Embed code

The HTML code needs to embed the Virtual3DGallery.swf viewer and pass a single flashvars variable called dataURL to the viewer. This variable must contain the URL to the JSON configuration file which configures the viewer.

If you are embedding the viewer within a page that contains other content it is also recommended set the wmode=window flash parameter so that HTML elements can be positioned above the flash content.

By default, this package uses the SWFObject Javascript library to do the embedding.

JSON configuration

The Flash viewer is driven by the JSON configuration which contains the list of images to display in the gallery, associated image metadata (title, author, description) and translations for the UI textual elements, e.g.:

{"images": [
    {"url": "http://my.server.com/images/image1.png",
     "title": "Nice scenery",
     "description": "Lorem lipsum..",
     "author": "dokai"},
    {"url": "http://my.server.com/images/image2.png",
     "title": "Screenshot of Foo",
     "description": "Lorem lipsum..",
     "author": "dokai"}
    ],
 "ui": {
    "enterRoomToolTip": "Click to enter",
    "fullscreen": "Fullscreen",
    "loadingImg": "Loading image:",
    "enterRoom": "Entering room [x] of [y]",
    "anaglyph": "Anaglyph"
 },
 "settings": {
    "anaglyphModeEnabled": "false"
 }}

The viewer does not care where the images and associated metadata come from so you can implement any custom logic that puts together the list (custom catalog queries, structural hierarchies, etc) as long as the resulting JSON document is valid.

The package contains an associated JSON schema document which can be used to validate the JSON configuration, e.g.:

from hexagonit.virtualgallery.schema import GALLERY_DATA_SCHEMA
from validictory import validate
import json

try:
    # Assuming the `my_custom_config` contains the Python
    # data structure with the image information.
    validate(my_custom_config, GALLERY_DATA_SCHEMA)
    json_config = json.dumps(my_custom_config)
except ValueError:
    # Validation failed, do something.
    pass

You might want to display the gallery somewhere else or possibly in a toolbarless new window. To keep all Plone stuff away from the virtual gallery use a URL like below to only get the title of the gallery and the Flash object that displays it:

http://<path>/<to>/<your>/<gallery>/<folder>/virtualgallery?ajax_load=1&ajax_include_head=1

1.0 (2011-08-26)

• Added support for configuring the image scale used in the gallery on per-context basis. [dokai]

• Updated documentation [dokai]

• Updated Finnish translations. [dokai]

• Support for translations added. [zupo]

• Fixed the Flash window mode so that Plone dropdown menus are visible on top of the Flash movie. [dokai]

• Updated the Flash movie to a new version. Highlights:

  • No more empty frames on walls.

  • The default position when entering a room shows the middle box with the room number better.

  • Redundant tooltips (prev, next, forward, backward, etc) removed.

  • Traversal through doors using mouse clicks.

  • Repositioned the prev/next and fullscreen buttons.

  • Fixed a bug with image info popups being sticky in fullscreen mode.

  • Fixed a bug with empty galleries.

  • Fixed a bug with tooltips not expanding correctly over different sized text.

  • Fixed a bug where in some cases clicking on an image would zoom-in on a wrong one.

  • Traversing through doors is possible with a single click.

  Removed also the now redundant entries in the JSON configuration.

  [dokai]

1.0b4 (2011-08-10)

• Really fix the packaging error. The setuptools unpack_tarfile function filters out symlinks when unpacking so they will not be present in the unpacked package. This, combined with some weirdness in either tar itself or the Python tar module which reverses the order of the link, caused the targets of the symlinks to be removed from the final unpacked package. [dokai]

1.0b3 (2011-08-10)

• Fixed packaging error in 1.0b2. [dokai]

• JSON schema validation. [zupo]

1.0b2 (2011-08-04)

• Code cleanups. [zupo]

• More comments and documentation. [zupo]

• More tests. [zupo]

1.0b1 (2011-08-04)

• Initial release. [zupo]