Category: FlashBox

Jacob Fresco pointed me to a bug that I would never ever have found without his help! So thx.

Hi, first, compliments on the great plugin. However, I do have some remarks. It seems that WordPress 2.1.2 with Wp-Flashbox 1.3 crashes Internet Explorer (=> version 6). When I disable Flashbox, everything works fine.

In Firefox, everything works like a charm… I cannot seem to find the cause of this problem. Any ideas?

Because I have a newly installed Windows XP, I only have IE7, Firefox 2 (my default browser) and for testing Opera (used for testing FlashBox)

So to test this bug I installed Multiple IE which makes it possible to install multiple versions of IE on your PC.
And of course tested IE6: no bugs, no crashes, no nothing, it worked like it supposed to.

Just to be sure, I tested IE6 today at work.
Woooo, that’s an extreme bug.

First you get:

And then you get:

A little search on the internet revealed the problem: “Press OK to continue loading the content of this page”
It’s the changes Microsoft made to IE in response to the Eolas patent lawsuit.

But I thought SWFObject would fix this? (internet explorer eolas changes and the flash plugin/)
But when I tested the demo pages at deconcept with IE6 I also got
“Press OK to continue loading the content of this page” but not the “Operation aborted”

So there must be something wrong with FlashBox. But before I can find out what it is… I have to know the difference between my home-computer and my work-computer, so I can find out what goes wrong.

Can I use FlashBox if I don’t use WordPress
Yes, you can!
But you will have to install FlashBox manually: the instructions for that can be found here

Why does FlashBox work differently on Firefox 2 Apple
I can’t stand this, but it’s true. I can’t get FlashBox to work the same in all browsers and OS. The complete story can be read here. I came to the conclusion that I can’t do anything about this problem. And just need to work around it.

Why is FlashBox for free?

• I had an itch to scratch, and if you have the same itch; this will help you.
• lightbox is for free, and FlashBox is based upon this
• I love freeware and open source
• I want my 10 minutes of fame

I have made a new homepage for FlashBox (let’s say it’s 80% ready).

Well not exactly..
It’s a new feature in WordPress 2: you can choose a template which will be used for Pages.
So in fact I’ve made a new template.

Whateva: I’ve started with the documentation of FlashBox.
The new homepage is a start, and soon there will be some post about Usage instructions, faq, todo/request, competition, etc.

Todo

• usefull information about
  • error handeling
  • usefull information about the loading
  • Feedback if img not there (error)
  • Feedback from a slow server
• extra information
• More information about img (meta data)
• resize if image is to big
• Gallery navigation
  • thumbnails, or something similar so you can skip a couple images in a gallery
• Read xml
• Read FLV
• Read MP3
• autoplay / slideshow
• resize big images
• Flash 7 plugin (nice to have) as minimum requirement, FlashBox uses now Flash 8 plugin which should cover about 94% of the users (source Adobe)
• If no Flash plugin is available (or not the correct version) there should be a possibility to view without Flashbox
• A button in tinyMCE the default wysiwyg editor
• Visible notification form the activation of FlashBox
• Posible to activate FlashBox without ‘rel=”flashbox”‘ – tag

note: A good example is the slideshow from flickr.com.

Requests

There was no specific place to place requests.
And now there is, so I collected the requests I already got and placed it here:

emre

Congratulations on your new plug-in! While it looks great, I have to say you have more competition than you realize. The newest breed includes Slightbox (23KB) and Litebox (3KB).

While size is no longer an issue, I can think of one area where you can pull ahead: ease of installation. All the others require modifying the code to add a REL attribute to tags. If you can make yours work without modifying any code, it will be the first choice of many people.

Veel bedankt!

Answer: This is a possibility, but I think should be an option which can be activated.

Hardy

Thanks man, good idea to build up something smaller than most of the other photo-plugins for wp. What i always miss, is a solution to show iptc-Data. Woud be nice to put this feature into the plugin. But good work for now.

Hardy

Answer: I think it’s possible to do this.
The PHP JPEG Metadata Toolkit by Evan Hunter. I have to perfect the Flash first before I introduce another feature. But this was also a though of mine, but not this extensive (I had never heard of iptc-Data)
Thx for pointing this out to me!

Quicknavigation: How to use | How to install on WordPress | Tips and Tricks

How to use

Download the lastest-zip file: in there you will find:

+ wp-flashbox (32.4 kB)
|	+ csMinimal Flash plugin version is 8!
|	|	- flashbox.css (0.5 kB)
|	+ js
|	|	- browser_detect.compressed.js (1.6 kB)
|	|	- domFunction.compressed.js.js (0.4 kB)
|	|	- browser_detect.compressed.js (1.6 kB)
|	|	- flashbox.compressed.js (5.1 kB)
|	|	- swfobject.compressed.js.js (6.1 kB)
|	- flashbox_v01.swf (11.2 kB)
|	- readme.txt (3.7 kB)
|	- wp-flashbox.php (3.4 kB)

Part 1 – Setup

Flashbox uses Javascript files, don’t forget them to include in your header.

Include the Flashbox CSS file (or append your active stylesheet with the Flashbox styles).

Part 2 – Activate

Add a rel="flashbox" attribute to any link tag to activate the flashbox. For example:

image #1

Optional: Use the title attribute if you want to show a caption.

If you have a set of related images that you would like to group, follow step one but additionally include a group name between square brackets in the rel attribute. For example:

image #1
image #2
image #3

And because it also works with lightbox:

image #1
image #2
image #3

No limits to the number of image sets per page or how many images are allowed in each set. Go nuts!

Install on WordPress

Usage instructions

• Download the latest-zip file and decompress into wp-content/plugins.
• Go to your Plugins screen in the WordPress admin area, and activate “Flashboxâ€?.



• In the code view, you get a “Flashboxâ€?-button where you can fill in url of the image, the caption and the groupname

Check all images: How to use FlashBox in WordPress.

Tips and Tricks

Minimal Flash plugin version is 8!

tip 1: How to create a gallery without showing every image.
put this in the source of you html page:
image gallery
and where every in the page

The display:none will make the whole block (div) disappear for the viewer but, it will still be “visible” for the FlashBox code

tip 2: How to create a large gallery without showing every image, but some step inbetween.
put this in the source of you html page:

image 1 - 25




---


image 26 - 50




---

The display:none will make the whole block (div) disappear for the viewer but, it will still be “visible” for the FlashBox code. In html it will look like this:

image 1-25
image 26 – 50