Collapsible Panels - Links to open one, and close others

Question

Hi,
I am new to Dreamweaver and have been creating my site by
learning as I go along. I have already read through all the other
related topics associated with Collapsible Panels on this blog and
have still not found an answer. I have been able to open and close
Collapsible Panels by using links - but unfortunately, I need more
than just opening and closing.
On my site i have approximately 5 pages, all with the same
header and Menu bar. The Information (that i have presented in
numerous Collapsible Panels) does however vary from page to page.
What I need to try and figure out is:
How can I open one collapsible panel and close all others? I
have seen the one example which leads to my next question:
How can I group Panels? Some examples of how to open one and
close all others use this grouping. Is there any other way of
opening one and closing all others without grouping?
Lastly, is it possible to set up a link that can be viewed on
one page which when clicked opens the relevant page and collapsible
panel? i.e. on my About Us page there is a link (using the Menu
bar) for one of my several services on the services drop down menu
(but services is on a different page with the same setup). When a
viewer clicks on the specific service, is it possible to get the
site to open the services page, and open the relevant collapsible
panel (with all other Panels closed)?
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated - I have been
searching for days now and cannot seem to find any
answers/directions in laymans terms.
Kind regards,
John

Answer 1

wlsjoh013 wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am new to Dreamweaver and have been creating my site
by learning as I go
> along. I have already read through all the other related
topics associated
> with Collapsible Panels on this blog and have still not
found an answer. I
> have been able to open and close Collapsible Panels by
using links - but
> unfortunately, I need more than just opening and
closing.
>
> On my site i have approximately 5 pages, all with the
same header and Menu
> bar. The Information (that i have presented in numerous
Collapsible Panels)
> does however vary from page to page. What I need to try
and figure out is:
>
> How can I open one collapsible panel and close all
others? I have seen the one
> example which leads to my next question:
This page has an example that has a link that can open and
close a panel:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/spry/samples/collapsiblepanel/collapsible_panel_sample. htm
One way to do this would be to have a single link that would
open one of your panels using the code, but then add to it code
that closes each of the other panels, for example:
<a href="#"
onclick="CollapsiblePanel4.open();CollapsiblePanel5.close();CollapsiblePanel6.close();">O pen
4, close 5 and 6</a>
To make this work, you'll need to look that the panel
constructors at the bottom of your page and make sure to match up
the panel variable names i.e. "var CollapsiblePanel1 =...." the
variable is CollapsiblePanel1.
You could also write a function that gathers together the
various panels you have on the page and then pass to it only the
panel that you want kept open. For now, though, it might be best to
use the above method, given your expertise. And taking that even
further, you could apply the function call unobtrusively. Both the
function call and the unobtrusive part you can work on later to get
this working for now.
> How can I group Panels? Some examples of how to open one
and close all others
> use this grouping. Is there any other way of opening one
and closing all
> others without grouping?
This is a little confusing, on one hand you ask about how to
group, but then ask how not to group. There is a concept of a
collapsible panel group:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/spry/samples/collapsiblepanel/CollapsiblePanelGroupSamp le.html
But there is another type of group, that may be more what
you're looking for, and that's an Accordion panel, which is similar
to the collapsible panel group, with the exception that it can only
have one panel open at a time.
> Lastly, is it possible to set up a link that can be
viewed on one page which
> when clicked opens the relevant page and collapsible
panel? i.e. on my About Us
> page there is a link (using the Menu bar) for one of my
several services on the
> services drop down menu (but services is on a different
page with the same
> setup). When a viewer clicks on the specific service, is
it possible to get
> the site to open the services page, and open the
relevant collapsible panel
> (with all other Panels closed)?
Probably the easiest way to do this particular one would be
to make sure that you have all of the panels set to be closed when
the page loads, and then take a look at the code for the last
example on this page:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/spry/samples/utils/URLUtilsSample.html
That example uses a tabbed panel, but the concept is the
same, use a URL parameter to determine what to show. You'll need to
link in the SpryURLUtils file in the Spry download package (look in
the includes folder):
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/spry/home.html
Essentially, your link will look similar to:
sample.html?panel=1
Then your code could look something like:
var params = Spry.Utils.getLocationParamsAsObject();
var CollapsiblePanel1 = new
Spry.Widget.CollapsiblePanel("CollapsiblePanel1",
{contentIsOpen:(params.panel==1 )} );
var CollapsiblePanel2 = new
Spry.Widget.CollapsiblePanel("CollapsiblePanel2",
{contentIsOpen:(params.panel==2 )} );
Basically what this is doing is creating an object from the
URL parameters. Then for each of the panels the constructor has
code that determines whether or not to expand the panel when the
page loads. So it checks the value of params.panel to see if it
matches 1 (for the first one), if it does, then that means that
contentIsOpen is set to true, if it is some other number or is not
present at all, then that means that the panel is closed. This
would then be repeated down the line for how ever many panels you
want to operate like that.
Danilo Celic
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