Entries for month: “July 2009”
Memento Image Gallery Plugin
Before I even knew about Mango Blog, I ran my own home brew blog system. It did not have very many features but it worked for the time, and I was proud of what I had been able to create. But it took me nearly a year to make the move and convert my personal blog over to Mango Blog simply because it did not have the features I wanted from it. One of those features that held me back was a photo gallery. I tried to use flickr but my technophobic family cried fowl! They liked the original lightbox style image gallery, and found themselves lost and confused when all my photo links directed them to flickr.
Thanks to Mango Blog's plugin architecture I was able to create a simple but functional photo gallery system to solve my problem. I am calling it "Memento". It was based loosely on my Auto Gallery script that I have been using for years to simplify the automation of image galleries. I just made it even easier to use by adding an image resizing cfc that automatically creates the thumbnails for you. No more creating two versions of your image in Photoshop. Hooray!
Download the Memento Plugin For CF8+
- Plugin version:
- 1.1 for CF8
- Last Updated:
- 2009-07-28
- Requires:
- Mango Blog 1.3+
- Auto-install URL:
- http://www.visual28.com/assets/content/mango/Memento-v1-1.zip
CF 7 version now available
I gave up trying to make ColdFusion 7 work with my original version of Memento. No matter how hard I tried, I could not make the two work correctly. I did manage to chunk out the CF7 only bits and get it to work on my CF7 server. Since it's such a hassle, I won't be updating this version unless there really is a demand for it in the future. Instead my efforts will be in making the the CF8+ version more robust and extendable.
http://www.visual28.com/assets/content/mango/Memento_CF7.zip
Installation
When you first install Memento it will create a new folder called (can you guess?) "memento" in your assets/content directory. This is where all the images and files are put when you use the file explorer that comes with Mango Blog so you don't have to learn how to upload files just for Memento. Just do it the same way your already used to.
Getting Started
Using Memento is pretty easy (I hope). Start by creating a new folder inside of the "memento" folder to hold all your images. I refer to it as an album as that term seems to make the most sense. For discussion sake, let's call the album "test". Upload your pictures to the "test" album.
On any page or post where you want to include your photo gallery, type in the editor [memento:AlbumName] Using our example above, you would type [memento:test] That's pretty much all there is to it.
Just in case it is not too clear how to use Memento, I put together some videos that I think will help you understand how to use it.
The first time your album is called, Memento will automatically scan your album and create the thumbnails for you. Expect that the first time you call memento to create your thumbnails the page will take longer to load. Be patient. The more photos you have or the larger the images are you can expect longer load times the first time the thumbnails are generated.
Memento will also build out the code necessary for any of those fancy lightbox scripts. Memento is built to use either Shadowbox, Lightbox2, or Fancybox. If you use another lightbox script and wish to see it supported let me know either in the comments or with an email. I would be happy to include support for it.
Additional Gallery Features
One of the cool features about Memento is it's ability to scan your large images to check for new ones. If you later add new photos to an existing Memento album, Memento will automatically create that new thumbnail and display it on the page with the rest of the images.
What if you change your blogs design and part of that redesign is making all your existing thumbnails square? Maybe you want to change the size of the thumbnails, like making them bigger? No problem! Just delete the "thumbs" folder from inside your album and Memento will reprocess your album images making new ones based on your new settings.
Technical Requirements
Memento was built to run on CFMX 8 or higher. (CF 7 Version coming soon)
Requires jQuery plugin to use lightbox effects
Lightbox, Shadowbox, or Fancybox plugin required for overlay effect
Development To Do List
Memento is not perfect. I would like to see it grow and have ideas in mind for that growth. If people like the plugin and find it useful I will continue to build on it. Here are some of my thoughts for future upgrades.
Implement large image resizing (preview images). Currently original images are linked to thumbnails. Shadowbox will scale image to fit browser. However this may not be desirable in some situations where users upload large images that are 10 megapixels. Currently, the recommended process is to resize your large preview images first. 800pz -1200px is a pretty good size for most uses.
Option to keep or delete original files after preview images are built. Keeping originals will be handy if you change your mind and want to reprocess the images. Reprocessing thumbnails is as simple as deleting the "thumbs" folder in your Memento album folder. Deleting the originals save server space.
Option to place "Download Original" link in preview title or below thumbnail. I thought this would be helpful if you had a large image you wanted to offer as a download but also wanted to offer a larger but not full size preview to your visitors
Option to extract EXIF meta-data for image title, captions, and keywords.
Acknowledgements
I would like to point out the great work the guys at Developer Office have done creating an awesome cfc called iEdit. It served as the basis for putting this plugin together and helped me to work out the cfimage version of the plugin. Without the support of great open source products like iEdit and Mango Blog, we would not have such a great community. Hats off to all that develop and create open source software!
→ Respond NowTags: Freebies · Mango · Plugins
Easy Retweet 1.1
Thanks to the great feedback on my initial Easy Retweet plugin I have made a few enhancements to the 1.1 version of the Easy Retweet Plugin. It now supports a new event. It can now attach itself to the end of your blog post automatically. You no longer have to manually add the link to your content.
As I found out, not every theme supports the "beforePostContentEnd" event. If your not seeing the retweet links and you have it enabled you may have to add a line to your template. It's pretty easy and is only one line.
Open your index.cfm look for this line: <mango:PostProperty ifnothasExcerpt body /> Right after it add the following line: <mango:Event name="beforePostContentEnd" />
We will make a similar change to the post.cfm page. Find the line that reads <mango:PostProperty body /> and again add the folloing line after it: <mango:Event name="beforePostContentEnd" /> That's it. Save your templates and upload them to your site.
Get the Easy Retweet Plugin
- Plugin version:
- 1.1
- Last Updated:
- 2009-07-24
- Requires:
- Mango Blog 1.3+
- Auto-install URL:
- http://www.visual28.com/assets/content/mango/EasyRetweet1.1.zip
→ Respond NowTags: Freebies · Mango · Plugins
Shadowbox Plugin
Hands down, Shadowbox is my favorite javascript lightbox. Not only does it make creating image galleries a snap, but it can also make displaying Flash videos easy, Quicktime, AVI, and WMV files are all done with a simple hyperlink.
David Freerksen created the original Mango Blog plugin, and I do not wish to take credit for his work. The Shadowbox3a plugin is really just a re-skining of the original shadowbox plugin by David. So even though I love the shadowbox plugin, I could not find a place in my heart for it with it's original skin. I felt the original skin is a usability disaster.
Below is a side by side comparison between the original shadowbox and the 3a version. It's a very small difference but it has spared me hours trying to defend it's very existence to my superiors. Because of this one change, I no longer receive phone calls from people saying the don't understand how to get back to the main page where they just came from. Just goes to show that just because it makes sense to you and I It may not make sence to those that are less savvy
Since I already modified the Shadowbox plugin, and because I am releasing a photo gallery plugin later this month. I wanted to post my modified plugin in case any of you also hate the original shadowbox skin.
Download The Plugin
- Plugin version:
- 1.0
- Last Updated:
- 2009-07-21
- Requires:
- Mango Blog 1.3+
- Auto-install URL:
- http://www.visual28.com/assets/content/mango/shadowbox3a.zip
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Fancybox Light
Fancybox is a great lightbox alternative because it is easy to customize and it looks really nice. I used it for the first time in my AutoGallery script and thought it worked out nicely. This past week I have been working on a photo gallery plugin for mango blog called "Memento". I have decided to make the code a little cleaner by separating the fancybox code from the rest of the plugin. It made the most sense as it allowed users to make their own decision about what lightbox script they wanted to use.
I am releasing this plugin as a "light" version because it uses the older 1.0.0 version of fancybox and does not have as many options as the current release of fancybox (currently 1.2.1). Many of the newest features of fancybox appear to be made in an effort to make it work more like Shadowbox by incorporating more media types than just images. For a photo galery this isn't necessary and the light version works just fine. I do plan to release a full version later if people find it useful enough to merit the work. If your a big Fancybox fan let me know in the comments.
- Plugin version:
- 1.0
- Last Updated:
- 2009-07-20
- Requires:
- Mango Blog 1.3+
- Auto-install URL:
- http://www.visual28.com/assets/content/mango/fancybox-light.zip
→ Respond NowTags: Freebies · Mango · Plugins
sIFR3
A while back I started working on a sIFR text replacement plugin for mango blog. For what ever reason I stopped working on it and there it sat on my hard drive wasting away. So rather then have it waste away I thought I would post it here for you all to take a look at and maybe add to it. The plugin currently works as is. You can test it using the really bad font I included with the download or use the sIFR Generator to test your own.
Known Bugs: Advanced styling not working properly. Better to style with theme css.
- Plugin version:
- 1.0
- Last Updated:
- 2009-07-14
- Requires:
- Mango Blog 1.3+
- Auto-install URL:
- http://www.visual28.com/assets/content/mango/sIFR3.zip
→ Respond NowTags: Freebies · Mango · Plugins
