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By pgeorge on
I'm building some online API Documentation for a "framework" that my company has built.
It's basically going to be your standard menu tree on the left, with all the categories that
can expand out into specific sections, and then the content on the right.
Would it be a good idea to use Drupal for something like this? To get a clearer example of
what I'm talking about check out this example of Ext's API docs.
If you click on the Ext link on the menu it expands out and then you can see all the other choices
that become available...pretty standard stuff here.
So would Drupal work well for this?
Comments
should I take the lack of
should I take the lack of response as a "no, it wouldn't be the best solution" ?
I just need to know quick because I need to be able to show something this Friday.
Not necessarily-- it may be
Not necessarily-- it may be that no one who came across the post had an opinion, lol.
I don't see anything that can't be done with drupal.
I've not done an api doc site, but off the top of my head I don't know of a module for the ajaxy folder navigator on the site you linked. You could mimic this with the activemenu, taxonomy_image, and taxonomy_menu modules pretty easily. And you could use the panels module for the page structure (though I'm not sure about the expanding content window).
You might also want to look at the codefilter, geshifilter, api, and drupalbin modules as well.
I guess it comes down to whether or not you are going to want to do other sites-- if not the learning curve on drupal might not be worth it for you if there is another open source package aimed specifically at api documentation.
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"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." - Lao Tzu
"God helps those who help themselves." - Ben Franklin
"Search is your best friend." - Worldfallz
Thanks! I'm not going to be
Thanks! I'm not going to be doing other sites...but I've already spent a couple days learning Drupal and I'd hate to just throw it out. I definitely don't need to have the ajax type menus like on the Ext-JS site, I was showing that more or less to get the idea of the navigation across. After playing around with Drupal it looks like I can just make a nav-tree out of a menu, and then add pages as needed and place them under whatever parent I want them to be under. That sounds pretty doable right? The hardest part of this I think is going to be figuring out how to do the theme. Any advice on that?
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pgeorge
Yep-- what you describe is
Yep-- what you describe is very doable (take a look at drupal's api site: api.drupal.org). It's very functional, just needs some theme/graphics love (which will be addressed shortly as part of the d.o. redesign, i'm sure).
As for themes-- you basically have 2 main options. Browse the available themes and see if there's one that you like pretty much the way it is (or with with some minor adjustments). Alternatively, you could start with one of the base themes (like zen or framework, there are others but those are the two i like best) and do the majority of the styling yourself.
A third option, though I don't often recommend it, is to start from scratch.
===
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." - Lao Tzu
"God helps those who help themselves." - Ben Franklin
"Search is your best friend." - Worldfallz
Ah, yes, I looked at the
Ah, yes, I looked at the themes available. The only problem is that I'm a design/CSS fanatic and something inside me dies whenever I use a premade template or theme. However, because of time issues I might just have to do that...but we'll see, I can whip out CSS pretty fast.
Pretty much the only things I need to do as far as markup goes is get rid of the tables and and move my menu to the left side. I created a menu in the garland theme and noticed that it was placed at the top and the parent/child toggle wasn't working at all...is there some trick to that?
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pgeorge
When you say you looked at
When you say you looked at the themes available I hope you meant http://drupal.org/project/Themes and not just the ones that come with core drupal (at admin/build/themes).
Also, i should have mentioned that the one theme you don't want to choose to customize is garland, lol. It's notoriously difficult to work with.
If you're a designer/css jockey then the zen and/or framework themes are really meant for you-- they provide that basic structure but leave the style to you (and without having to fight with selectors to guess the right override).
To get the parent/child menu relationship to work you need to make sure the menu you choose (as admin/build/menu/settings) for primary and secondary are the same.
===
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." - Lao Tzu
"God helps those who help themselves." - Ben Franklin
"Search is your best friend." - Worldfallz