[tweaks] Highslide Tweaks for XWD6

Inspired by John (covoxer) and Steve (sledger), I tried my hand at putting together some tweaks for the Highslide slideshow feature of XWD6. I zipped them up and attached them to this post. I used code snippets as presented on the Highslide website: http://highslide.com.

I’m nowhere near an expert in writing code and I hope, therefore, that John – who is one of the developers at Xara – is willing to take a good look at them. I’ve noticed that some code that I tried out seemed to reset some of XWD’s HS core settings, so perhaps it’s wise to wait till John gives his okay.

Most tweaks allow you to adjust settings/values. I included in the Placeholder “Replace with HTML code” window some directions. These are preceded by a double slash (“//”). I included some tweaks allowing to restore default settings/values because in some cases even after removing a tweak, the settings/values didn’t return to XWD’s original settings/values. This may very well have been caused by some code that didn’t really work the way I expected and which I, therefore, didn’t include in the tweaks.

The tweaks are listed in the next post. If you discover any issues with them, please mention them in this thread.

Description of Highslide tweaks for Xara Web Designer 6:

HS BG Dimming & Color.xar – allows you to set the opacity and color of the popup background;
HS BG Reset Defaults.xar – allows you to reset the default settings for opacity and color of the popup background;
HS Block Right-Click.xar – this tweak makes it impossible for a visitor to right-click an image and copy or save it. Please note that a visitor can copy/save the images in other ways;
HS Caption R or L + Width.xar – allows you to set the caption panel to the right or left of the popup image and set the panel’s width;
HS Center Popup + Default.xar – same tweak as introduced by sledger but default value (“auto”) is included;
HS Number All Images.xar – with this tweak each image in the slideshow is numbered and set off against the total count of images. You can customize display text and assign it to the header or the caption (footer) area of the popup;
HS Popup Set Margins.xar – this tweak helps you to keep certain areas of your web page (e.g., the menu) uncovered by popups;
HS Popup Defaults.xar – allows you to reset the margins to “0” again;
HS Preload Images.xar – you can set the number of images to be preloaded. If too many images are preloaded the page may act slowly.

Ah, I forgot. You can have the tweaks included in the Designs Gallery by clicking the "Disc Designs" button on top of this gallery. Browse to where you saved the tweaks folder on your hard disk and open the folder. Even though you don't see anything, click "Add". Now, the tweaks will be accessible through the Designs Gallery.

To use them, drag and drop them on the MouseOff layer of the page on which you have an image gallery. You can change the settings by opening the Web Properties window and selecting the Placeholder tab.

Nice job of collecting and preparing these for use in WD6 Boy :D
Xtreme Pro 6 will also use the HS popups, so when that is released all the HighSlide tweaks will work there too.

Thanks for taking the time.:-bd

(Of course you realise you now have to support them >:) ;)) )

Hi Boy. Thanks very much for the tweaks, very generous of you:) 1st with a support problem here though I'm afraid [probably me!!] - tried the Centre, Caption Align and Numbering tweaks together and only the centring works :o Tried without it and the others individually but still no joy. Could you have a look at the .web for me please?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sledger

(Of course you realise you now have to support them >:) ;)) )

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You got me worried there, Steve, especially when I saw neodeist's post! :eek:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by neodeist

1st with a support problem here ...

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I think I got it covered, neodeist. ;) Looking at your file I noticed the following: First of all, you need to place the placeholders on the page itself. The caption align feature didn't work for you because you didn't enter any text on them (in other words: w/o text, no caption panel).

I redid your file a bit and attached it to this post.

LATER EDIT: As sledger pointed out, these tweaks missed the <head> name and therefore didn't work off the page. New .zip file will be uploaded...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Boy

First of all, you need to place the placeholders on the page itself.

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I think they should all have the <head> name?
They work fine off the page and on the pasteboard provided they are placed in the head section (even Johns)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sledger

I think they should all have the <head> name?

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You're absolutely right. I messed up a bit with the <head> name with some of the tweaks. Now they'll also work if placed on the pasteboard next to the page with the slideshow. Sorry about that.

Steve, I want to re-upload the .zip file and attach it to the first post but I can no longer edit that post.

You can send it to me and I'll re attached the zip to the first post.
sledger-at-gmail-com

:o I thought by Caption you meant Pop-Up Title, DOH! #-o All working now with <head>, except that for numbering I changed "heading" to "caption" and the numbers appeared top-right :o

Quote:

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Originally Posted by neodeist

... except that for numbering I changed "heading" to "caption" and the numbers appeared top-right :o

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If you remove the caption align tweak, the numbers will appear at the bottom (= "caption" in Highslide parlance).

Updated Tweaks per Boy's request

► http://www.talkgraphics.com/showpost...19&postcount=1

Thank you Boy, very much appreciated :) 'Caption' = 'Bottom' eh ... makes sense now you say it, but no wonder I can never quite fathom these things ;))

Folks, I must say that I'm a bit surprised that there's not more interest in the Highslide tweaks that I attached to the first post of this thread. I imagined that the ability to customize your slideshows a little bit more would be met with more curiosity than it has. Even John (covoxer) was silent :( ;).

Anyway, I prepared a few more that I zipped up and attached to this post (see enclosed ReadMe file for directions):
HS BG Dimming Delay.xar -- allows you to set the fading speed at which the background behind the popup is being displayed (and removed when closing the popup);
HS Image Transitions.xar -- this tweak changes the default transition between images to fast fly-ins and fly-outs;
HS Title Position.xar -- allows you to change the position of the image title to: "above" (default), "top", "bottom" and "middle". As second value you can add "left", "right" or "center" (e.g., "top, right");
HS Title Visible.xar -- setting the value to "false" makes the image title on the popup permanently visible;
HS Title Visible Off.xar -- setting the value to "true" (default value) requires the cursor to be over the popup image in order for the title to be visible.

These are probably the last ones that I'll prepare, as I believe I have exhausted the available code that works in XWD6. For those who have missed them, a few days ago I also posted some language tweaks with which you can localize the control tips for the Highslide slideshow player: http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthread.php?t=44845

Enjoy!

I appreciate your generosity Boy :) Bet there'll be loads of posts requesting this info!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Boy

Even John (covoxer) was silent :( ;)

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... and that's a good sign, because if I find some issues I would let you know. ;)
Seems quite well done though. :)

Thank you Boy, for the taking the time to create these. As Covoxer says, I'm sure the silence is a good thing. No one is having problems with them.
Peter

Hi Boy:

Thanks for these. The silence is because I'm busy designing and trying out the tweaks;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by neodeist

I appreciate your generosity Boy :)

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Thanks, John. I knew from your earlier posts that you found them useful but I appreciate that you're confirming this with your post.

Quote:

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Bet there'll be loads of posts requesting this info!

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And this is what I actually expected. I wasn't really fishing for compliments and such. Very nice to receive praise and appreciation but I thought that doing these tweaks would allow me to contribute something useful to this very nice community. But after a few days I saw that the .zip file had been downloaded less than a few dozen times. :-O But maybe that's actually a lot...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by covoxer

... and that's a good sign, because if I find some issues I would let you know. ;)
Seems quite well done though. :)

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Silence = approval. Okay, I'll remember that :D Perhaps that for others it's good to know that these tweaks past the test. Thanks for letting us know!

To Deltapete and Mediaguy: hope you find them useful. Let us see your designs!

I think there's probably many people waiting for XXP6 so don't need the tweaks yet

Well, I actually hope that quite a few of these tweaks and other new Highslide options will be incorporated in XXP6's Web Properties/Image/Options dialog. I mean, to make Pro really Pro ;))

How about having uncluttered option boxes and instead incorporating the tweaks in the design gallery like widgets? :) BTW, I like the comment/options you include in the tweaks.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by neodeist

How about having uncluttered option boxes...?

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In my view, that's what the "Web Properties/Image/Popup photo options" dialog that we have now already is. It seems that it could be 'easily' expanded to include other popup and gallery options, such as player skin, background color, font, types of transitions etc. etc.

Quote:

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BTW, I like the comment/options you include in the tweaks

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Thanks! With some of these variables it took me some time to figure out what they meant or how they worked. So, these texts were meant to give users a bit of a head start. For instance, the "Title Position" tweak has three variables, but I still have difficulty understanding how the first two exactly interact. Users just have to experiment, especially because the effect depends on the size/length of the title.

Boy,
I'm having a problem getting several tweaks to work together. My web has the centering popup and no right click tweak. Works OK in IE8 but still right-clickable in Firefox. Tried them both on and off the page with the same result. Any suggestions?

Jim

Hi Jim, I tried your setup and it worked in Firefox 3.6.3. Perhaps you can try to refresh FF's cache by pressing F5. Let me know if that works.

boy,
Nope, still the same. here's the URL: http://www.pigeonrivercountry.com/early.htm and a screenshot. Maybe you can take a look and see what it does for you. I'm using FF3.5.8 as I have some add-ons that won't work in 3.6.

Jim

Works for me, Jim, both in IE and FF. Please note, though, the right-click blocking only works on the popups ('protecting' the larger versions of your photos), not the rest of the page.

Great pictures by the way and a nice site!

Confirmed Jim's problem - right-click disabled in IE8 but not in FF 3.6.3

Works fine here to Jim.. (Though Opera is immune to the protection)

Attachment 71528

Which FF extensions are you using? Maybe one of them is conflicting.

Of course, as we all know by now - screen capture is always an option as is digging the photo out of your cache ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by neodeist

Confirmed Jim's problem - right-click disabled in IE8 but not in FF 3.6.3

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Works fine in my FF 3.6.3

The only add-ons I have are these:

Attachment 71531

Tweak works in Dragon [Chrome] ;)

boy,
Thanks for the compliments. Yes this is right-clicking on the popup itself. It's not a big deal, I just would have liked it to work as planned. If I ever figure out what the problem was I will let you know. BTW, it does work correctly in preview mode.

Jim

Sledger,

These are the add-ons I have installed.

Jim, why not try temporarily disabling them all and see what happens?

Still, at the end of the day it's all wasted effort imho. As you have seen, it works for some but not for others. And there's always ways around it.

sledger,
I tried disabling them all, no difference. I'm not going to pursue it because, like I mentioned, it's not that important and there's ways around it anyway. If I do figure it out I'll let you know.

Jim

Sorry to hear that it doesn't really work for you, Jim, but happy that it's not too vexing. Actually, it's perhaps good that it doesn't work in your browser because otherwise you would have thought your pictures to be safe on the net and they're really not...

Boy - Thanks for these customizations. I hadn't visited the forums too often in the past, but I see that there is a great community out here!

I've been on the HS site trying to find out how to do 3 specific things:
- Get the slide navigation buttons to be bigger (like in the "red barn" example on http://highslide.com/#examples)
- Change the font size/family of the caption
- Use the black overlay options for the captions (like hs.registerOverlay)

Your mods worked really well for me - how did you grab the code from HS for your modifications?

Thanks again for the toys:D

Wolfcoach, glad you find the tweaks useful. :D

Sorry to say, but as far as I know the three customizations you want are not possible through XWD6 tweaks. You'd need to configure Highslide for that and that is impossible in XWD6. You could download the HS-pack and try to find your own solution and bypass XWD6's native HS-option. I haven't tried this but imagine it would be possible.

All possible customization code can be found on the HS website and their forum. Some of the code that I used for the tweaks I found here: http://highslide.com/ref/.

If you're going to pursue this, please show us your results. Would be very much appreciated.