This is an architectural suggestion. At the moment quicktabs explicitly deals with the different types of tabs in the module code in switch statements on the type of the tab. An example is the quicktabs_render_tabpage() function (line 443, quicktabs.module, 6.x-2.0-rc3).

There has been talk about quicktabs explicitly supporting other types of tabs, such as Panels 3 (http://drupal.org/node/236925), and in theory perhaps there are other types of tab-content that it would be useful to have.

Would it be useful to re-structure quicktabs slightly to perhaps define 'tabtype handlers' which could be created and registered by other modules. These tab handlers could, through the use of hooks (like CCK field handlers), or perhaps an object-oriented approach (like views display handlers) implement functions for rendering the content of their tabs and for providing & validating the settings elements for their type on the 'create new quicktab block' admin page.

With a pluggable solution like this, if it is documented sufficiently, then it opens up the opportunity for anyone to create a module that provides a new tab type. Very flexible.

What do you think? Is this consistent with the roadmap you guys have in mind (katballey, Pasqualle)? Would it be useful?

I know there's a lot of good work being done at the moment to support Drupal 7, not to mention all the other issues. I would be happy to help out with development of these things if we can discuss it over and agree where things are going.

Comments

pasqualle’s picture

pasqualle
Location 🇭🇺 Budapest
commented

one word: ctools

check the plugins/content_types and plugins/views_content/content_types directories
there is everything what we need, tab content configuration and tab content display for block, node, view and many other content types.. you can see that the panels 3 content type is also ready: panels3 module panels_mini/plugins/content_types directory

so that is the approach I would like to take. I really need a initial D7 port of ctools to start using it in QT 7.x release.

michelle’s picture

michelle
she/her
Primary language English
Location Wisconsin, USA
commented

I'd love to see this as well. I thought I was being clever and I made a mini panel so that I'd have a "block" to feed to QT and then I put the QT block back in the Panels page. It looked good in theory... Until I remembered that blocks don't take arguments and so my mini panel was unaware of the context on the page. Doh! I was thinking it would be so much nicer if I could just add a Panels/CTools content type directly to QT. :)

Michelle

netw3rker’s picture

netw3rker commented
Status: Active » Closed (won't fix)

this is implemented with the ctools plugin interface