How can I influence layout of a form?

[Sophist]

Ok - I have a form with various name fields, various address fields etc. some of which are hide / show, and a repeat group for sub-details which appear in a separate tab (using bootstrap tabs),

The default layout for the main group is single column which leads to a very long form with scrolling.

But if I set the Group to two columns, I get two columns in the front-end, but the fields don't layout nicely i.e. address fields start on same row as name fields, and when fields are unhidden, all the fields below shuffle about.

I have thought about splitting the main group into name, address etc. groups which would then be laid out independently (I hope), but I think they would then be on separate tabs.

Is there a non-database element that you can add to a group which e.g. forces a new row to start when you are multi-column?

If not is there any other way of achieving this?

Many thanks.

P

 

[troester]

To different points:
1. The fabrik provided layouts/template are generic, just displaying displayable elements in the given order.
You can split your elements in different groups, those groups are only on separate tabs if you choose the "tabs" layout.
You can add custom CSS to the fabrik templates (firebug is a good tool to test/modify...)

2. You can create a custom template which may be generic (i.e. you can use it on differents forms) or you can create a template displaying elements by name, so being totally free to display as you like.

In fabrik3.0 there's an example form template "contacts_custom", in fabrik 3.1 you can find this in the.../views form/tmpl25/ folder. Not sure if this will do 1:1 in fabrik3.1 (I never tried) but it will show the principle

http://fabrikar.com/forums/index.php?wiki/form-templates/

 

[Sophist]

troester

Thanks (again) for your input - I would like to try to avoid custom templates for a specific form as that somewhat avoids the point of templates in the first place, though it is on my list of things to do to tweak the css to e.g. use slightly smaller fonts etc. And I might tweak the icons for required fields so that they appear after the label instead of before it.

I guess I can use multi-page forms instead of tabs - because with these you get control over where the page breaks are. Or I could look at tweaking the tab template to use the same page breaks to decide where to start a new tab. (Or do the first which will be functional, and then do the second at some future point as a look-and-feel activity.)

Off to try it. Thanks again.

P

 

[gbguy]

troester,
Can you provide a new link for the form-template example? The one below no longer works.

TIA

To different points:
<snip>

In fabrik3.0 there's an example form template "contacts_custom", in fabrik 3.1 you can find this in the.../views form/tmpl25/ folder. Not sure if this will do 1:1 in fabrik3.1 (I never tried) but it will show the principle

http://fabrikar.com/forums/index.php?wiki/form-templates/

 

[troester]

http://www.fabrikar.com/forums/index.php?wiki/form-and-details-templates/
http://fabrikar.com/forums/index.php?wiki/index/#designers