s CREATING YOUR OWN TEMPLATES in Visual Basic .NET

Generator Code 39 Extended in Visual Basic .NET s CREATING YOUR OWN TEMPLATES

Written in Java, jEdit (www.jedit.org) is a powerful open source program editor that is available for all platforms that can execute Java. Although jEdit itself is loaded with features, it is the thriving development community, which frequently releases industrial-grade plug-ins, that makes jEdit one of the strongest editors available. Extremely useful to Joomla developers, there are plug-ins for the following tasks (and many more): CSS editing PHP syntax checking Color-coded, side-by-side, file differencing In-program FTP uploading Beautifying code formatting

Tabbed open file access (like Firefox) PHP parsing XML formatting For most basic PHP work, I use jEdit because of its numerous features and plug-ins. In Figure 6-18, you can see the default Joomla template style sheet loaded into jEdit. In the figure, the style sheet plug-in is displaying the properties of the currently selected div#logo style, which can be edited with drop-down menu selections.

Figure 6-18. One of the exceptional features of jEdit is the variety of plug-ins, such as this CSS editor.

jEdit has two primary drawbacks for Joomla development: Having been written in Java, it can run on any platform, but many times I ve encountered slowdown problems that were not readily explainable. I ve noticed this same effect with other Java programs, and I m not expert enough on the phenomenon to make a guess as to the root cause. Its reliance on plug-ins means that some features are not handled as well as they could be. Some functions, such as XML handling, are handled clumsily by the plug-in, while other text editors (such as UltraEdit) handle them natively and elegantly. These complaints are minor, however, compared to the power and versatility offered by this application.

You were first introduced to the Leo (Literate Editor with Outlines) tool in 4, where you saw how to use it for planning the Joomla site structure. Leo is actually much more powerful than just an outlining tool. In fact, it can be used as a combined development and documentation system. Leo has complete capabilities for hosting source code (with full syntax highlighting) and also linking to external files to break them into virtual outlines. For a simple example, let s say you were trying to develop a complex HTML web page. In an editor like jEdit, you would simply load the file into the editor and proceed with editing. However, what if the source code file were 20 pages long Although not realistic for an HTML page, long files are not uncommon in complex PHP projects, especially ones that contain client-side JavaScript code. For a long HTML page, it might be useful to divide the file into various parts, such as header, scripts, column1, column2, column3, and footer. In Leo, you can virtually break a file into just this sort of organization. Figure 6-19 shows a sample of such an implementation. I ve taken a Joomla template and divided the file into outline headings, which are called sections. The arrows in the figure show the sections in the outline and their associated references in the code pane: The code begins with a section reference to << License >>. In the outline, I ve drawn an arrow to point to the node that actually holds the License section. Any text held in the body of that node is inserted into the file when it is saved!

Figure 6-19. Leo can break a file into virtual sections for complete file organization. << header >> is another section. Clicking that section node of the outline will display the content held in that section, as shown in Figure 6-20. Only the header code is shown in the code pane. That allows you to focus on editing a particular section of a long file and organize it in the manner that makes the most sense. Below the header section in the outline is the << body >> section. The body section is further divided into other sections that appear as child nodes. You may begin to see the power of using Leo to organize a development project. However, this example barely scratches the surface. You may have noticed that the example shows only a single file reference. In fact, all the files of the project can be held in the outline for complete project construction and management. Furthermore, any nodes that are placed in the outline, yet begin with the @ignore directive, will not be stored in the output files. That means you can place complete documentation within the outline without it interfering with the code.