I know I’m opening a can of worms here, but I’m lazy and don’t feel like going back through the support forums right at this very moment.
I’ve been messing around with some new script stuff for Exhibit. Exhibit is the plugin for WordPress that inserts photos on this site. Anyhow, I’m trying to incorporate the thumbnails a bit more, as you can see if you click this link to the popup link page.
The local version uses some styles and PNG files to make the background transparent when you click the “Info” link at the bottom. I want to display photo info, but I don’t want it to cover the photo, but I don’t want to expand the size of the window too much, and I would really like thumbnail navigation inside the popup…
So what do you like best? I know there’s someone out there who wants next/previous links in the popup, and this version will be able to do that.
In other Exhibit news, I think I only told Valerie about the exciting new virtual file system stuff that Exhibit 2.0 does. You drop in an additional plugin and Exhibit can access your Flickr photo groups just as if they were sitting on your own server. With another virtual file system plugin, you could set up one site with WordPress and Exhibit as a “photoblog” (Did I mention that Exhibit 2.0 will have gallery-like output? I guess not.) and then on your “blog” site you can reference the files in your gallery through the regular Exhibit interface, just like they were in that blog. Additional photo-storage systems should be similarly easy to implement.
I’ve started work on the photo cropper. You will be able to specify either the entire photo to use as a thumbnail, or a custom region that you draw onto the image.
I’ve decided that Exhibit 2.0 will support up to three image sizes for each photo - native, web, and thumbnail. With this you could (possibly) toss another plugin in there that would let you display smaller, usable photos in your blog, but still let the relatives get top-quality prints from online photo places. Haven’t decided how final the photo printing feature is yet, but it sounds like something Berta would want, so I may do it.
And the interface is already somewhat improved. Not as much clutter, and still all of the features. I can’t say it’ll hit the server less, but it’s going to be a smooth UI experience. I hope.
If I get ambitious, I’ll put some screen captures online. Exhibit 2.0 isn’t running anywhere yet, nor is it ready to test, so don’t get too excited.
Anyway, your thoughts on the popups are welcome.
Here’s an animated GIF of the integrated Image browser so far:
