I have a novice question related to the authoring tool. It looks like I always have to have an article, block and component together -- in other words, I can't have one without the other. Is that correct? I'm running into a situation where I don't have enough content to necessitate having three levels of information and am trying to figure out how to flex the tool; it feels rigid in requiring all three parts, but perhaps I'm misunderstanding. Can someone help clarify for me? Hope this makes sense.
Basic question about the ABCs in the authoring tool
Re: Basic question about the ABCs in the authoring tool
Laura,
ABCs have a hierarchical relationship. An Article can have one or more blocks, and a block can have 1 or 2 components, but that's just how things are organized internally so to speak. It doesn't mean that you need to fill out all three levels of information.
For example, if you want to put just some text in a text component, you will need to add an article (or use an existing article that you already have), then add a block, then add the text component to the block. However, you don't have to insert any information in the displayTitle or body of the article or the block... in other words, each of those elements needs to be there to contain the other, but you don't have to show information in them, if you don't want.
Re: Basic question about the ABCs in the authoring tool
Thanks, that's what I've done so far. The challenge is that it leaves some big gaps on the page design wise. Is there any way to "collapse" the dead space?
Re: Basic question about the ABCs in the authoring tool
Maybe somebody can give you a better solution... but I think that to adjust things like that (e.g., reduce the height of an "empty" space) you have to resort to style changes ... that's how I think I've done it in the past (add a custom class to the component you want to adjust, and then create a style rule to adjust the height)...