I have a couple of sites where I’ve implemented the Scripty Lightbox 2 action and it is working but I’m wondering if it’s possible to add a behavior (or two) to make it similar to how Scripty Lightbox works.
I am using Scripty Lightbox 2 on quicktime files of various lengths and playback sizes. The various playback sizes prevent me (as I understand it and from what I’ve seen) of using Scritpy Lighbox since there can only be 1 designated size per page. Even if I enter 3 different sizes for 3 different links I am presented with 1 size. Scripty Lightbox 2 handles this with no problems.
The issue I have with SL 2 is that when I click on some of the heavier quick times, there’s a moment where it appears to the user that nothing is happening. I’m guessing this 3-5 second span is happening during the cacheing of the QT. Scripty Lightbox appears instantly with the animation of the frame appearing and a loading animation while the cache process occurs. So the user sees a reaction immediately after clicking a link. Is there a way to get a similar behavior in SL2?
Getting greedy, it would also be nice to be able to choose whether to use the drop shadow ala SL2 or dim the page ala SL. That being said I have no idea how any of the coding is done and have enough trouble simply applying some of these actions. So I may be asking for the impossible and for that I apologize.
Any insights would be greatly appreciated, even if it’s just an alternate way of handling what I’ve set up.
Thanks to all of those who write actions that make jokers like me look capable.
The issue I have with SL 2 is that when I click on some of the heavier quick times, there’s a moment where it appears to the user that nothing is happening. I’m guessing this 3-5 second span is happening during the cacheing of the QT. Scripty Lightbox appears instantly with the animation of the frame appearing and a loading animation while the cache process occurs. So the user sees a reaction immediately after clicking a link. Is there a way to get a similar behavior in SL2?
SL does a double-take – it loads its stalling page, and then loads the actual requested content. The reason why SL2 does what it does is that it is trying to load enough of the content (if it’s an image or something else that it can work out the dimensions of) to figure out how large to draw the display window. Unlike SL, SL2 doesn’t resize itself after the content has loaded – it’s a one-shot deal.
I have seen what you’re describing, and I agree it’s not very good user experience. If I get a chance, I will see what I can do about this; perhaps a loading indicator of some sort, maybe just an animation of the link you just clicked to give a hint that “I’m working on it”.
As to the other request, I could easily disable the shadow or offer a choice of background color within the player window, and less easily offer the windowshade style instead. It’s trivial to do it on a modern browser, less trivial to make it fall back on IE < 9.
Thanks for the reply. A loading indicator or animation would be great. I’m thinking of the user sitting there after the initial click wondering if a) they mis-clicked b) that it’s a dead link. While I like the opening animation in SL a loading indicator would do the trick.
I tried to create a rollover to give the user the impression that they had indeed clicked something. I made the text change from white to gray, but the problem I then had was that the text stayed light gray on the page.
I think that I get what you are saying about the drop shadow and border colors. I am all for having options in layout but if it kills functionality then that’s that.
Thanks again for the quick response. If you come up with something I’d be happy to give it a test.