Slideshow Folder (4.1)

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

Slideshow Folder integrates the Slideshow for Mootools javascript class into Plone. This powerful, lightweight, well-designed slideshow module was originally developed for TextPattern and has also been adapted for Joomla.

Slideshow Folder offers the following features:

• Animated slidehows with configurable transitions, including fade, wipe and push.
• Configurable duration of transitions, and slide timing
• Pan and zoom over slides (aka the "Ken Burns" effect)
• Thumbnail navigation and forward/back arrows (both are optional)
• Image captions
• Intelligent preloading of images to save bandwidth
  

We wanted develop a slideshow product for Plone using Zope 3 development techniques, so that we could avoid having to create subclassed content types for the slideshow folder and/or images. Instead, Slideshow Folder automatically recognizes when a Folder contains Images, and automatically offers slideshow settings and a slideshow view.

Dependencies

Slideshow Folder requires:

• Zope 2.9+ (developed and tested against Zope 2.9.7)
• Plone 2.5.2+ (developed and tested against Plone 2.5.3)
  
• CMFonFive 1.3.4 (http://codespeak.net/z3/cmfonfive)

We are waiting for Plone 3 RC1 to test Slideshow Folder against Plone 3.  Any compatibility or bug reports (and patches! we love patches!) are enthusiastically welcome.

Slideshow Folder is NOT compatible with Plone 2.1 or Plone 2.0.  It currently uses Zope 3 components (e.g. Formlib) that were first included with Plone 2.5/Zope 2.9.

Installation

Download the product and untar/unzip it. Copy the product folder "slideshowfolder" into your Zope Products directory, typically at $INSTANCE_HOME/Products. Restart your Zope instance.

Because Slideshow Folder uses the Zope 3 components, much of it is automatically loaded when you restart your Zope instance. The remaining components are loaded in using GenericSetup.

In the ZMI of a site navigate to portal_setup. Once there select the Properties tab and choose folderslideshow from the Active Site Configuration drop down list. Then select the import tab and click the Import All Steps button at the bottom of the page.

Finally, install CMFonFive into your Plone site at Site Setup>Add/Remove Programs or via portal_quickinstaller in the ZMI.

Usage

Within a standard Plone folder, add a standard Plone image and publish it. Once the first image is created, the containing folder gain a new entry in the "display" menu. Activate the slideshow view to view the folder as a slideshow.

To change the slideshow's settings, see the new "slideshow" tab on the folder.

An image's description will be used for its caption.

Note: the slideshow will only include published images in the folder. This may change in a future release. You can override it in browser.py if you are so inclined.

Limitations

Slideshow Folder currently has several limitations, most of which flow from the Slideshow for Mootools javascript class upon which it is based.  Future releases of Slideshow for Mootools may address some of these.

• Slideshow animations cannot be paused. (However, you can set the duration of each slide to a very long time, which effectively makes the slideshow advance only on mouse clicks.)
• Transitions cannot be set on a per-slide basis, only for all the slides in the slideshow.
• Thumbnails and captions cannot be perfectly centered beneath the slideshow image.
  
• Each image in your slideshow must be the same size and orientation.  If your image is too small, it will be rescaled. If you image is too large, it will be cropped randomly. 

Credits

Slideshow Folder was written by: Johnpaul Burbank - http://www.tegus.ca

The initial concept, project management and a few tweaks by: ONE/Northwest - http://www.onenw.org - including Jon Stahl, Jon Baldivieso and Andrew Burkhalter.

Special thanks to Conservation Northwest (http://www.conservationnw.org) for sponsorship and beta testing.

Slideshow Folder includes and is based on Slideshow for Mootools, by Aeron Glemann, which can be found at: <http://www.electricprism.net/aeron/slideshow. It also uses the Mootools javascript library, from http://www.mootools.net. We used the arrow icons from the Tango Desktop Project (http://tango.freedesktop.org).