Flash-based galleries
:: Thursday, October 27th, 2005 @ 2:22:46 am
:: Tags: Computers
Like many people, I sort of hate Flash unless it’s used only for small, subtle parts of a website so the entire site still functions as you’d expect it to. But as of the last two journal entries, I’ve gone to the dark side and am using Flash for image galleries, mostly because I actually like looking through Flash-based image galleries. I like that the images fade into each other, thumbnails slide into place as you navigate, and that it pre-loads the entire gallery in the background.
To start my migration to Flash, I’m using SimpleViewer, a free Flash widget that displays images configured in an XML file. For those of us who are lazy, there are many ways to automatically generate SimpleViewer galleries, including using desktop apps like Picasa and Porta, both of which are easy to use and customizable via templates. Eventually, I will probably end up purchasing the code to SimpleViewer and customizing it further, but for now, I’m going to give the free version a try.
There were a few elements of my old HTML galleries that I wanted to preserve.
1. I wanted to make sure that people still had access to watermarked images for download. I know that SimpleViewer can be modified easily to provide access to the original jpgs, but I am not currently going down that route.
2. I want people to have access to the EXIF data in the images.
3. I want the index pages to be indexed by search engines.
4. I want to be able to link to specific images.
1 and #2 can easily be fixed by providing additional links or mouse-over behavior in the Flash app, but I have not been able to think of a way to make #3 or #4 possible without including a HTML version of the gallery as well.
At the moment, I’m including (below the Flash gallery) a table of filenames and captions (which are really what I want to be indexed, anyway) which can be shown and hidden like the EXIF data in most of my HTML image-view pages. This solves all four problems, but adds complexity that I’m not happy with. You have to navigate to a second slideshow to get to the desired images; providing download links and EXIF display in the Flash app itself seems like a more elegant solution to the first two issues, but doesn’t solve the others.
Are any of you out there away of a way to use Flash in a way that gives search engines access to filename and caption information? Can people link to specific parts of a Flash app?
I don’t know much about Flash, and have never worked with it. Guess it’s time to start…
| IMAGE CAPTION | DATE/TIME |
| A tiny Secretary Blenny (Acanthemblemaria maria) hides in a brain coral | 2005:07:24 08:05:47 |
| A tiny, tiny goby hangs out on a coral | 2005:07:25 06:28:38 |
| A small, green frogfish waves its lure around | 2005:07:25 06:58:44 |
| Squid sex: sperm sac implantation | 2005:07:26 08:10:24 |
| There were probably forty or more tarpin in the murky channel at Lac Cai | 2005:07:30 08:04:44 |
| Urchin detail | 2005:08:09 18:59:49 |
| A blue spotted ray | 2005:08:09 19:25:55 |
| A tiny filefish in front of a colorful soft coral | 2005:08:11 18:56:05 |
| Eric Cheng blows four bubble rings (photo: Dave Patchen) | 0000:00:00 00:00:00 |
| Soft coral crab | 2005:08:14 07:29:13 |
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Hi Eric, did you already have a look at the Adobe PS CS2 flash gallery. You can download them at:http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=2961
and they come with the flash source.
Flash the application is eviiil. I prefer not to rip my eyeballs from their sockets and so I rather fancy Laszlo. It uses the flash runtime as its visual engine, but your app is built declaratively in XML and procedurally in ECMAscript. It gives you the view framework I’d want to build in Flash anyway before doing anything else, and so it saved me about 3 months of eyeball-lessness. Lots of nifty web services, data-view-binding, and XML parsing built-in, too.
Not sure about search engine indexing, but you can pass the Laszlo app arguments via the url query. It could also, of course, be a shell gallery that reads your jpegs and metadata from the filesystem. If you have the server resources, you can actually serve dynamic Laszlo apps built on-the-fly with php … if such a thing would ever be necessary, I dunno.
Anyway, I wike it.
Lars - thanks for the CS2 flash gallery link. I’ll give it a try!
Eric - most Flash-based galleries these days read images and metadata from the filesystem. Otherwise, there is no way I’d use flash. SimpleViewer has an online-admin tool that lets you crank out XML dynamically for use with the app…
Flash is the debil! But then I dislike most things that require a plugin. But then again I use shutterbook which is a flash based photo gallery. I’m a walking contradiction.
This comment was not very helpful…
i really like how you can put the mouse cursor over the entire right half of the pic to advance to the next pic, and the entire left half of the pic to see the previous pic. those flashing arrows at the corners look nifty too.
eric, how do you feel about porta renaming all the files? i’ve been playing around with it, and i guess that’s the only thing that kinda bugs me, since sometimes people ask me for the original file, and it’s easier for me to find if i know the original file name. (or perhaps i haven’t found the option to switch off renaming?)
oops sorry, i’m reading your post again and realizing that porta and picasa are programs that incorporate simpleviewer, and that you might not have used porta to build your sample gallery. will look into simpleviewer now to see if there are more customizable options there …
Count me as one who doesn’t like Flash in any form including this one!