[TYPO3-core] Q: change in flexform display?

[Dmitry Dulepov [typo3]]

Hi!

Kasper Skårhøj wrote:
> Yes, it was me who changed it. In fact, changing this part is not 
> critical for my main work on flexforms which was on DHTML features. So 
> we could restore the old look as an option. Of if the majority of you 
> wants the old look as default the new one can be the option. Feel free 
> to implement that. The new look has at least the advantage that it is 
> not table based. In fact, this was the reason why I changed it, to get 
> rid of tables and using <div> instead. Necessary for nice nesting.
> 
> However, I believe we should work with Jens Hoffman and Benjamin Mack on 
> improving the options for display. Here are my main ideas (attached image):
> 
> a) That fields can be listed side-by-side. Like "Movie title" and "Movie 
> poster image" below. We can imagine that subsequent fields are just 
> "floats" like this - or that they are positioned with some absolute 
> numbers. I don't know.
> b) that items (like "Basic row") could be set up in a sort of "table 
> row" fashion. WIth the new dynamic of flexforms this view could be 
> highly effective way of making tables!

I like the idea :) So layout should be defined in some way. Similar technique exists now in templavoila, where admin user can define how Page module lays out content blocks. May be we should make it generic for flexforms, not just tv-specific.

It is difficult to me to imagine how we can back old look without tables. CSS floats are not flexible enough to automatically adjust its width to label content. One solution is to remove hard-coded rendering of flexforms from TCEforms at all and make three special rendering classes: one abstract and two real. User may define what rendering he wants by including a new tag into <meta>. Then TCEforms instantiates corresponding renderer and does rendering. This way we can have lots of renderers, even experimental ones (like the one you described above) whithout loosing previous looks. We just plug them in and they can be used.

What do you think about idea with flexform renderers?

-- 
Dmitry Dulepov
TYPO3 freelancer / TYPO3 core team member
Web: http://typo3bloke.net/
Skype: callto:liels_bugs