Feature Request Consideration: Embedded Gallery & Themes

ozgreg
ozgreg's picture

Joined: 2003-10-18
Posts: 1378
Posted: Thu, 2005-04-21 01:34

One of the G2 features I love (Despite my hosting issue with embedded) is the ability to taylor the "layout" to suit the embedded application requirements

The downside to this is should you or someone else directly acess your gallery (that is NOT via the embedded php) the "stand alone" look tends to be totally crap because it has all been changed to suit the embedded application.

My suggestion would be when running embedded, the layout/theme be different (Either defined in Gallery Layout Admin Panel) or maybe hardcoded to be a layout/theme called embedded, for example.

That way we have maximum flexibility for changing the way G2 looks while embedded while still retaining the ability to access G2 as a standalone should the suitation ever require it..

 
valiant

Joined: 2003-01-04
Posts: 32509
Posted: Thu, 2005-04-21 05:47

ozgreg, something like this was discussed a while ago. We could indeed have a check for something like a "embedded" directory similar to the "local" directory for templates.
But is this enough, or do you want different layouts/themes active for embedded/standalone? ...

We should start collecting a wishlist for embedded G2 apps, with input from you WP guys, mambo, phpnuke, drupal, etc., etc.

 
ozgreg
ozgreg's picture

Joined: 2003-10-18
Posts: 1378
Posted: Thu, 2005-04-21 08:34

Valiant, you would best know the level of effort but for my 5 cents worth (bloody inflation it use to be two cents) I would separate the Theme / Layout Templates / style sheets for embedded / standalone that way G2 would have two very different ways of being displayed. Both of them could be totally independent (in terms of layout ) from each other..

If that proved a large amount of effort before release G2 (maybe future release type functionality) then instead as a work around, your suggesion was excellent, that is, having an embedded directory like local, to seperate the two modes.

As it stands in G2 B2, it is very hard to balance a nice looking embedded G2 without it looking crap in standalone.

 
bharat
bharat's picture

Joined: 2002-05-21
Posts: 7994
Posted: Thu, 2005-04-21 08:38

When presented with this decision in the past we've always aimed to satisfy the 80% case. And right now the 80% case is that people don't need to view their Gallery in both embedded and standalone modes simultaneously. And that's being generous; I imagine it's a very very small percentage of people who want both. So for the 2.0 release, I don't think we should worry too much about that scenario, at least not until we have mastered embedding on a wide variety of platforms.

 
valiant

Joined: 2003-01-04
Posts: 32509
Posted: Thu, 2005-04-21 09:49

bharat, that's fine for me. I also believe that only a very tiny percentage will run G2 standalone/embedded at the same time. perhaps during site development/design, but not once the site is in production.
Should we create a feature request / task scheduled for late 2005 to keep track of this need?

 
ozgreg
ozgreg's picture

Joined: 2003-10-18
Posts: 1378
Posted: Thu, 2005-04-21 10:49

Very happy to run up a poll over this to track this requirement, what do you both think.. Right now it is a pain in the ass because we switch a lot between the modes which you expect in a beta environment.

 
ckdake
ckdake's picture

Joined: 2004-02-18
Posts: 2258
Posted: Thu, 2005-04-21 23:06

see the new poll on the front page and tell us how you feel!

 
cschlatt

Joined: 2005-05-24
Posts: 17
Posted: Sat, 2005-05-28 11:21

I'm embedding g2 into pmwiki, which hasn't built in a real user management. So I decided to use g2 standalone for admin and g2 embedded just for viewing. As discussed earlier in this thread, it is very difficult to have a layout/theme that works for both scenarios.

I haven't looked at the code yet, but wouldn't it be quite easy to integrate a default layout/theme selection into the GalleryEmbed class, maybe as an optional argument to the init call.

Cheers,
Christian

 
Yazon

Joined: 2004-08-10
Posts: 80
Posted: Fri, 2005-06-03 18:22

Well, here is a problem - most php sites force their own fonts and sizes onto Gallery, so in my instance (and i've tried several web site packages) gallery fonts look so small that no one can read them....I wish there was a way to adjust that.