Other methods to display items

re #1:

- the showcase module was meant to be a very simple ajax script for presenting nodes... i didnt want to get into the complexity of deciding the many different filter mechanisms to deice which nodes to display.. the views module does a very good job of this already.. and showcase allows you to use a view as your node source.

in other words everything you listed as far as sorting , filtering , etc can be easily done by defining a view.. and then in showcase settings; pick that view as your node source

re #2:

- You are right my module doesn't make a block; i guess it could.. BUT.. pretty simple to do without doing any code.. simply go to admin/block and add a block. Now you need to get the ID number for the new block - simple put mouse over the link to configure the block and you will see it's ID number. In the settings for showcase simply put that ID number as the block for the showcase.

NOTE - one thing i noticed as i was just trying this out... since i originally designed showcase to fit in to my site.. in the header region i defined for it.. i specifically wanted to strip out the extra block stuff.. and just get the content for the block.. since block borders and the like would make a mess for me. However; when you add this into an existing region like "leftborder" for example.. it is likely you would want it to keep the block look and feel.

I will take a look to see if i can add that as a setting - i.e strip or no-strip

well i took a look the code i use to strip block content is outside of the showcase module.. should , i think it should work fine to throw into a std block.

As it turns out.. that isnt the case on my LiquidCMS site since i have a special box tpl to give the special block borders and that code is inside the DIv for the block.. i think i could ahve posibly written it differently ??? anyway, thats why when i dump showcase output to a left border block.. my nice block borders get dumped.. not sure best way to make this more generic.. for any ajax.. pretty much got to have a div somewhere to dump to.. and then it will dump whatever was there..

perhaps something like a header and footer setting for showcase module.. like they have with views module - that way you could wrap the showcase content anyway you liked before rendering it.. hmmm.. maybe...

ok, done.. added header/footer bits.. they seem to work pretty well. I now can have showcase dump into a block in my left border.. i'll set it like that for a bit on my site so you can check it out if you like...

i'll add rev 0.7 with this and couple little JS changes to my site download page.