expand text boxes or offer text area?

[BuffaloPrintingCo]

I use Fusion Pro to link with a third party online store app. When i preview my created file from Acrobat the text boxes are very narrow and often, the date I enter for testing expands past the end so it makes it hard to check my entries.

 

Is there any way to expand the width of the text boxes or to offer a text area so the user can see more of what they entered?

[Dan Korn]

You could turn on Copyfitting to make the text shrink down to fit. Or you could use an Overflow page. It depends on how you want to handle it in the output.

[BuffaloPrintingCo]

That's not the problem. The text fits in the output file fine. It's when I Preview the HTML form that's the issue. The preview is what I see when I go to enter the information online and the text boxes are too small.

So after I enter the information I want to show up on the product, I can't just look at the text box because it only holds about 18 characters in it. To see the rest of the entered information, I need to click the text box and arrow over.

[Dan Korn]

That's not the problem. The text fits in the output file fine. It's when I Preview the HTML form that's the issue. The preview is what I see when I go to enter the information online and the text boxes are too small.

So after I enter the information I want to show up on the product, I can't just look at the text box because it only holds about 18 characters in it. To see the rest of the entered information, I need to click the text box and arrow over.

Oh, I see, I didn't get that you were talking about the HTML Form Preview. I'm still not sure I completely understand the issue, though. Don't you see the data as you're typing it in? Or are you somehow auto-populating the form fields?

 

Remember that the sample form you see when you click the Preview Form button is just that: a sample. The idea is that some Web-to-Print app would create its own input web form based on the XML file generated by the HTML Form Definition (Web DataCollect) dialog. As the preview form itself states at the bottom, "Sample navigation controls and formatting are shown as an example of how this form will look in a complete website. Exact appearance will vary based on the settings of the web server."

 

That said, the sample/preview form is generated via an XSL transformation (actually two transformations) of the XML file to HTML using the XSL files found in the WebCollect folder ("C:\Program Files\Printable\FusionPro\WebCollect" by default on Windows). So, you (or a web application) can modify these files to change the appearance of the form by modifying these XSL files, or substituting your own.

 

Specifically, you can add this at line 80 of the DLWebCollect.xsl file, after the <INPUT type="text"> tag:

<xsl:attribute name="size">100</xsl:attribute>

This will make the text input boxes for standard single-line input fields 100 pixels wide, which is a lot wider than the default. Or you can use a different number. You may also need to add similar code to other places in the XSL file for other field types.

 

CAVEAT: Change these files at your own risk. It's very easy to render the preview form, or other parts of the system, completely inoperable. Please back up the DLWebCollect.xsl file, or any other files in the FusionPro installation, before making changes. PTI is not responsible for any errors, confusion, hair loss, or computer explosions resulting from hacking these files.

 

P.S. Although if you really have that much data to enter, then instead of hacking the XSL files, you might consider just setting the field type to Multi-line in the Web DataCollect dialog, which will give you a multi-line input box, which is resizable in many web browsers (at least in Firefox).

[BuffaloPrintingCo]

That changed the preview and i was able to tweak the number to get it to the size i want but it didn't change the final view in my web-to-print application so it must be something about how that third party reads those files.

 

Thanks Dan

[Dan Korn]

That changed the preview and i was able to tweak the number to get it to the size i want but it didn't change the final view in my web-to-print application so it must be something about how that third party reads those files.

Yes, it's completely up to the web application to decide how it interprets the XML file and displays a user input from.