mrs_exif_lab Brings Exif Data ToolTips to your Slimbox

marios · 2007-01-31 02:28:46

This is yet another Gallery Plugin. While I knew, that some of the Gallery Plugins are very powerfull and much better than this one, I needed something more custom made, that fits my specific needs, while building a complex Gallery Site.

Why ?

Among Christiphe Beyl’s Slimbox implementation (which is a mootools extension) this plugin lets me sort images by Image category, anywhere I need it.
The main purpose of this plugin though is to display the EXIF DATA inside the Tooltip of the Image Thumbnails.

I wanted that my familiy members and friends can see this information along with the thumbnails, and I also want to see this data myself while I browse or review my galleries.
I also don’t want to use online Services to handle my images despite Server load, but TXP solely, without any other Gallery Extensions.
I never liked this Idea from the Beginning, when Flickr first showed up.

Features

Exifer by Jake Olefsky is used here to get at the bulk exif Data which the plugin then transforms into an assortment of 16 most common or most interesting EXIF propeties in a human readable form.

How much and which of this data should be displayed inside the ToolTip can by configured with the plugin’s custom Tag attribute values in a human-readable form.
The CSS of the ToolTip can be styled to your custom needs, if wanted.

The mootools Library and the necessary dependencies are not necessary, since, they are already included in the plugin.

Images can be either filtered by category or or/and by a custom string that can be set with a tag attribute.
Limit and offset can be altered.

Example Gallery

Here is an small example gallery , that shows the plugin in action.

Download and online-documentation

Version 0.1 Package
Available here
Version 0.2 Plugin Update
Available here

Note: In case you haven’t used this yet, you need both downloads then.

This is the first version and I’ve tested on TXD with a whole bunchload of javascript madness together and it seems to work fine.
Keep in mind though, that I am Beginner with PHP, so be gentle.

Downsides

Since to make this work, I need the FX effects dependencies of the mootools Library as well, the whole Size of the compressed script Library is a bit scary.
May be this can be improved in the future.
By default the caption data is displayed in the Footer of the slimbox popup. This has the disadvantage, that the default title tooltip pops up as well.
This Behavior can be disabled, if wanted ( Currently though the caption data then get’s hijacked and doesn’t show up in the popup.)
See for your self.

Keep in mind that some Image Editing Software and Plugins strip this Data from the Image Files, and so does Photoshop when using the Save for Web option.
To work around this, (PS7) you want to make use of the Image Size command instead.
( Just make an action droplet for bulk processing )
From the Image plugins side, aba image_import will do well for bulk uploading.

Credits

This plugin would not have been possible without the Existence of Graumeisters ExtendTips Extension, which goes around the problem, that there is no reasonable cross browser and standard compliant way to emulate styles and linebreaks inside the title attribute.
( Well, not yet at least, but mootools is showing the way)

I first intended to pull the EXIF Data from static files which works as well, and then changed my mind on this later on.
Due to the 64kb Size limitation, this option is not include in the plugin and remains unreleased.
Thanks to Steve Dickinson also for his Advice on proper file handling in PHP.

For brevity the other Credit mentions are inside the plugin Help and the on-line documentation.

regards, marios

Last edited by marios (2007-02-08 02:40:54)

net-carver · 2007-02-01 07:16:38

marios

I have to admit I haven’t tried this yet (actually, I don’t have any source of digital images to extract exif data from!) but I do want to say congratulations on publishing your first plugin!

marios · 2007-02-03 03:40:45

Unfortunately, ExtendTips doesn’t work on neither IE A-Grade Browser.
I’m now trying to see if that is even possible with r83 of the mootools library.

( Just discovered that today. I had been too lazy to test on Explorer as well )

If not, then this will take a long time until it works on Explorer as well.
(As long as it takes to learn stuff)

regards, marios

Last edited by marios (2007-02-03 03:44:02)

marios · 2007-02-07 19:49:57

Hi again,

Sorry, for beeing late here, I didn’t have internet access during the last days.
However, to make it short:

The reason, why ExtendTips wouldn’t work on IE Browsers, is, is that it can only accept inline HTML Tags, while the EXIF Data get’s rendered in Block Level Tags as a Definition List. ( which is something that I do not want. I want block level Tags )

The good news is, that this can be rectified without too much Trouble.

Apart from that, I have a couple of changes in mind for this.

(Custom string filtering method will have support for not loosing the caption field for other data as well.)

@Steve, if you want to just test the plugin, in the download package, there is a sample image inside the exifer include folder.
Next version will have some sample images for testing included.

That’s it for now.

regards, marios

Last edited by marios (2007-02-07 19:51:27)

marios · 2007-02-07 23:24:49

The problem is fixed now.
New download available tomorrow.

regards, marios

marios · 2007-02-08 02:48:00

Update is now available.
This Update fixes the Exif ToolTips for IE6/7 plus a couple of other things.
To update your current Exif version, just use the second download link above and replace the plugin file,
The rest remains untouched on your Server.
Note: Some z-index display Issues still remain, in case there are form Elements on the page.
(This will be looked into another time)

Finally: My Apollogies for all the things I have promised and haven’t done yet.
(Life is getting increasingly more difficult here in Greece, and I don’t get done even 20% of all the things , I want/need to do)

regards, marios

Last edited by marios (2007-02-08 02:49:52)

marios · 2007-02-18 08:40:06

This difference in the download count tells me, that poeple are simply not reading before installing.
So , as a reminder:
You need to download both versions, or else, your ToolTips won’t show up in Explorer.

The following patch solves a small accessibility issue ( in the CSS file slimbox.css)
replace:

.ttt { display: none;}

with:

.ttt { position: absolute; left: -999px; width: 990px; }

(off-left tecnique)

I also seem to have forgotten table prefix support.
(All that should be available in the next version)

regards, marios

marios · 2007-04-06 17:35:40

I found a bug, that will cause the plugin, either to skip existant exif data or dispay the non-availability-default message, allthough, data exists.

Don’t have the time to fix it right now, since i’m off for easter.

To work around this, allways include the model value for the exif_tags tag attribute of the main tag.

The fixed version will be available after easter.

regards, marios

Last edited by marios (2007-04-06 17:59:15)

sisushka · 2007-08-22 10:34:34

Hi Marios,

I love your plugin (so do the clients of mine) :) but I found out that in one case it behaves weirdly. If I use it for two or more sections, it makes my site down. Well, not whole, but the default page which is meant to redirect to default section called /home.

The error looks like this:
Fatal error: Cannot redeclare mrs_parse_exif() (previously declared in /home/html/retriever-sport.sk/public_html/textpattern/lib/txplib_misc.php(512) : eval()'d code:303) in /home/html/retriever-sport.sk/public_html/textpattern/lib/txplib_misc.php(512) : eval()'d code on line 303

I’m running TXP 4.0.4.

I’m not sure whether is this a fault of plugin or my TXP structure, but a helping hand would be very appreciated.

Last edited by sisushka (2007-08-22 10:36:26)

marios · 2007-08-22 19:04:44

I will actually have to test it and take a closer look. I have found some other Issues as well. Will take some time though.

regards, marios

marios · 2007-08-25 21:10:32

Not compatible with version 4.0.5

Now I can not access my network disks, where I already had tracked down some bugs.
This plugin must be updated for 4.05.
If you want to give a helping hand chime in.

regards, marios

marios · 2007-10-03 09:53:31

The plugin will remain in limbo unless someone want’s to adopt it, or until I have the time for it.

A couple of Ideas I had:

Rewrite the shabby code and make it dependent on Bloke’s plugin library, so it depends on Bloke’s slimbox plugin, and can be used seperately with smd_slimbox.

Move out the mootols stuff of the plugin and make it dependent on Folder.

regards, marios

Last edited by marios (2007-10-03 09:54:02)

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#1 2007-01-31 02:28:46