Piclens Integration / Media-RSS feed for galleries

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Requested : http://alexrabe.boelinger.com/forums/?forum=5&topic=1232&page=1

Galleries and albums should have a RSS feed option

Original issue reported on code.google.com by alex.cologne on 13 Jan 2008 at 10:56

[GoogleCodeExporter]

PicLens (http://piclens.com/) displays Media RSS feeds
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_RSS) in a *stunning* "3D Wall".  PicLens 
supports
various web browsers (for Firefox:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5579)and also has a Wordpress 
plugin
(http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-piclens/).  But so far, I have been 
unable to
get it to work with nextgen gallery.  Too bad, because the 3D wall totally 
blows away
all other slideshows that I've seen.

Original comment by shackdou...@gmail.com on 26 Jan 2008 at 11:14

[GoogleCodeExporter]

very very cool plugin for Firefox, indeed wen need RSS feeds now...!!!

Original comment by alex.cologne on 28 Jan 2008 at 6:09

• Changed state: Accepted
• Added labels: Milestone-V0.90
• Removed labels: Milestone-V1.00

[GoogleCodeExporter]

This is great to see! Guess you can ignore my post on your blog.  :)

Dave.

Original comment by dham...@gmail.com on 29 Jan 2008 at 6:55

[GoogleCodeExporter]

FYI, I was successful tonight in hacking the wp-piclens plugin to create
PicLens-compatible media-rss feeds for nextgen-gallery.  I need to test it 
more, but
I'll release it to the community later this week.  It doesn't depend on or 
modify
nextgen-gallery at all.  Basically, what it does is parse the_content after 
nextgen
has expanded the "[gallery=]" tag.  It's not a replacement for native feeds in
nextgen, but it should be a good interim solution and as an example to learn and
build from.

Original comment by shackdou...@gmail.com on 29 Jan 2008 at 7:17

[GoogleCodeExporter]

My plugin wp-piclens-plus can be downloaded from
http://liferain.com/downloads/wp-piclens-plus/  This creates Media RSS feeds 
that
work with both NextGEN Gallery and PicLens.  It's not as good as it could be if 
it
were built into NextGEN, but it's a start.

Original comment by shackdou...@gmail.com on 30 Jan 2008 at 9:05

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Couple of suggestions for this feature.
first, I have been playing with shackdougall's PicLensPlus plugin, Cool! This 
is what
allowed me to play and see some things I want to mention.

1. Looks like Nextgen currently makes a fixed pixel/fixed dimension thumbnail
regardless of original photo orientation.  This looks kind of funny in the 3D 
wall.
First you see all thumbs on the wall looking exactly the same, then when you 
click on
one specifically it may switch to landscape or portrait.

2. Playing on my own I found that if I want each "Gallery" to show up 
separately in
PicLens, they each need their own MediaRSS file.  Where I found only having one 
main
file a problem was when I have some personal photos behind a password protected 
page.
  If a user starts up PicLens from a picture on an open page, they see every picture
in the RSS feed.  This might be a nice "Option" to have.  1 All photos 2 By 
Album, 3
By Gallery.

Just some thoughts,
Dave.

Original comment by DavidHam...@gmail.com on 1 Feb 2008 at 5:28

[GoogleCodeExporter]

In NextGEN, you can control the dimensions of the thumbnails in
Gallery>Options>Thumbnails.  Uncheck "Set Fix Dimension" to get a mixture of
landscape and portrait thumbnails.  Then edit your gallery (Gallery>Manage
Gallery>Edit), select the pictures, select action = "create new thumbnails", and
click okay to regenerate the thumbnails.  At least, I think that will work.  I
haven't actually tried it. ;-)

--Shack

Original comment by shackdou...@gmail.com on 1 Feb 2008 at 6:44

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Thanks Shack.  
I really need to look closer before I talk.  This is twice I have been wrong.
Yesterday, I said the issue with your Plugin was random, when in fact, it was 
related
to the UPPERCASE .JPG extensions. I will investigate a bit more "First" from 
now on.

Thanks,
Dave.

Original comment by DavidHam...@gmail.com on 1 Feb 2008 at 5:32

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I forgot to ask, what do you guys think about my second point?  Would it be 
possible
to control what comes up in the 3D wall by generating separate MediaRSS files by
album or gallery?  I admit my understanding of the wordpress framework is very 
weak.
My PHP is also weak.  Pretty much just a Win32 developer.

Original comment by DavidHam...@gmail.com on 1 Feb 2008 at 5:41

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I've thought a little about this, but I don't have a complete answer and I 
haven't
worked with PicLens enough to know how flexible it is.

In general, it is easy to create multiple MediaRSS feeds, but I haven't tested
PicLens yet to see if it is smart enough to use them.

wp-piclens-plus is already including the same images in more than one feed.  For
example, http://www.lisachristiephotos.com/?feed=mrss (feed1) is a feed that 
contains
images from several galleries and 
http://www.lisachristiephotos.com/?p=17&feed=mrss
(feed2) is a feed that contains only the beach photos (needs 1.0.5.1 to work).

Right now, when you browse (main page) http://www.lisachristiephotos.com/, it
includes a meta tag that allows PicLens to discover (feed1).  So, if you open
PicLens, it displays all the galleries.  When you browse (gallery page)
http://www.lisachristiephotos.com/?p=17, it includes a meta tag for (feed2), so
PicLens only shows the beach photos.

But it could work differently.  For example, when you browse (main page),
wp-piclens-plus could add feed meta tags for each individual gallery that is 
being
displayed.  Theoretically, PicLens would be smart enough to determine which 
images
are coming from which feed, so that when you click on a beach image, it would 
show
only beach images.  But I haven't tested this yet.  I don't know if PicLens is 
as
smart as we would like.

There's another case that's interesting.  
http://liferain.com/virtual-worlds/gallery/
shows a thumbnail for a gallery.  If you open PicLens on that thumbnail, then 
it only
shows the thumbnail.  What you would like to happen is for it to show all the 
images
that are in the gallery that the thumbnail represents.  And if there were 
multiple
thumbnails there, each representing a gallery, then opening PicLens on any given
thumbnail should show the images that are in that gallery.  This is another 
example
where the page would have to have multiple MediaRSS feeds to work.  But again, I
don't know yet if PicLens is smart enough to handle it.

I'll let you know after I've had time to implement some of this and test it.

--Shack

Original comment by shackdou...@gmail.com on 1 Feb 2008 at 6:28

[GoogleCodeExporter]

NGG [singlepic] tags pose a problem for PicLens.  They get expanded to 
something like:

<a href="http://blog/.../final_002.jpg">
<img class="ngg-singlepic ngg-left" "
src="http://blackbird.liferain.com/secondlife/wp-content/plugins/nextgen-gallery
/nggshow.php?pid=3&width=200&height=150&mode="
alt="final_002.jpg" title="final_002.jpg" />
</a>

Note that the src for the img is a call to a PHP script.  PicLens doesn't know 
what
to do with this.  When you create the NGG MediaRSS feed, you will probably have 
to
replace this with a direct link to an image in the feed.

I'm in the process of trying to understand how I should handle this in 
wp-piclens-plus.

Original comment by shackdou...@gmail.com on 4 Feb 2008 at 4:46

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Here's another case that's causing problems for wp-piclens-plus.  I'm not yet 
sure
what tag it is, but it gets expanded to javascript.  It's being used on this 
page:
http://lovhaug.net/blog/?p=27 and the javascript looks something like.

<script type="text/javascript">
var nggal9=new Array()
nggal9[0]=["DSC03759.JPG", "DSC03759.JPG", ""]
...
jQuery(document).ready(function() {
  jQuery("#nggal9").nggallery({
        imgarray    : nggal9,
        name        : "hannibal2",
        galleryurl  : "http://lovhaug.net/blog/wp-content/gallery/hannibal2/",
        thumbfolder : "thumbs",
        thickbox    : true,
        maxelement  : 20
    });
});
</script>

It's looking more and more like the MediaRSS feed *must* to be generated by 
NGG.  I
can hack around things like this in wp-piclens-plus, but it really needs to be
implemented directly in NGG.

Original comment by shackdou...@gmail.com on 4 Feb 2008 at 5:24

[GoogleCodeExporter]

to Comment #11) Yes, the Singlepic can create dynamic output, but with the 
cache 
option, PicLense can handle it, because then static files are generated.

to Comment #12) Yes, the jQuery solution is a problem for PicLense, but I will 
drop 
this mode in the next version. It doesn't work good and reliable...

I would confirm that a inbuild MediaRSS should be the best, main problem is 
that I 
can't get during the <link> section, the current post gallery. It would be the 
best 
that only the shown gallery is linked to PicLens.

I must play a little bit more with it...

Original comment by alex.cologne on 4 Feb 2008 at 5:41

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Thanks, Alex!  That has fixed the issues in Comments 11/12: Turning on "Cache 
Single
Pictures" and turning off "jQuery navigation".  I have successful reports back 
from
users on both counts.

Original comment by shackdou...@gmail.com on 5 Feb 2008 at 1:11

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Original comment by alex.cologne on 30 Mar 2008 at 10:49

• Changed title: Piclens Integration / Media-RSS feed for galleries

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Here's a good resource on the PicLens Website.  It confirms that PicLens can 
handle
multiple feeds on a single page and describes how you can setup PicLens to do 
paged
galleries.  http://piclens.com/lite/webmasterguide.php#albums

Original comment by shackdou...@gmail.com on 9 Apr 2008 at 5:24

[GoogleCodeExporter]

First pass of PicLense support in r270

Original comment by alex.cologne on 2 Sep 2008 at 2:27

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Improved in r274 along with Media RSS integration. Some polishing has to be 
done to
use all features provided by the new Media RSS API (plugin developers?).

Original comment by vpra...@gmail.com on 11 Sep 2008 at 1:02

• Changed state: Fixed
• Added labels: Milestone-Release1.0
• Removed labels: Milestone-V0.90