Products.slideshowfolder 4.0

Slideshow Folder provides a simple, elegant animated slideshow for Plone.

About

Slideshow Folder provides a simple, elegant animated slideshow for Plone.

Slideshow Folder integrates the Slideshow 2 javascript class into Plone. Slideshow 2 a powerful, feature-rich, easy-to-customize slideshow library – big thanks to Aeron Glemann all of the hard work he’s poured into it!

Slideshow Folder offers the following features:

• Animated slideshows with configurable transitions

• Navigation thumbnails

• Image captions

• Intelligent preloading of images to save bandwidth

• A play/pause/forward/reverse slideshow controller

• Looping and random-order slideshows

• Optional support for “lightbox” style image pop-ups

• Look and feel completely customizable via CSS

Design Rationale

Slideshow Folder uses Zope 3 development techniques to enable normal Plone Folders, Collections and Images with configurable slideshow views.

We wanted to develop a slideshow product for Plone that would avoid creating custom content types for the images and slideshow folders in order to allow easy installation, re-use of existing images in the site and to avoid “stranding” content in future upgrades or when you remove the product.

Dependencies

Slideshow Folder is easiest to install and use under Plone 3.x, but also supports Plone 2.5.2+. However, in order to use Slideshow Folder under Plone 2.5, you must be comfortable installing software from SVN checkout.

Slideshow Folder requires:

• Plone 3.0+ strongly recommended (Plone 2.5.2+ works, but requires the following dependences)

• CMFonFive 1.3.4 (ONLY if using Plone 2.5.x - http://codespeak.net/z3/cmfonfive/)

• Five 1.4 (ONLY if using Plone 2.5.x - http://codespeak.net/z3/five/)

• plone.app.form (ONLY if using Plone 2.5.x - check out from http://svn.plone.org/svn/plone/plone.app.form/branches/plone-2.5

Installation

Plone 3.x, buildout-based installer

If you are using Plone 3.x via a buildout-based installer, simply add “Products.slideshowfolder” to the [eggs] section of your buildout.

• Beginning with Plone 3.1, Plone’s universal installer for Unix uses buildout.

• Plone 3.2 and higher will use buildout for Windows, Mac OSX and Unix universal installers.

Plone 3.0.x, non-buildout installer

Slideshow Folder installs in the conventional way. Unzip the tarball and copy the product folder “slideshowfolder” into your Zope Products directory and restart your Zope instance. You can then install it into your Plone site from the Plone Control Panel or the ZMI’s portal_quickinstaller. Uninstall it the same way.

Plone 2.5.x, non-buildout installer

Download Slideshow Folder and its dependencies, listed above.

Install Slideshow Folder, CMFOnFive and Five in your Zope instance’s Products folder as normal.

plone.app.form must be checked out from SVN and installed in your Zope’s instance’s lib/python/plone/app/form directory. It can be a bit tricky to unpack the directories correctly. Tip: you get a directory called plone.app.form, but you need to go to your Zope instance’s lib/python folder and do:

mkdir plone (if it doesn't exist)
cd plone
mkdir app (if it doesn't exist)
cd app
mkdir form

Then go to your unpacked plone.app.form directory and do:

mv plone/app/form/*  yourzopeinstance/lib/python/plone/app/form

Plone 2.5.x, buildout-based installation

Add “Products.slideshowfolder” to the [eggs] section of your buildout.

Consult buildout documentation for tips on installing CMFOnFive, Five tarballs and plone.app.form from SVN. Warning: this will require some experience using buildout for more complex installations.

Using Slideshow Folder

Each Folder and Collection in your site will have a new option in its “action” menu – “make slideshow”. Choosing that will select a slideshow view for that folder and give you a new “Slideshow Settings” configuration tab. As soon as there are published images in the folder, you’ll see the slideshow. (Collections rely on the criteria that you put in them to render the images for the slideshow. Non-images are ignored. That means that workflow restrictions are based solely on your Collection’s criteria.)

To change the slideshow’s settings, see the new “slideshow settings” tab on the folder.

Each image’s Description will be used for its caption. If there is no description, the Title will be used.

Each slideshow will have an “disable slideshow” option in the action menu. This will revert it to being a normal Folder (or Smart Folder), including deleting the slideshow settings. (It will not delete any content, though.)

Note: The slideshow will only include published images in the folder. You can customize this (rather crudely) by customizing folder_slideshow.pt and calling the setWorkflowFilter method on the slideshow view. (Options include “None” or any valid workflow state.) Consult the interfaces.py for documentation on those methods. (Alternatively, you can use a Collection and not place any workflow restrictions on your criteria.)

Note: Only a subset of the options for Aeron Glemann’s library are supported via the ‘Slideshow Settings’ tab. See http://code.google.com/p/slideshow/wiki/Slideshow for the full list of options. If customization beyond the options exposed via the web interface is needed, you can customize slideshow_settings.js.pt to specify the additional options.

Note: You may use your own custom image content type as long as it implements the Products.slideshowfolder.interfaces.ISlideshowImage interface (which requires an Archetypes ImageField named ‘image’ in its schema.) (Plone 3.0+ only.)

Limitations

Slideshow Folder currently has several limitations, most of which flow from the Slideshow 2 javascript class it is based on.

• Transitions cannot be set on a per-slide basis, only for all the slides in the slideshow.

• In IE, the slideshow does not operate properly when logged in as a Manager and accessing the site at http://localhost/. You can work around this by using http://127.0.0.1/ instead. See http://plone.org/products/slideshowfolder/issues/46 for details.

Credits

Slideshow Folder was written by Johnpaul Burbank, with subsequent changes by Jon Baldivieso. Version 4.0 by David Glick.

Initial concept, project management and a few tweaks by ONE/Northwest, including Jon Stahl and Andrew Burkhalter.

Special thanks to Conservation Northwest for partial funding and beta testing.

Slideshow Folder includes and is based on Slideshow 2, by Aeron Glemann. Slideshow 2 uses the Mootools javascript library.

More information

Please see http://www.plone.org/products/slideshowfolder for more information, updates, documentation and bug reports.

ONE/Northwest is a nonprofit organization that provides technology assistance (including Plone-powered websites!) to environmental NGOs. If you’d like to support our work, including the release of open-source software like Slideshow Folder, please see: http://www.onenw.org/about/supporters/support-our-work

History

4.0 - final (2008-07-30)

• Documented workaround for obscure issue with viewing slideshow when logged in, using IE as the browser, and accessing the site at http://localhost/. [davisagli]

• Changed the permission checked when deciding whether to display a warning about needing to add images to a slideshow-enabled folder to ‘ATContentTypes: Add Image’. Also removed detail about publishing, since images are no longer associated with a workflow by default. [jessesnyder]

4.0 - release candidate 2 (2008-07-18)

• Worked around an obscure Javascript error affecting IE when logged in. [davisagli]

• Applied patch for http://code.google.com/p/slideshow/issues/detail?id=28&can=1 from upstream, which fixes an issue where images weren’t displayed when serving via a proxy. [davisagli]

4.0 - release candidate 1 (2008-07-11)

• Added “Slideshowfolder: Manage slideshow settings” permission (assigned to Manager, Editor, and Owner roles by default.) [davisagli]

• Added i18n infrastructure. [davisagli]

• Improved compatibility with things that are not ATImages but implement the same interface (ISlideshowImage). [davisagli]

• Switched settings form to use formlib. [davisagli]

• Modified mootools ‘protect’ flag to work around still-present conflict with kupuhelpers.js [davisagli]

• Switched to “Slideshow 2” javascript and Mootools 1.2. Changes to templates, settings to expose new features. [jonstahl]

3.0 alpha 2 - unreleased

• Using proper noLongerProvides zope.interface API for removing a marker interface from content object [andrewb]

• Removing testJSRegisteryHasResources per no longer present mootools.js, slideshow.js in JS registry. This is now pulled in via a metal slot (see below for more) [andrewb]

• Load javascript via a metal slot rather than via the javascript registry, to avoid conflicting with kupu. [davisagli]

3.0 alpha 1 - 2007.12.11

• Moved registration of “slideshow settings” action to Generic Setup; it gets re-registered in Plone 3.0 to a different action id via a separate profile.

1.2.2 - 2007.12.11

• Fixed conditional zope.annotations import in a more graceful way. [FinnArild]

• Removed newlines from image descriptions; they were breaking the js. Thanks to “Taun” for finding this. [jbaldivieso]

• Fixed another js bug caused by a misplaced comma. [jbaldivieso]

1.2.1 - 2007.10.29

• Fixed a minor bug where duration settings were not getting respected due to malformed JS. [jbaldivieso]

1.2 - 2007.10.22

• Finished support for Smart Folders – slideshows now show up properly for them. (Rich Topics are supported.) (issue #14) [jbaldivieso]

• Fixed the slideshow settings javascript so that it works in IE. [jbaldivieso]

• cleaned up the Generic Setup install steps. (No bugs were reported, but installation could have been a little funny before.) [jbaldivieso]

• Slideshows now use full absolute urls for image sources. This should mean that spaces in image names are escaped properly. (issue #15) [jbaldivieso]

1.1 - 2007.10.04

• Restructured how the slideshow settings are delivered to the template. Separated out the data from the presentation (no more HTML/JS coming directly from the browser view). In so doing:

  • gave support for Unicode image captions (issue #8)

  • gave skin-level support for filtering slideshow image content based on WF (i.e., showing non-published images in a slideshow is a template change now)

  [jbaldivieso]

• Modified the slideshow template to give feedback when the folder didn’t have content for a slideshow (including a message of advice if you are a content editor). (issue #7) [jbaldivieso]

• Uninstall process examines all folders in the catalog and unslideshowifies them (as long as you’re not reinstalling) (issue #9). Uninstall also removes its traces from portal_actions. [jbaldivieso]

• Refactored the way slideshows are activated. One switch does it all (including changing the view template). All folders may now be activated, regardless of whether they have images in them yet. Slideshows may also now be deactivated. [jbaldivieso]

• Use backgroundColor from base_properties for slideshow bg color (issue #3). [jbaldivieso]

1.0 - 2007.09.??

• First release.