2.1. Using NewsFlash Regions

NewsFlash provides 12 regions that you can publish blocks to (along with a region for the Suckerfish menu.) The NewsFlash Regions Page shows each of the available regions. Looking at this page will give you a feel for where the regions are in relation to the one another.

The Basics

First, let's get the terminology down. A Drupal page typically includes a Content area and, optionally, one or more Blocks, which are published to Regions.

The Content area is the main part of the page, and is made up of Nodes. A node can be a story, a blog post, a forum post, or a custom node type. For the most part, Drupal manages the Content area, and you direct it using the Drupal administion menus.

A Region is essentially a physical place on the page. For example, a left sidebar region might be provided to display something to the left of the Content area. Regions are provided by the theme, and different themes will provide a different selection of regions.

A Block is a piece of content. Blocks can have a title and body text. In order to display a Block on your site, you publish it to a Region. In selecting a Region for a particular Block, you are determining where on the page that Block will be displayed.

Collapsible Regions

NewsFlash Regions are grouped into collapsible sections. The User1, User2, and User3 regions are the blocks below the masthead. We collectively call these three regions Section1. Similarly, User4, User5, and User6 make up Section2.

In order to display a Section, simply publish a block to one of the User Regions in that Section. If you publish to only one User Region in a Section, that Region will fill the width of the page. Publish to two or to all three User Regions in a Section, and the Regions will split the horizontal space accordingly.

Similarly, if you publish content to the Left or Right Sidebars, they will appear. Publish nothing to one of the sidebars and it collapses out of sight.

If you publish nothing to one of the sidebars, the main Content area will grow to fill the horizontal space normally taken by the sidebar. Publish to none of the sidebars and the main Content area will fill the width of the page.

A region will stretch vertically as much as necessary to display the content you publish to it. You can publish as many blocks to an individual region as you want. When you publish more than one block to a region, the blocks are stacked vertically atop one another. You can determine the order that blocks appear within a region by configuring the Weight of each block.

2.2. Using The Primary Links Menu

NewsFlash displays the primary links menu on the right side of the header. This section describes how to configure the two-level static menus.

You can designate any Drupal menu(s) as your primary and secondary links menus. A standard Drupal installation will come with a menu named Primary links, but you can select another menu to act as your sites Primary Links.

You can crate a new menu by clicking on the Add menu tab of the admin/build/menu page, or you can add and delete items from an existing menu to get the structure you want.

Once you've got your menu and menu items created, you need to tell Drupal that this will be the Primary Links menu. By pointing your browser to /yoursite/admin/build/menu/settings, you will have an opportunity to designate your Primary Links menu. Select your menu from the Menu containing primary links dropdown, and then click the Save configuration button.

Your new menu should appear immediately. You don't need to publish your new Prinary Links menu to a region. As long as you've designated a menu to provide the Prinary Links for your site, LiteJazz will display it.

The LiteJazz Primary and Secondary Links menus are designed to present a single horizontal row of top-level menu items. If you publish a menu that has too many top-level items to fit in one row, you're not likely to get the behavior you expect.

2.3. Using Suckerfish Menus

LiteJazz has son-of-suckerfish menus integrated into the theme. Using this feature, you can create a standard Drupal menu and present it as a dynamic drop-down menu that is compatible with most browsers.

NewsFlash provides a region called suckerfish menu. If you publish a standard Drupal menu in this region, it will be displayed as a suckerfish drop-down menu. However, there are a few things you need to do in order for everything to work correctly.

To start with, you'll need a menu. You can create a new menu in Drupal by pointing your browser to /yoursite/admin/build/menu and clicking on the Add Menu tab. After creating a menu, you'll want to add your menu items one at a time by clicking on the Add Item link and entering the item information. Use the Parent Item selection box to organize your menu items into the desired structure.

It is very important that all Parent Menu Items in a suckerfish menu have the Expanded checkbox enabled. This option instructs Drupal to generate HTML code for the entire menu structure. If you do not enable this feature for a particular parent menu item, you will not see its child menu items.

Once you've create a menu and enabled the Expanded option for all parent menu items, you can publish the menu to the suckerfish region. Point your browser to /yoursite/admin/build/block and select the suckerfish menu region from the selection box next to your menu block name. Then click the Save Blocks button.

The NewsFlash suckerfish menu is designed to present a single horizontal row of top-level menu items. If you publish a menu that has too many top-level items to fit in one row, you're not likely to get the behavior you expect.

Important! Internet Explorer 6 has a bug related to the CSS hover attribute that prevents pure CSS suckerfish menus from working correctly. NewsFlash provides a javascript file that will work around this problem and allow suckerfish menus to work correctly in IE. If you want to use this feature, you must enable the 'Enable Suckerfish Javascript for IE6' checkbox on the theme settings page. If you do not enable this option, suckerfish menus will not work in IE6.

2.4 Using The IE PNG Fix

Internet Explorer versions 5.5 and 6.0 do not display transparent PNG files correctly. Instead of applying the image transparency, the browser displays transparent images in an ugly gray box. NewsFlash includes a javascript-based fix for this bug. To enable the use of the IE PNG fix, simply select the IE PNG Fix checkbox from the theme configuration page.

The NewsFlash IE PNG fix is implemented using Drupal's built-in jquery framework, so it should not interfere with any additionally installed modules. However if you do experience a problem (or if you just don't use PNG files on your site), try disabling the IE PNG fix.

2.5. Using NewsFlash Custom Typography

NewsFlash provides several custom styles that you can use in your node or block content. You can see examples of these styles on the Typography Sample page.

You can use the custom typography styles on your site by inserting a small amount of HTML code into your node or block content. Each of the examples on the Typography Sample page specify the HTML code necessary to use that style.

For example, the alert style example on the Typography Sample page specifies that you'll need to wrap your content in a set of <span class="alert">...</span> tags.

Within your block or node body, you could enter the following code:

<span class="alert">This is really important!</span>

You will need to change the Input format of your node or block to Full HTML, or else Drupal will filter out your HTML code.

If you've done everything correctly, NewsFlash will display this as:

This is really important!

Similarly, if you create a block or node with the following code:

<blockquote>This is a really famous quote from a really famous person that 
was taken from a really famous story out of a really famous book.</blockquote>

NewsFlash will display it as:

This is a really famous quote from a really famous person that was taken from a really famous story out of a really famous book.

2.6. Adding a New Color Style to NewsFlash

You can add additional color schemes to NewsFlash by modifying the image files and CSS style sheets in the theme. This section briefly describes the steps necessary to create a new color scheme. We'll use yellow as an example.

• Image Files - Create an image folder for the new scheme as litejazz/images/yellow. Copy the image files from an existing scheme into this folder. Modify the image files as desired.
• CSS Color file - Each scheme has a CSS file in litejazz/css that specifies unique color attributes. Copy an existing scheme (blue.css, for example) to yellow.css. Edit this file to reflect the colors for your new scheme. Make sure to change the path names of background images to point to the litejazz/images/yellow folder.
• CSS suckerfish file - Each scheme has a CSS file in litejazz/css that specifies suckerfish color attributes. Copy an existing scheme (suckerfish_blue.css, for example) to suckerfish_yellow.css. Edit this file to reflect the colors for your new scheme.
• Edit settings.php - At line 28 of this file is an array of scheme choices that are presented on the theme admin screen. Add an entry for your new scheme: yellow' => t('Yellow'), This first 'yellow' is the scheme name, and it must match all of the file and folder names previously created. The second 'Yellow' is the name as presented in the drop-down list on the theme admin screen

It's important to keep the file and folder names consistent. The theme uses the scheme name (as specified in settings.php) to generate expected file names. So a color scheme named yellow will only work if there is a folder named images/yellow, a file named css/yellow.css, and a file named css/suckerfish_yellow.css.