What is CMFContentPanels?

  CMFContentPanels is a cmf/plone portlets product. You can create a new
content which is composed of other contents as 'content panels'. You can 
change the layout, the panel box skin, the panel content viewlet TTW. 

  CMFContentPanels is in
"Collective":http://sourceforge.net/projects/collective. you can report bugs
there.

Features

  * easy to use and easy to extend

  * predefined viewlets for Document, Image, Folder, Topic, ZWiki Page by default

  * CMFContentPanels content can be nested another CMFContentPanels content,
    this make you can make very complexed content. (eg: multi-row )

  * i18n

  * select content by bowsing and search

  * 6 box skins provided by default. You can add you own!

  * compatible with Plone 1.0 & Plone2.0

How to Use it?

  1. Install it. See INSTALL.txt for more information.

  2. Add a new ContentPanels: like other content, select CMFContentPanels from the add list in plone, and Add it.

  3. Edit the ContentPanels' name/title/description, and click save. Now you
are in the view page. It is a blank page since no panels you defined.

  3. Go to the 'config page' to add panels and adjust the layout:

    * click the right top 'tool icon' in the view page to go to the config page.

    * By default there are only 1 page, 2 columns and no panels. You can
      adjust properties of the page in the top form. You can add/delete page,
      add columns in the following buttons. Below that, is 2 columns of 
      'New Panel' form, where you can add new panels.

    * In the 'New Panel' form, the current contentpanels is selected by
      default.  you can click the open icon to select other content, a popup window will appear
      for you to browse or search content. Click the check box to select 
      the content in the popup window. Now the new selected content title 
      will appear in the 'New Panel' form. You can click 'add panel' button to
      add the new content.

    * Now you will find a new panel added with default box skine and default
      viewlet. You should change the viewlet and box skin for the new added 
      panel.  Also, you can write you own viewlet and box skin easily. 
      See the following sections for detail. 

    * The bottom form is about column. Note column width should be percent format,
      for example, '50%'. 

How to make more viewlets?

  Viewlet is a view of content which can be selected in contentpanels. Viewlet 
can be a zpt or a zpt macro. Viewlets are registered with CMF Action mechanism.

  1. Write a viewlet for your content. You can refer to stuff at
\CMFContentPanels\skins\contentpanels\viewlets, which are default viewlets.

  2. Add a new CMF action with the CMF Action mechanism. Remember, the action
catalog should be 'panel_viewlets'. See the Install.py for detail

How to add new panel box skin?

  Panel box skin can be used by all panel, you can extend it:

  1. write your panel box skin. you can refer to stuff at
\CMFContentPanels\skins\contentpanels\box_skins

  2. go to ZMI 'portal_contentpanels', in the properties view, add your new
skin there.

Credits

  * "ZopeChina.com":http://www.zopechina.com, a leading Zope Service provider in China. ZopeChina.com runs the biggest Chinese Zope community in China - "CZUG.org":http://czug.org (China Zope User Group). We are trying to make Zope/Plone works better for Chinese people. 

  * ausum's "CMFPortlets":http://www.zope.org/Members/ausum/CMFPortlets , many idea comes from CMFPortlets. Thanks!
