December 8, 2006 at 3:30 p.m. Tagged as: Blog, Programming, Javascript

I mentioned SmoothGallery in a thread some days ago…
I will tell you a little bit more about it :)

Update
Smooth Gallery v1.0 is released, see the corresponding announcement !

Continuation of the article
But first, let’s see the history of SmoothSlideshow, and why I made it.

When I first started SmoothSlideshow, it was for the creation of http://www.universzik.com to have a little zone showing latest articles visuals and a little description: that’s how the timed mode began.
Then, I had to do something similar for http://www.pgo.fr but with arrows and no timer, to make the car turn on itself, that’s how the showcase mode came to life.

Seeing the good feedback I got on those effects, I made it opensource and released it with the name and website you know.

Now, after a mootools port, a major code rewrite (in objects), and a lot of other improvements, I see that a lot of people are starting to use this little component as a gallery, because there is no full-featured gallery system in javascript.

Now, let’s face it: SmoothSlideshow isn’t made for it, it’s splitting between manual and timed mode and it’s use of javascript arrays just makes no sense today both in terms of architecture and in terms of accessibility.

That’s why I have two news for you, one good and one bad:

• Let’s start by the bad one, SmoothSlideshow as you know it will be abandoned.
• Now the good one: it will be replaced by something that does everything the two smooth slideshow modes did, plus a lot of other things. The whole solution being fully customizable (you will be able to remove or add any component), and standard compliant (every data will be taken from your document using css selectors).

There will still be modes, but by how you configure it, some examples:

• with timer, without carousel, without arrows, and with links => old timed mode
• without timer, without carousel, with arrows, without links => old showcase mode
• without timer, with arrows, with links, with carousel => new gallery mode

But, as I repeat again, you can choose to activate or deactivate any of those elements and others.

Now, for the most impatient of you, I’ve set up a little demo page of the gallery mode… But remember, it’s still alpha-quality with bugs, compatibility issues, it doesn’t have all the features, etc… :-)

Eh you were waiting for the link, right ? ;) Here it is: http://smoothslideshow.jondesign.net/SmoothGallery/demo.html

Feel free to comment with all the bugs you find, all the features you would like to see, etc…

Oh, by the way, while you’re still reading my post (are you ?), I announce that we are making a shinny new website to hold all the documentation, different demos, etc… There should also be in the future (distant, near ? this is the question…) a module similar (in the concept, not the shape) to the “slideshowpro director”, but for JonDesign’s SmoothGallery.