[Pro] Efficient "gallery" creation

Freeway
1

Here’s a kind of vague and general question I hope some of the experts here can consider.

First please look at http://luckypro.biz/client/walter/v5/01_portfolio/port-01_new.html. You can see I’m proposing a “picture gallery” based on Walter’s Carousel Action. The client kind of likes the system. They will probably want both a “Previous / Next” button function and a clickable Text List.

Right now, their site has about 80 works, shown in six categories. (So, six galleries.) They’ve told me that for the new site, they probably want only one gallery, showing all the works.

Now, I know that a Carousel with 80 items is never going to finish preloading. When I was assuming there would be six galleries/Carousels, I figured a gallery with, say, 20 items might be OK. But 80? No way.

Even trying to use TargetShowHide won’t be possible in Freeway. The max number of Targets in one page is 60, right?

And, building all these layers or Carousel items as Freeway “draw each one by hand” items is laborious. This seems like a good candidate for a javascript list or XML driven operation. I’ve had some limited experience of using XML to populate javascript pages (Roman Holiday Map), but only enough to know such a thing is possible.

Note that for this project, I don’t really need any slide show-like-effects. don’t need fading, or even sliding! A simple layer swap will suffice. (I think.) So, assuming all the above is true: 80 items; no effects; buttons and picking list; possibility to create the items with XML or LI list; has anyone suggestions about a method in Freeway?

I’d really appreciate some brainstorming!

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2

All I have to say is good luck with that. You’re braver than me.

If I were in your shoes I’d toss it all into a SlideShowPro slideshow and have it do the work for me, but it looks like you need something outside of FW’s current capabilities.

I’ll watch the thread here and see if you do find any kind of solution as I’m sure it’ll be helpful for people wanting to make galleries that exceed beyond the typical 25 or 60 image limit.

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3

Not sure if SSPro can do the text list for me. I kind of think not. Have seen a simple list-driven gallery produced with frames. That would be easy to do technically, but laborious to set up. Although perhaps not much more than finagling an XML file. The initial setup would be just that: done once and then done with. Only about six or so new works are added a year. More or less.

Frames don’t bookmark well. Tradeoffs all over.

Well, I’m going to be out of town and out of touch for about ten days. Perhaps by the time we get back there will have been a FW/javascript/gallery breakthrough.

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4

Have just met with client. They like the SSPro approach in general. Blah by me, but OK, it’s nifty-new to them. So, unfortunately, no opportunity just now to push the javascript gallery technology.

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5

I suggest a third party solution. www.viewbook.com. Faster, easier, prettier.

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6

On 7 Oct 2009, 11:26 pm, John-Paul Kernot wrote:

I suggest a third party solution. www.viewbook.com. Faster, easier, prettier.

When the next person asks you, take a look at the ScriptyLightbox Action. The gallery loads each photo using Ajax, so your only page load is for the thumbnails, not the big pictures.

Walter

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7

Is there a way of have a ‘next’ button with the scripty lightbox
rather than closing and opening another? I have seen it mentioned
before. No a major problem if the answer is no.

Nathan Garner
Creative Director

Austin Wells Design Limited
One Elmgate Drive - Littledown - Bournemouth BH7 7EF
t 01202 301271 e email@hidden w http://www.austinwellsdesign.co.uk

Member of NAPP

On 8 Oct 2009, at 00:29, waltd wrote:

On 7 Oct 2009, 11:26 pm, John-Paul Kernot wrote:

I suggest a third party solution. www.viewbook.com. Faster, easier,
prettier.

When the next person asks you, take a look at the ScriptyLightbox
Action. The gallery loads each photo using Ajax, so your only page
load is for the thumbnails, not the big pictures.

Walter

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8

The function is there in the underlying Lightwindow.js script that the
Action uses, but I haven’t figured out a way to expose it in the
Freeway idiom. It relies on file naming and folder naming to work at
all, and I haven’t found a way to make that easy enough to do in
Freeway, so I deliberately hid those features until I can.

Walter

On Oct 8, 2009, at 4:29 AM, Nathan Garner wrote:

Is there a way of have a ‘next’ button with the scripty lightbox
rather than closing and opening another? I have seen it mentioned
before. No a major problem if the answer is no.

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9

I don’t blame you Walter!

Regards,

Nathan Garner
Creative Director

Austin Wells Design Limited
One Elmgate Drive - Littledown - Bournemouth BH7 7EF
t 01202 301271 e email@hidden w http://www.austinwellsdesign.co.uk

Member of NAPP

On 8 Oct 2009, at 14:21, Walter Lee Davis wrote:

The function is there in the underlying Lightwindow.js script that
the Action uses, but I haven’t figured out a way to expose it in the
Freeway idiom. It relies on file naming and folder naming to work at
all, and I haven’t found a way to make that easy enough to do in
Freeway, so I deliberately hid those features until I can.

Walter

On Oct 8, 2009, at 4:29 AM, Nathan Garner wrote:

Is there a way of have a ‘next’ button with the scripty lightbox
rather than closing and opening another? I have seen it mentioned
before. No a major problem if the answer is no.

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10

Thanks to all who continue to follow this thread.

Just went to Viewbook. The first two of their Example pages I clicked to were broken: one had an error message in the gallery area, one gave no page at all, just a blank browser window. Does not inspire confidence. My client is particular about “branding” through color, and wouldn’t stand for logos, etc. So another twenty bucks a month for what should be a couple simple gallery pages won’t fly.

For our purposes of showing up to 80 pictures in a gallery, a Lightbox effect would have to be applied to a scrolling gallery of thumbnails. No way the client would go for visitors having to scroll a page showing all thumbnails as inline items, all visible at once. And if I’m going to make a scrolling thumbnail strip, I might as well use SSPro, right? Or am I, as often happens, missing something?

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