New full-screen / browser slideshow plugin (beta)

mr. sheep

Hi all,

First of all, just started using zenphoto on my web site and I'm very happy with it, it's exactly what I needed, great stuff!

However, what I've been trying to find for a while is a really high quality full-screen slideshow. The flow-player based one didn't really jingle my bells so I've written a new flash based slideshow plugin (I've called it slideshow_flash).

See Example photos - click View Slideshow for an example.

If anyone would like to use this then all the files you need are available in the "ZenphotoPlugin" folder at:

ZenphotoPlugin slideshow_flash files

The full code is available (GPL licenced as I've based some small parts on existing stuff from zenphoto) at http://www.deltawebdev.co.uk/websvn/listing.php?repname=FullScreenSlideshow

I didn't implement anything for search-based albums as I didn't really understand them! I imagine someone who did could easily add in support for them though. This is the first Flash / ActionScript3 development I've done so if it's all terrible, go easy on me!

Hope this is useful for others - I made it for my own uses but if others get usage out of it then that's great. Any comments or suggestions for improvement are welcomed.

Mark

mr. sheep

I've put together zips of the required files to install and the source code for anyone interested.

Zenphoto slideshow_flash plugin

acrylian

Thanks, every plugin is welcome. We will add it our extensions page soon.

mr. sheep

Thanks for putting up the link on the extensions page - I've updated the web page with a better description etc now, which might be better than the description from the above post for the extensions page?

Updated web page

The download, source, etc are all linked to from that one page now.

I'm hoping to add some screenshots and tidy the page up a bit over the weekend, if I get chance. It's a bit, erm, simplistic right now!

acrylian

Thanks for the update, a project page is better (simplistic look, no, I would say classic..:-)). I have updated the plugin entr. A suggestion you maybe could add what Flash version actually is required.

mr. sheep

I will work that out and put it on the page!

I suspect it should work with Flash 9 but as this is my first attempt at any flash development (I'm a C#/.net developer by trade, for my sins) I'll first have to find out how to find out what version is needed before I can confirm that...

Thanks for updating the plugin page.

fns

Thanks for creating this plugin! It works great, and allowed me to close my Smugmug account .

I did find one problem - I was getting an error out of line 102 of the function 'printSlideShowFlashLink' in the slideshow_flash.php file in the plugins folder, when you invoke it to display the 'View Slideshow' link on an image or album page. The problem is on line 68 of that file - variable name '$slideshow_instance' needs to be changed to '$slideshow_flash_instance'.

Cheers,

fns

mr. sheep

Hi fns, I didn't notice that one, didn't seem to affect the way I was using it but it's fixed now in the latest version. Please try it out and let me know if it's still causing a problem.

http://www.deltawebdev.co.uk/projects/zenphotoSlideshowFlash/

Other fixes in the latest version:

1) When you select "View Slideshow" from an image page, the slideshow now starts from that image instead of the first image in the album.

2) When you select "Next" or "Previous" the slideshow stops playing and goes into Pause mode.

3) If a slide hasn't yet loaded into the cache when the next/prev button is pushed, or if the slide hasn't loaded at the time it is required to be displayed, a "Loading..." message is displayed.

You should just be able to drop-deploy this on top of the previous version.

efishinsea

Hi.

I installed your plugin, which works pretty well, but was getting undefined notices at line 124 in slideshow_flash.php, so edited the line from:

if ($_GET["slideStartInd"] != null )

to

if (isset($_GET["slideStartInd"]) && $_GET["slideStartInd"] != null )

which simply checks for the value before testing on it.

Also, it would be nice(r) if there were some sort of "exit" button in the full-screen mode, which non-intuitive types will sure appreciate when they decide they want to "go back" and are left fumbling for the browser's back button.

Thanks for the plugin!

mr. sheep

Thanks for the fix, I've added it in and updated the zip. Not sure why but it didn't cause any problems on my install. Such is the vagueries of the different versions of PHP, no doubt.

When you say "full-screen" mode, do you mean the browser-filling mode or the actual full full screen mode? If you're referring to the full full-screen mode, clicking the Full Screen button again (left-most button) will exit back to the browser-filling mode...

If you're meaning to exit from the browser-filling mode, I'll have a look into that and see if I can work out some easy way to have a button which will return to wherever you came from. I'm sure it's possible, will just have to cajole flash into doing it for me!

m.

Bohdan

I have installed the full screen viewer and it works well with albums but not with sub-albums. Also where I have flash videos in one of the albums, there does not seem to be an option to play the videos, either in full screen or original size. I have had to temporarily disable the plug-in and return to the default image size for the slideshow.

Is there an easy solution?

mr. sheep

Hi Bohdan,

I'm not sure how to include the photos in a sub-album in with the higher level album, I'll have a look and see if there's an easy way of doing that - imagine that that would be easy enough to do.

The plugin currently doesn't support video in any form, and I won't be adding support for that myself any time soon as I don't use video on my site and don't have the time to investigate it right now, however all of the source code for the plugin (both flash and PHP parts) is available on the site, so if anyone is able to and wants to add that in, I'm happy to include it in a future release.

m.

Bohdan

Thank you. You have done a great job with what there is at the moment. Hopefully others will be able to pick up where you have left off and extend the plugin to cover full screen video, or at least to enable some sort of switch back to the normal video format plugin while still being able to view photos in full screen mode using your plugin.

mr. sheep

If I get a chance, I'll have a look into it on the off-chance that it is actually really easy! I suspect it won't be, but it's worth a look into. No promises, but if I get time I'll look.

firdauzm

Hi Mr. Sheep,

I'm using your plugin and really happy with it.. Thank you..

There is one issue for your information.
The caption show image description with their html tag..
I really hope there is a way to get rid of those tag..
Or maybe can it show the image title instead of description?..

Below is the screenshot for better understanding..
http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh48/firdauzm/slideshow_flash.jpg

mr. sheep

Hi firdauzm,

Glad you're happy with the plug-in.

Can you give this version a go?

Test version

The only file that has changed is slideshow_flash.php, so if you take that out of the zip file and put it in your zenphoto install (replacing zp-core/plugins/slideshow_flash.php) then that should do it.

Let me know if that does the trick for you!

Thanks,
Mark

plague

Hi mr.sheep. I've found a small bug that I hope you can resolve.

First of all, I love the plugin. It works great and it gives a very good impression for my website.

One bug I noticed is that if the directory name contains "&" sign, the slideshow is not recognizing the directory name. It is only taking the first part of the name and since a folder doesn't exist as such, it reports as error. This is not an issue with spaces. Only one I encountered this issue is with "&" sign which I've used on quite a few of my album names.

Hope you can provide a fix.

mr. sheep

Hi plague,

Glad you like the plugin!

I'll have a look into that problem. Just to confirm, are you using the latest version (v1.1.2)?

Thanks,
Mark

mr. sheep

Hi again,

I've found and fixed the bug with this; there's a new version available on the website now (v1.1.3). The only file you need to deploy is /plugin/slideshow_flash.php from the zip file to zp-core/plugins/ in your zenphoto install, there should be no other changes.

Please give it a try and let me know how it goes!

Thanks,
Mark

berwanger

This is a great plugin! Thanks.

I tweaked the HTML in your slideshow_flash.php page to include a back button. This brings back users to the page they came from instead of having them fumble for the back button. Here is the code:

`
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">


<?php echo getBareGalleryTitle()." > ".getBareAlbumTitle(); ?> - Slideshow
<?php //zenJavascript(); ?>
<?php printSlideShowFlashJS(); ?>
<?php printSlideShowFlash(); ?>

html, body { height:98%; }
body { margin:0;background:#000;}

FullScreenSlideshow

Alternative content

`

berwanger

Two more minor tweaks, both in slideshow_flash.php:
1) line 39 has a typo ... should be: "setOptionDefault('slideshow_flash_showcaptions', 'false');"
2) line 202 should be "./expressInstall.swf" instead of "expressInstall.swf" otherwise Flash will not load automatically in IE6 and IE7 if Flash plugin is not already installed.

Really great work though, Mark (mr. sheep)!

By the way, I also tweaked line 202 to 98% instead of 100% for IE to match with the input button I placed in (see above). However, Mark, if you wanted to add in the back button in your Flash object, I definitely wouldn't mind!

Please let me know if you do.

Thanks again,

Joe

sbillard

I have not looked at the script, but your comment
`1) line 39 has a typo ... should be: "setOptionDefault('slideshow_flash_showcaptions', 'false');"`

Seems probably incorrect. If the default of `'slideshow_flash_showcaptions` should be zero (`false`) then pass `0`. passing the string `'false'` will result in a value of `true`.

mr. sheep

I think that option does actually use the string values 'true' and 'false' so the option value really should be 'false'... I would change it but that would be a breaking change so I'll probably save that for another major release if one is warranted.

The problem was a typo on the default option name - 'slideshow_flash_showcaptiosn'. I've fixed that now so that will be included in the next version.

I'm working on a back-button for inclusion in the flash slideshow itself, that should be ready in the next day or two as I've worked out how to do it now.

Thanks for the feedback guys!

Mark

digitizer

hey nice plugin. would you release the fla file so one could muck around with the gui?
cheers

mr. sheep

Hi digitizer,

All of the files used to develop the flash part are present on the website - it was developed using the open source FlashDevelop rather than Adobe Flash, you can use that to update or make changes to it.

Let me know if you have any trouble downloading the source.

Thanks,
Mark

mr. sheep

New version available now (v1.1.4). This includes:

1. New X button in the slideshow toolbar which exits the slideshow and returns to the referring album/photo.
2. Fixed typo in name for one of the default configuration keys.
3. Fixed URL for Flash express install.

Thanks to those who have identified problems and fixes!

To upgrade to this version, the slideshow_flash.php in zp-core/plugins/ and the FullScreenSlideshow.swf in zp-core/plugins/slideshow_flash/ both need to be replaced with the versions out of the new zip; else just follow the full instructions in Install.txt.

Let me know of any issues or problems.

Thanks,
Mark

jayray999

Hey this has to be the coolest Zenphoto third-party plugin especially with Flash becoming more ubiquitous than even PDF. Like @fns, a lot of people will forgo a Smugmug account. I hope you continue to support it because people are going to love it. Brilliant.

mr. sheep

Hi jayray,

Thanks for the feedback, glad you're happy with the plugin!

As to future support, I fully intend to continue supporting it so if you (or anyone else) have any ideas etc for improvements please let me know - obviously this is a hobby for me so can't make any promises but I'll certainly give things a go if people have suggestions.

m.

jayray999

Hi mark. I can hardly think of anything to improve but if you force me to brainstorm then I can think of a few minor things.

1. The fullscreen button in your slideshow's control panel/dashboard can look a bit more intuitive. I can imagine some people not realizing that's what it is meant for.

2. You might want to have some kind of mouseover text for the dashboard buttons telling people what each button does.

Note: 1. and 2. fall under the category of idiot-proofing. Next I have a feature request.

3. Musical accompaniment for the slideshow. As far I know Zenphoto does not support such a feature although I am half expecting acrylian to correct me on this. With your slideshow you could call an MP3 file from the /zp-core/plugins folder. You could even have the option of choosing different MP3 files from your slideshow's dashboard in addition to a music ON/OFF control.

acrylian

@jayray999: You are right Zenphoto itself does not support audio while a slideshow plays. However of course everything is generally possible (if you know how) by adding some extra code to the theme's slideshow.php page.

jayray999

Malte. Thanks for the confirmation.