Modifying Exhibit Builder drag-and-drop Item browse pane.

Hi all,

I have a problem with Exhibit Builder in that I have the same small icon-like file associated with every Item in my Omeka archive.
In the Exhibit Builder Items browse/search pane (i.e. the drag-and-drop style Items array), therefore, it is difficult to conduct a search for the correct Item to add to an Exhibit page, since the files are all represented by the same icon in the array.

Before I had no files associated with Items, and this array displayed the Title of each Item instead which was more useful.

I'd like to modify Exhibit Builder so that I can recreate this behavior, or else somehow display Item Titles along with the file icons in the Items browse/search pane.

Could anybody direct me to the bit of code that I should try to edit / add to? Or does anybody have any other suggestions to help?

Thanks,
Deirdre

Hi Deirdre,

There a few answers to this question.

First, this is something we have fixed in the upcoming 1.3 release of Omeka, which should be available by the end of the year. The Exhibit Builder interface has been much improved and this particular issue is addressed.

However, in your previous post you mentioned you are using MyOmeka on your site. Currently MyOmeka is not supported on version 1.3, and is unlikely to be upgraded in the near future. This is not to say it won't work, but you will have to tweak a few things to get it to do so on 1.3. For example, you will need to load the Prototype javascript library which is no longer loaded by default in 1.3.

Additionally, if you feel comfortable using svn you could check out the trunk of Omeka and begin tinkering with this now, though I would caution against using it for a production site.

Finally, if you'd prefer to simply stay on 1.2, you could modify the file at plugins/ExhibitBuilder/helpers/ExhibitFunctions.php

Under the function exhibit_builder_exhibit_form_item() around line 284, following the line that reads

$html .= item_has_thumbnail() ? item_square_thumbnail() : '<div class="title">' . item('Dublin Core', 'Title', ', ') . '</div>';

you could add a line such as

$html .= item('Dublin Core', 'Title');

This will print the title below the thumbnail.

Hope this helps.

kalbers,

Thank you so much for your prompt reply!

I decided to go with your second suggestion (i.e. stick with Omeka 1.2 for the moment), and modify the ExhibitFunctions.php file as you suggested, which worked great!

The only other thing I had to do was change a line in the plugins/ExhibitBuilder/views/admin/css/exhibits.css to ensure that the Titles on the top row of the array could be seen (and were not hidden by the next row of icons underneath):

.item-drop {
float:left;
border:1px solid #A2C9E8;
margin-right:2px;
margin-bottom:40px;
display:block;
}

So, I just increased the margin-bottom from 2px to 40px so that even my longest Title could be visible!

It's a shame about MyOmeka not being supported on version 1.3! Will it eventually?

Thanks a million for your help on this one! Much appreciated!

Regards,
Dee!

Glad that worked.

As I said, MyOmeka MAY work on 1.3 with a little tweaking, however, we can't make any promises.

Unfortunately, it will have to be significantly reworked, and probably rewritten in to use jQuery, so it could be sometime before we officially support it again.