Forum OpenACS Q&A: Slide show gallery package created

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Posted by Nick Kokkos on
Hi everyone!

I have managed to write a package, which I have uploaded to file-storage (slideshowgallery.tar) ,
that encapsulates Jonathan Schemoul's SmoothGallery slide
show javascript library ( http://smoothgallery.jondesign.net) Based on your feedback
we may commit it to cvs once it matures enough. For the time being, this
package uses an old version of Jon's smoothgallery. Latest version,
I believe, lets you choose from multiple picture categories, and there is also a flickr feature.

Basically, I wanted to learn openacs and in the meantime contribute something back. This
is something I did while not having enough time so be aware, there may be bugs.

I went through the docs+forums and various packages such as photo-album
and photo-album-lite and made something that uploads files, lists their thumbnails
using the listbuilder, uses the parameters features and the permissions
calls, and finally calls Jon's library to show the slide show.
The main drawback is that the files are uploaded to a www/images
folder and not through content repository. Also the data model is
dumb. You'll see for yourself. You need also to manually create the
table by running the sql files.

This is a first "draft" so there is room for improvement.
You may post your likes and dislikes so we can all see how
this can be improved. Ok, most of the "cool" functionality
is based on Jon's and Mootools team work (SmoothGallery is
based on the mootools ajax library), but openacs, i think is cool too.

I wrote this package on a suse linux box using openacs-5.2.3 and you
need to have ImageMagick installed. You need also to add more than 1 picture
to make the slideshow roll..

By the way, thanks to Paulo for his hint on how to embed thumbnails in the
listbuilder. It's used in this package.

Well, go ahead and upload some pictures!

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Posted by Nick Kokkos on
Sorry, Claudio, I meant you, not Paulo. I got the names mixed up 😊
Can this be merged with photo-album? I mean, can I install some of this functionality inside photo-album?

Great job!

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Posted by Nick Kokkos on
It shouldn't be difficult. In the beginning I was thinking of adding this as a photo-album feature but there was so much to learn so I created a new package instead. Right now I am reading the tutorials on content repository so hopefully in short time we can have this installed into photoalbum. I am planning to use Jon's version 2.0 of smoothgallery which supports multiple categories.
Stay tuned..