Ideas
+3
Cropping Tool Recommendation
One of the biggest challenges I hear about in our newsroom relates to cropping photos using the tool within BLOX. (1) Most of our staff logically try to crop the original image forgetting about the preview images and since many of the block templates are coded to pull in preview images, their crop edits are never visible online.
(2) Even if they remember to crop the preview image(s), they must do so with great care, keeping the cropped width at 300 pixels wide, again because many of the block templates are coded to pull in preview images that are exactly 300/100 pixels wide. If they fail to do this perfectly, some of the blocks will not show the photo at all.
I've been thinking about this for a long time and think a great solution would be to allow users to crop the original image and upon saving they are prompted with a "yes" or "no" dialog box asking if they would like to re-create preview images based on the latest crop. This would insure cropped photos carry thru to the preview images and at the proper dimensions for block templates. Of course the user could always select "no" if they only wished to crop the original image.
If this is doable, I believe this would solve both of the issues detailed above.
(2) Even if they remember to crop the preview image(s), they must do so with great care, keeping the cropped width at 300 pixels wide, again because many of the block templates are coded to pull in preview images that are exactly 300/100 pixels wide. If they fail to do this perfectly, some of the blocks will not show the photo at all.
I've been thinking about this for a long time and think a great solution would be to allow users to crop the original image and upon saving they are prompted with a "yes" or "no" dialog box asking if they would like to re-create preview images based on the latest crop. This would insure cropped photos carry thru to the preview images and at the proper dimensions for block templates. Of course the user could always select "no" if they only wished to crop the original image.
If this is doable, I believe this would solve both of the issues detailed above.
Customer support service by UserEcho
So let me see if I understand what you are driving at - the user would crop the original photo in the BLOX admin and as part of that edit be offered a choice to reprocess all thumbnails on this new permutation of the web photo?
Also, it does sound like there is some need on the template side for a 'closest' choice width - When something is not quite 300 pixels but is within a certain margin of error - to use that photo instead.
That's exactly it! Sorry for my delayed response. Meant to confirm these weeks ago.
Also on the "Choose closest preview" consider the following
I believe this block is pulling in a 300px wide preview, however for portraits, if the preview is 300px wide it's 440ish tall, if I create 300px tall preview then the width is only 200ish... If the way previews were handled were smart enough to "know" if a 300px wide isn't available then use a 300px tall one or use the next smaller size we might get more than an eyebrow gallery.
Alternately add a "center and square" button to the image editor for previews. In the example below it would center the current image in a 300x300 square leaving 48pxs of transparency to either side of the original image.
(But, I did check and the new block has the eyebrow gallery problem as well.)
By the way, I wish I could provide an award or something for the "eyebrow gallery" phrase. That's classic! =)
Thanks... I've actually looked at the slideshow versatile block (showcase option) and stuck it on our "advertisers" page (kind of a catch all for things we are trying out and a demo for specific ad ideas... There's no link to it on the site ) I really thought the slider_fit_images or slider_fit_height options would be the ticket but they didn't seem to have any effect on showcase
The custom properties are:
slider_columns = 2 (can also be 3)
slider_force_adjust = true
slider_id = slider-2-col (needs to be different if there are more than one on a page)
slider_style = showcase