Using HorelDruid with Joomla - Availability Check

[blackdog]

The HotelDruid availability check is the primary means of a potential customer interacting with the software. Marco has achieved this by presenting a template which is highly customisable from the HotelDruid back end which can then be included in other front end sofftware as an iframe.

We have taken this one step further and developed a Joomla module which can access the HotelDruid database but be customised from the Joomla administrator panel.

The standard template is formatted by means of nested tables resulting in poor degradation when accessed via smaller devices as field names get separated from the input boxes.

In the demo we have

• removed ALL tables
  used css to format the input layout to ensure input labels stay with their associated input boxes however viewed
  moved the translation to use the Joomla translation/internationalisation facilities
  used Joomla admin to customise the forms
  tried separate the functionality from the display to make it comply better with the Joomla MVC architecture

We are still working on getting it fit for general release if there is enough interest.

[kyomar]

Thanks blackdog, that's great that somebody is working on a table less and nice looking availability, rates and hopefully calendar template. HotelDruid is - as you mentioned - a great reservation system but lucks in the front end. Would be great if it were compatible with any website (not only joomla).

Keep up your good work.

[blackdog]

Thanks for your comments
The way I have eliminated the tables is using my IDE (Netbeans) recursively replace the opening table, table row and table cell tags with opening div tags with individual names like hdtable, hdrow, and hdcell, then replace all the closing tags with closing /div tags. Then go to the css file and add three corresponding classes for hdtable,hdrow and hdcell. tables and rows are displayed as blocks, cells are displayed inline.
If you really want to go overboard you should use fieldgroups with legends and labels for inputs all formatted with css.
I am still working towards this if you would like to see how far I have please PM or email me.
Thanks again
Dave

[softfaber]

Hi Dave,
Very interested to collaborate also on this.
As we usually work with wordpress, it could be a nice thing to have it done for wp.
Please let me know

Henry

[marco]

Hello,
maybe a faster solution, using css, is to delete table properties from <table>, <tr>, <td> elements with the classes used in the form.

Regards,
Marco