on 11/25/08 mjatharvest wrote:

I’ve been using slide show pro director() any time a client asks me to add a photo gallery page of their church events

pros
-easy to install
-simple, intuitive interface
-resizes photos automatically on the fly (really helpful for non-techy users)

cons
-you have to pay about $30 for each domain you use it on
-if you have a lot of sites, updating several installs can become time consuming
-requires flash
-no integration with the cms(client has to use two admin panels, one for the site, and one for their photo gallery, and can’t easily link between the two)

The main thing that keeps me from using the Galleries api now is photo resizing. I would have to train all my clients to download some free software like pixresizer() and make sure they always used the exact same pixel dimensions before they added pictures under media.

A possible solution would be to give administrators the ability to set default max pixel dimensions for a large image and thumbnail image sitewide, maybe in the site settings. Then two images would automatically generate at those sizes each time a picture is added under media. We could create an xml file of all the galleries for a flash slideshow if we wanted too, but if we knew the pictures would always be the same we could implement a standards based solution much more simply.

Maybe way in the future there could even be a self contained ajax gallery that we could just drop into a page with a monklet call, we can all dream right?

I would also love to hear about creative implementation and success stories with the existing photo gallery api, I could be missing something obvious that’s available now.

Also, what sort of photo gallery functionality, if any, will be available in cobblestone?