Zoomsearch in Adobe Muse?

[Meryl]

Hi all,

I can't for the life of me figure out how to get the search results into an Adobe Muse site page. I would have to do a massive amount of styling search_template.html in order to make it fit the site style. I was hoping to find a way to embed the search results into a page, but I'm lost.

You can embed HTML into an Adobe Muse page, and add some things to the head, but I'm not sure how to combine Zoomsearch and Muse on the same page.

Any suggestions? Anyone else out there use Adobe Muse?

[Ray]

I'm not familiar with Adobe Muse (and frankly, it's not really known as a proper web site developing tool so much as an "instant site" utility -- to put another way, like a microwave dinner versus actual cooking).

But Zoom doesn't require much. We basically simply need to create a HTML page named "search_template.html" that has the HTML comment <!--ZOOMSEARCH--> in the page indicating where you want your search results to appear.

So first, check if Adobe Muse will allow you to "Export as HTML" or "Save as HTML".

Next, check if you can add a HTML comment.

Then create a page as you normally would, add the tag (in the HTML code! not as content):

<!--ZOOMSEARCH-->

In the part of the page where you want the results to appear.

Then save this page as "search_template.html". Then put this in the same folder as your search files.

Hope that helped you get looking in the right direction.

[Meryl]

Yeah, Muse is not that easy to place a search page out of its own directory. I couldn't reproduce all the scripts and CSS when I did that.

[Meryl]

Also, side issue: I added a logging function, realized I didn't want to deal with writing to a file on the server, and now no matter what I do Zoomsearch insists on thinking I want it to create a log on the server. How can I change this?

[David]

You can turn off logging (from the Advanced configuration window).

After making the change. The new setting will be picked up next time you re-index the site.

[Meryl]

New question: I'm trying to add Zoomsearch in an iframe. Here's the search form code:
<form method="get" action="search.asp" target="searchResults">

And here's the iframe code:
<iframe title="Search" name="searchResults" width="900" height="500" style="border: 0;"></iframe>

I'm getting a 500 server error. Instead of getting the results of a search, I'm getting search.asp in the iframe (and a 500 server error unless I run the page from the server itself).

I thought I was following the instructions properly, according to the help files: http://www.wrensoft.com/zoom/support...to.html#frames

The search results page is in a different directory from search.asp and the Zoomsearch files. Would that be the problem?

[Ray]

Can you give us the URL to the page in question so we can take a look? Hard to be sure what is happening from your description alone.

search.asp appearing in the iframe is a good sign. It is the same page that generates the results. The question is if the search query is being submitted to search.asp correctly (e.g. is the query variable named correctly for the search form, etc.)

[Meryl]

Unfortunately, I can't. It's on our internal LAN for testing. But if I'm on the right track, then it's just a matter of getting the code right. Here is the full code of the search button form:
<form method="get" action="search.asp" target="searchResults">
<table cellpadding="0px" cellspacing="0px">
<tr>
<td style="border-style:solid none solid solid;border-color:#4B7B9F;border-width:1px;">
<input type="text" name="zoom_query" style="width:150px; border:0px solid; height:17px; padding:0px 3px; position:relative;">
</td>
<td style="border-style:solid;border-color:#4B7B9F;border-width:1px;">
<input type="submit" value="" style="border-style: none; background: url('http://test.akimeka.com/images/searchbutton3.gif') no-repeat; width: 24px; height: 20px;">
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</form>

Using the Search Page tab, I selected "Frame or window" and entered searchResults (the name of the frame). Both settings.asp and search_template.html are in the zoomaspx directory. Do I need to add an absolute URL for the frame, perhaps?

[Meryl]

Got it. I was calling out search.asp incorrectly. Now to style the frame. Thanks!

Edited: ARGH! It only works on the test page with the frame. Everywhere else, ZoomSearch creates an entirely new search results page with no header/footer.

Question: Do I have to have a zoomaspx directory? Can I configure the files to be in the same directory as the rest of the pages? Right now, it's pulling search.asp out of the zoomaspx directory, and I have search_template.html in the main directory due to Muse not working well and playing with others when you move its pages.

[Meryl]

Ray, I'm not disagreeing with you about Muse. I needed to stand up a big, complicated site in a month, so I chose Muse as the tool to give the customer what they wanted in the timeframe they demanded. ZoomSearch might get a few new users if they created a Muse widget for your product. The only search widget available is outrageously expensive. I would have loved it if I could have used a ZoomSearch widget and not had to figure things out on my own.

[Ray]

Got it. I was calling out search.asp incorrectly. Now to style the frame. Thanks!

Edited: ARGH! It only works on the test page with the frame. Everywhere else, ZoomSearch creates an entirely new search results page with no header/footer.

It's not Zoom that is creating a new page, it's just that if you submit a query to "search.asp" directly, it doesn't know anything about your wrapper page with the IFRAME. When you targeted the previous search page within your IFRAME, you are sticking it into the frameset for that page only.

It sounds like what you want is for your IFRAME page (let's say "mysearch.html") to actually be capable of passing all parameters (e.g. zoom_query, zoom_per_page, etc.) along to the search.asp page within the iframe.

Then you can have search forms from your other pages to submit to your "mysearch.html" page, containing your header and footer and passing the query along to "search.asp" within the iframe.

As to whether or not Adobe Muse is capable of doing this -- I'm not sure. I spent 10 minutes looking around online but couldn't find anything on this.

Unfortunately, with most applications like Muse, as soon as you try to do something beyond the designed usage, things get much more difficult and obscure than a normal web development environment -- regardless of how simple the additional requirement is.

An alternative to avoid this issue is to not have a search form on your other pages (where users can type into a box and hit "Search") as nice as this would be. But, instead, just have a "Search" button that takes them to your wrapper page with the IFRAME to the search box. Then they can enter in the search query. It would save you the hassle of working out the rest of the above.

Question: Do I have to have a zoomaspx directory? Can I configure the files to be in the same directory as the rest of the pages? Right now, it's pulling search.asp out of the zoomaspx directory, and I have search_template.html in the main directory due to Muse not working well and playing with others when you move its pages.

I think there's some confusion here.

"zoomaspx" is a directory name used in the ASP.NET Server Control installation process.

You have so far been referring to "search.asp", which is an ASP (also known as "Classic ASP") script.

ASP (aka Classic ASP) is NOT the same as ASP.NET (aka ASPX). They are very different platforms. Blame Microsoft for the terribly misleading naming.

You do not need to have a "zoomaspx" directory if you are using Classic ASP. The only requirement is for the "Required Files" listed at the end of indexing (search.asp, settings.asp, search_template.html, and all the *.zdat files) to be placed in the same folder as each other.

So if you have search_template.html in the main directory, you can just as easily have the rest of those files in the main directory as well, for simplicity's sake.

[Ray]

Ray, I'm not disagreeing with you about Muse. I needed to stand up a big, complicated site in a month, so I chose Muse as the tool to give the customer what they wanted in the timeframe they demanded. ZoomSearch might get a few new users if they created a Muse widget for your product. The only search widget available is outrageously expensive. I would have loved it if I could have used a ZoomSearch widget and not had to figure things out on my own.

We would consider making an Adobe Muse widget if there is more user demand. At this point, you are the first Muse user we have heard from.

Unfortunately there are hundreds of new development tools and platforms popping up every few months. For us to develop custom support for each one (regardless of their popularity) would work out at a loss for us, as more often than not, new platforms come out and then get abandoned within 6 months by the developer themselves (regardless if it's Adobe or Microsoft or Apple).

We've been developing Zoom for over 11 years so we've seen many different platforms come and go. We've always listened to the users, so if you know of more than a few Muse users that would want something like this, get them to chime in.

[Meryl]

Thank you, I think you've helped me realize a few of the things I'm doing wrong. I did originally set it for asp.net and then changed to regular asp.

Don't get me wrong, the search works perfectly pretty much every time. It's just that my customer wants it to meld with their pages and Muse makes it a lot more difficult to do that.

[Meryl]

One last comment: Everything is working fine. Muse doesn't have the issues I thought it had. I screwed up a few things. Okay, I screwed up a LOT. After going in circles for the past week or so, I put the files in the correct directory, put the form in the header (HTML header) and the ZOOMSEARCH comment callout in the body of search_template.html.

Everything works perfectly. Thanks for all your help, and I'm a bit embarrassed to realize that I've essentially been running in circles. A colleague created a directory called "zoomaspx" for me and placed the Zoomsearch files in it, and I mistakenly thought that was what I needed to do.

The upshot: Zoomsearch works just fine in Adobe Muse, and I'm a bit of an idiot.

That said, your product is great and I will absolutely recommend it to my friends in the Muse forums.

[Ray]

Glad to hear ... at least the part about Zoom working, not so much the other parts which are a bit hard on yourself. Lots of Muse can be confusing I'm sure, as is the world of ASP and differences with ASPX, etc.

But glad to hear that the original approach appears to work with Muse and hopefully this will save other people from going down the wrong path.