Advanced Directory: Customization

Advanced Directory is probably the only application that offers truly professional output customization. Directories (categories), Related categories and Links can be displayed in many ways (see below). Moreover, easy to use HTML style containers helps design the output in any way you want. The abilities are only limited by your imagination.

Directories (Categories) and Related Directories and Resources (Links) output can individually be made either as:
(a) Standard HTML Links
or
(b) Selectable Form Inputs.

(a) As Standard HTML Links - can be shown in one single column or multiple columns (upto 6 columns). Multiple columns can also have interchangable background colors (customizable). See following examples:

Example-1:

You can choose to show the clean details (no resource numbers, no category signs)

Example-2 (3 columns, in an interchangable background color):

Example-3 (single column, with numbering and a background color):

(b) Selectable Form Inputs - As a Select/List button.

You can also expand your Select/List button as shown below:

You can also set a maximum character length to control the width of your Select/List box. Longer Directories are stemmed at the begining. This optional setting is useful if you maintain a compact site design and size of your Form must fit the design nicely. See below (the first category name has been trimmed at the beginning. Note, that URLs if showed this way they are trimmed at the end):

Directories (categories), Related Categories and Links can be displayed using any of the above mentioned layout.

Index Directories:

some directories (categories) on ODP site are formed as an index of alphabets, digits delimited by '|' and usually displayed as:

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | . . . . . . . . | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

Advanced Directory allows you display these Index Directories as 'Standard HTML Links' or 'Selectable Form Inputs' (as discussed earlier). You can also show them as a delimited list of links. You can set any delimeter that suits your site design (like ODP or something else). As for example:

A • B • C • D • E • F • G • . . . . . • T • U • V • W • X • Y • Z
or
A • B • C • D • E • F • G • . . . . . • T • U • V • W • X • Y • Z
or
A - B - C - D - E - F - G - . . . . . - T - U - V - W - X - Y - Z
or
A B C D E F G . . . . . T U V W X Y Z

or a different layout of your choice.

You are free to customize any output block Font attributes (Face, Color, Size etc.). All internal customizations are done by modifying the values of appropriate parameters in the configuration file. There is NO need to modify in the main script. You can make any further customizations any time and there is no need to interrupt the service.

Configurable Link-Bar:
You can set the Label text (or no Previous - Next label), maximum number of links to show at a time etc. to fit the link-bar nicely on your directory (or search) pages.