Last weekend i released a new hybrid module/skin object named MLSkinHelper, which is a versatile tool that lets you put easily editable and localizable pieces of HTML in your skin (so, not only text, but also images, links, etc).

Through an admin module you can add (localizable) key value pairs to a table, and with the accompanying skin object, you can show a specific value for a specific (fixed) or current (dynamic) locale anywhere in your skin.

The following use cases come to mind:

• Put "fixed" text anywhere in your skin. Fixed in quotes, because the text can be managed from a management module inside the portal. Mind you, this is either localized or not. You can tell the skinobject to always use values from one locale.
• Use localized logos in your skin. Because localized values can contain any html code (the database field is of type ntext, so you can put any length of text in a value, in any locale), you can also put links to images in the value. (In fact, the site logo on this site is localized with MLSkinHelper)
• Localize titles of modules that do not come with a localizable title. For instance, you could very easily localize the title of the feedback module. An example of this is included in the online help.
• You could even use the module version as a substute for the mlhtml module. The skinhelper allows you to edit content all in one place.

Resources:

• more about the module
• demo site
• support forum
• for sale on snowcovered
• for any question, please contact me on support@apollo-software.nl

cheers,

Erik

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