[Help] Alternating Row Color in Custom Theme

k4zzy

I'm working on a custom theme+style right now, and I've run into a brick wall with alternating background colors on the Discussion list.

It would be neat if I could somehow add a another class to the #Discussion_# tag, that alternates between rownumber_0 or rownumber_1. I've tried doing this in the theme page, but it won't let me do anything other than echo the number.

Any ideas or help? I know next to nothing of the Vanilla theme backend. I guess I could always take the easy route out and style #Discussion_2 different than #Discussion_3 and so on.

mary

Customize discussion.php:

In the beginning of the file, right after:
$LastUrl = GetLastCommentQuerystring($Discussion, $this->Context->Configuration, $CurrentUserJumpToLastCommentPref);
add:
if (!isset($row_count)) { static $row_count = 1; }

Next, right after:
<li id="Discussion_'.$Discussion->DiscussionID.'" class="Discussion'.
add (you can customize Odd/Even to be whatever classnames you want):
($row_count & 1 ? ' Odd' : ' Even').

Finally, at the end of the file, after:
</li>';
add:
$row_count++;

(Edit: updated to correct code.)

k4zzy

Thanks, I see how that is supposed to work, but it ends up just outputting the class "Odd" each time.

mary

Are you sure you've got the "static" bit in front of $row_count = 1?

k4zzy

Yup, double-checked.

mary

Have you got your theme activated?

k4zzy

Absolutely. That is an abandoned theme that I was working on, ignore the terrible mess. I'm just using it to test this whole thing.

k4zzy

Is this working on your server, is it known to work? It looks as though all the code is working as it should, but it is not looping through the "function" for each discussion.

mary

That's really weird. I tested it out myself and I swear it was working. Looked again, and it wasn't. 8x

Try this, it should act correctly now:

Instead of:
static $row_count = 1;

use:
if (!isset($row_count)) { static $row_count = 1; }

k4zzy

Beautiful, that worked. Thank you so much!

bugsmi0

so based on above code the css would be like this ? #discussions .odd or .even ?

I think I misunderstood this discussion is this for alternating coments or only for discussions ;-)

k4zzy

It's for alternating row colors on the discussion list, but it could be easily adapted for alternating colors on the comments page.

I used it on my in-progress style, if you want to see it in action.

bugsmi0

ah I see, nice

how would we adapt this to alternating comments ?

k4zzy

Just add the same code to your comments.php page.

bugsmi0

the code in comments.php appears to be very different then that of discussion.php

Jazzman

You can now use "Alternate" in Vanilla 1.0.1 to use alternating background colors.

bugsmi0

Alternate ? what is that

Jazzman

If you check this page's HTML source, you can see it:
<li id="Comment_38367"> ... <li id="Comment_38368" class="Alternate"> ... <li id="Comment_38369"> ... <li id="Comment_38370" class="Alternate"> ...
If you check my green-theme you can see how I use it on the comment section

k4zzy

Ah, nice. I still haven't found the time to update to 1.0.1 so I didn't see it yet.

bugsmi0

interesting, i'm using 1.0.1 and the class="Alternate" in source code do not exist how come ?

NickE

In the discussion page it won't be <samp>class="Alternate"</samp>, Alternate will be at the end of a list of classes (class="bla bla bla Alternate"). On the comments page it should be; if it isn't then you probably forgot to update a theme file or something.