Well, yesterday officially marked the first alpha release of imagefield_gallery 2.0. This is a signficant upgrade in terms of administration UI, and I've got some new features in the pipe for this one as well. Unfortunately I made the mistake of leaving out some css/js files for the first alpha release and I've been fighting with CVS a bit to try to fix the issue. I'm hoping my most recent release will handle this problem.
New Stuff:
The Administration was 2 different pages, these pages gave a user access to ALL of the different administration details for content type settings and css settings. Unfortunately, this system gave users a few too many options, and as such, it made for a less usable interface. The new interface has been streamlined into one main page, and from there there are individual sub-pages that allow users to alter eligable content types, and update their css settings. Along with that comes some "at-a-glance" details about your content types, the fields they're using and what your css settings are with out actually navigating to the individual pages. I'm hoping that this will make for a nicer experience over all. This did however require a couple of extra hooks into the gallery modules, so if you happen to be one of the 2 groups who have told me about galleries you built that hooked into imagefield_gallery, then be aware, you're going to need to do some upgrade. Additionally a few of the hooks scope have changed, and you may need to take that into consideration (I certainly did). Also worth mentioning... if you have a gallery that hooks into imagefield gallery... GIVE IT BACK! The community could certainly use a few more gallery types.
Upcoming Features:
This brings me to my next point which is that I WILL be building a new gallery type for this release. So by the time we hit beta, I should have 2 gallery types to choose from. Adding to the list of new features is the long talked about, but never implemented node-reference feature. I've been talking about this one for a while, and it's finally starting to take shape. This should allow you to attach imagefield_galleries to nodes with a node reference to nodes with imagefields on them... that's a confusing sentence. Suffice it to say, you'll be able to have a node type with a node reference widget on it. And if that widget references nodes with imagefields attached to them, then imagefield gallery can pull those images and display them in a gallery as though the images were attached to a single node.
I'm hoping this proves useful, I have a usecase for it right now, however, the nature of "multi-value" node references is making me a little leery at the moment. I'm still wondering why it doesn't work the same way free tagging taxonomy works. But that's not really my issue at the moment, so perhaps a discussion for another day.
Points of interest:
It's also worth noting that I'm considering a move to stop supporting imagefield 1/imagecache 1 with the 2.x release cycle of imagefield_gallery. This is an effort to keep the world in general moving forward, but also an effort to keep my code as clean/lean/drupaly as possible. I'm still unsure of my feelings in this regard as it will require all users to be php4+ compatible. But there are a lot of good reasons to help force people in that direction, so perhaps there's no harm. I'd really love some feedback on this particular issue.
Comments
Upload through User Interface is on your agenda as well
June 21, 2008 - 4:13pm — eigentor (not verified)Sorry for being a nuisance (I already created an issue). But Image Galleries should definitely de End-User-Centered. As there is funnily no real Best Practice for simple Image galleries in Drupal - strange but true.
So - I am very much looking forward to my users being able to mass-upload the 20 pictures they shot in Szeged through a form, and have a coffee while their broadband does the work.
Thanks so far for the great work!
A question of zones
June 22, 2008 - 12:49am — Kris VanderwaterThat's a great comment, and I'd love to help you out in that arena, but truthfully, that isn't even in the module's "zone" of responsibility. Imagefield Gallery's only point is to take images that are already uploaded (via imagefield at the moment) and display them in a nice gallery. This is really an improvement for imagefield or asset, or some other module of that type to make. It's sort of like asking the army to hunt down an enemy submarine... the army might have some hardware that could help... but truthfully it's the navy that's equipped to handle that problem.
Kris
Inline slideshow
June 22, 2008 - 4:16am — Adrian B (not verified)I'm looking for a way to present an inline slideshow with images a captions, much like the one CNN uses. I was thinking that a multivalue imagefield combined with Imagefied Gallery could be a solution, don't you think?
Absolutely
June 22, 2008 - 4:36am — Kris VanderwaterThis is exactly the sort of use case for which imagefield gallery was built. It's just a matter of building the gallery type and plugging it in. If you want some guidance on this one, feel free to contact me.
Kris
I mixed it up
June 23, 2008 - 12:09am — eigentor (not verified)Sorry for mixing up things - the issue I posted is for Imagefield upload module - and there it belongs to present a user interface for mass uploads.
http://drupal.org/node/267241
Love your yellow submarine metaphora :DD
Thanks
June 23, 2008 - 12:31am — Adrian B (not verified)That was the answer I was looking for :) I'll look into this later and if I have any questions I'll come back. I guess there's no available gallery type already written for this kind of gallery, so maybe I'll have to write it myself.
Stay with 1.x or go with 2.x alpha?
June 23, 2008 - 4:35pm — Adrian B (not verified)What version would you recommend for a soon-to-be-live site, should I stick with 1.4 or use the alpha of 2.0?
Node Reference
June 23, 2008 - 11:50pm — Tobi (not verified)Wow, cannot wait to test the node reference, when it comes to beta. That is exactly what I need ;)
Tobi
2x or not 2x?
June 24, 2008 - 3:31am — Kris Vanderwater@Adrian B
Personally I'd use the 2.0 alpha2 release. I don't think there are any bugs in it that aren't also in 1.4 (as far as I know). And it should make it easier to deal with the administration you might have to do. Plus I need the feedback. I don't think that 2.0 is any less stable than 1.4 at the moment, it's simply alpha because I intend on adding new features still. You might use 2.0 alpha 2 until I release beta. There will be a number of other alphas but alpha 2 should suffice for you for the moment. 1.x will not get any more love from me probably.
@Tobi
It will open doors with what you can do with it. My biggest complain is how multi-value node reference work at the moment, but I'm not fixing that problem so... Anyway, the node reference stuff is probably 50% there internally, and once I've got that going I'll release it. I'll be putting up dev releases soon if all goes well, and that should let people evaluate things better.
Too late :D
June 24, 2008 - 7:42pm — Adrian B (not verified)I was in a hurry, so I used 1.4 for now.
I made this ugly-as-hell-hack (really!) on the imagefield_gallery_lightbox2 module to transform it to my desired inline slideshow function. Basically I hide all the other thumbnails and prints the title field and some navigation (previous, image 1 of x, next). (Of course, I set the thumbnail size to a larger size than usual, but that's a setting outside the module.) All the other lightbox2 functionality remains.
It not the kind of code that I'm proud of, but it works for now :)
Sounds Fascinating
June 26, 2008 - 3:28am — Kris VanderwaterI'd love to see it, maybe we can clean it up into some better code. If you http://www.drupalbin.com it, and post it here, I'd love to take a look at it.
Kris Vanderwater
Does the new version work in Drupal 6
June 27, 2008 - 12:52pm — Drupal Fan (not verified)Great work Kris (and co.)
Does this new version work with Drupal 6.x? I need a nice gallery to use in 6 :-)
Unfortunately No...
June 28, 2008 - 7:33am — Kris Vanderwaterif you check the project page for the module you'll see more in depth on this status. 2.0 development has proceeded as I needed it for a client, however imagefield and imagecache (dependencies for me) are not yet upgraded to 6.x. My intention is to do as straight an upgrade from this version to 6.x compatibility, but that will depend greatly upon imagefield and imagecache. After that I'll start with 3.x which will probably end up being a rewrite from the ground up to take advantage of some new features I believe I'll have access to in d6. We'll have to take that one step at a time however.
Kris Vanderwater
some questions
August 12, 2008 - 11:02am — albiees (not verified)1- imagecache2 has 'defect' that for to work want imageapi.module that work only with php5; so isn't very good for who have many others module that work with php4;
maybe develope Imagefield gallery compatible only with imagecacahe2 not is a good path, or is possible to have an imageapi that can also to work with php4?
other if are in prevision for future version:
2- generally gallery have many photos, but if are all in a page the load isn't fast; have you in project to insert options for subdivide same node into more pages?
3- insert caption for to have photo's label
4- download more photos at once
Albiees
August 12, 2008 - 10:24pm — Kris Vanderwaterimagecache2 is dependent upon imageapi, that however is a benefit, not a detriment. PHP4's end of life was last week, doesn't mean we'll never use it again, but it does mean that we should be focusing on PHP5. It would be beneficial to you to find a host who provides PHP5 hosting. We could certainly help in that regard if you're having troubles. However, I still support imagecache1 as well. It's worth noting that Drupal 7 will be php5 specific, and many of the most popular addons for Drupal 6 are already dependent upon php5.
As for the rest of your questions, there are many gallery solutions and while IFG strives to be THE solution, that's simply not always possible, and a views based solution for drupal 5 is still relevant for situation in which there are MANY images.
Photo Labels is something that's supported by the way theme functions can be over-ridden now, so if you'll do a little bit of research into theme functions in Drupal, that should go a long way towards getting you what you need. After I release imagefield gallery 2 I'll be putting together documentation specifically for it, and this is such a requested alteration of the existing system that I will probably outline how it is done.
Horizontal thumbnails
August 21, 2008 - 5:51pm — Anonymous (not verified)Thanks for the module.
I have 1 question.
1. How do I set a grid of say 5x2 thumbnails?
thanks you
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