At present the [+next+] and [+previous+] placeholders generate complete links:
<a href="target_URL">VISIBLE-TEXT</a>
Where the only part I can change (through the &tplPaginateNext and & tplPaginatePrevious parameters) is the VISIBLE-TEXT portion. But I can’t apply my own CSS styles, add JavaScript, or set any other attributes of the link.
It seems that the only part I really need is the URL of the target page, around which I can create my own link with all the bells and whistles I want. Therefore I wonder what you think about adding two new placeholders that only return the target URLs:
[+nextURL+] and [+prevURL+]
But then one asks, what do we do at the first and last pages, where the Next and Previous links are replaced with <span>VISIBLE-TEXT</span>?
One answser to that question might be to define four template parameters...
&tplPrevActive
&tplPrevInactive
&tplNextActive
&tplNextInactive
...and to supply default templates for these in the language file. The "active" templates would contain HTML links using [+nextURL+], etc. to get the targets, and the "inactive" templates would have SPANs.
In all cases the default templates would contain the "< Previous" and "Next >" text strings that are currently stored in language files as fields ’next" and ’prev’, so you could eliminate those fields. You could also eliminate the current &tplPaginateNext and & tplPaginatePrevious parameters, and the current [+next+] and [+previous+] placeholders. So the net increase (should that be important to you) would be just two parameters (unless you retained all the now-unnecessary stuff for backwards compatibility...), and a huge increase in flexibility.
What do you think?
☆ A M B ☆
