. I know there are rendering differences between FF and IE, but not this much.

I still have work to do on the CSS generated by ZOOM to get the look I want, but I really need to figure this out first.

Thanks,
John

[David]

In the default template we supply we have this CSS,
.searchheading { font-size: 130%; font-weight: bold; padding-top: 10px; }

you have this CSS
.searchheading { font-weight: bold; font-size: 150% }

So if you put back the padding it should help I think. But I am not sure why there is such a large difference at the moment between the IE and Firefox layouts. Sometimes you just need to play around and experiment to see what works in all browsers.

[Ztrains]

I worked around that particular CSS issue for the moment, now I've got a brand new one...

I had worked the CSS so I liked the look, was working well on both IE and FF. I took a look at the recommended links option, and as soon as I tried to implement them... I'm almost back to where I was... the entire search page now appears outside of its table! I don't understand as it was fine 20 minutes ago... I have not touched my "search_template.html". I don't understand this at all.

[David]

I don't know what words you used recomended links for, so I can't test you page. They shouldn't make any difference to the layout of the page.

Also note that the ZOOMSEARCH tag should be on a seperate line of its own in the template file. So replace,
<td><!--ZOOMSEARCH--></td>
with
<td>
<!--ZOOMSEARCH-->
</td>

[Ztrains]

First off I appreciate the speed in which you reply to questions on this forum.

The issues I was having earlier were really odd, but I'm going to chalk some of this up to a little fatigue... been working too much, too late recently. I have things working fairly well now, I just added the Stop and Restart options to my components and they worked like a charm site wide to eliminate things like my menus, etc. from the search results.

I know I have some more questions coming up, but for now I have to go through my keywords on all pages and clean them up a bit (often I would use an existing page, Save As, then begin a new page forgetting to change the keywords... which Zoom picks up on.

John