LRB Portfolio updated to 2.4

Normally updates to LRB Portfolio are monthly, but this time I've had 2 code setbacks, meaning I had to go back twice and restart the update. I'm currently trialing a versioning system to prevent this from happening in the future. Mixed with a lot of other commitments, including new plugins and galleries, it's been tough to get this one out there. Hopefully I haven't introduced other bugs in the process of fixing the ones here.

Fixed issue where the menu offset could force the gallery to the right with Cmotion in Safari.

Fixed IE issue where there would be a gap at the bottom of images. (further work may be needed)

Changed Contact form so you no longer need to edit mail.html to get the correct email address)

There are other minor changes, but these are the main ones.

As with all updates, these are free to current 1.x & 2.X users of LRB Portfolio via the download link they received on purchase. New customers interested in buying this plugin can do from from the LRB Portfolio Website.

The updated User Guide is with the plugin, but can also be downloaded from the website.

Take it to a vote: new feature ideas for LRB Portfolio.

Folks,
If you are an LRB Portfolio user, you may know that I've a ton of new features in the current beta version. It's looking pretty good, if I say so myself.

So while I'm changing things, I want feedback on some potential features:


I'm thinking of tying the height of the about, contact and home pages to the image+border height. This is happening by default, but if I do this, I can add a scrolling control to the page allowing you to add a lot more text, which can be scrolled through.

Add an avatar image to the About page to allow you to add a photo of yourself. I'd simply have a logo called ava.jpg that you replace your image with.

Add a single blank page with the same features of About, so you can choose the image, the name of the page etc.

Change the Menu Font-Variant to a list and leave it on normal by default. I'm seeing too many galleries with this left set!

I'm also considering a new section to the site: A featured website page. I've been peeking at a few sites to see what you're up to, so I wonder if other users would like to see them too!



Finally, before you start jamming up the comments with other requests, here's the so far list on LRB Portfolio 1.2beta

1.2 Changed charset to UTF-16 to allow for further languages
Fixed Content Area font size issues by adding a Content Font Size control
Added images choice to Menu: You can now use an image instead of text in the menu
Added provisional code to allow Google Analytics code to be pasted:WARNING, each gallery loading will open the Google Analytics code in a browser window. This is how Lightroom deals with external resources and cannot be prevented. If you don't like this, then leave the Insert Analytics Code box unticked.
Added IE8 conditional code (this is Google beta code and I may drop this)
Added an image choice to the mail page
Change the Page title on the mail page to whatever is in the Page Title
Addition of the Dynamic Drive scroll script and making the internal script options available in the Output Settings panel.
Added the ability to name the gallery1.html page to anything you like (as long as it ends in .html or .htm). The engine will automatically generate the page with the new name and find it correctly (go me, I didn't think this could be done).

It's pretty feature laden.... almost a 2.0 feature laden release. But if I do jump a version, it'll still be the same link for current users when it becomes available.

LRB Portfolio updated to 1.02

This just adds 2 external links and a test.php to the web engine. It's only a very minor update, so you don't need to redownload unless you are using all 6 galleries and need further links. If you want it and have used the 5 downloads, reply using the download email and I'll reset it.

LRB Portfolio

A comment in the HS Web post got me started thinking about creating a far more customisable and cleaner version of a 'Website in a Gallery' Web plugin. I've literally spent almost all my spare time rewriting this from the ground up since then. In fact all the code has been completely replaced the with new Lightroom 2.0 SDK code and so is brand new. Even the Contact Form has been updated to give much prettier returns.

LRB Porfolio features.

A true Website in a Gallery.

Lightroom 2 compatible-Not for Lightroom 1

Wesbite featuring a Home, About and Contact pages, along with up to 6 galleries or external links.

A PHP contact form to make you contactable, but keeping your email address hidden.

For those without PHP, a series of contact details that you can pick and choose between, including Contact Name, Email, email link, phone number, address etc.

Choose the images for the Home, About and Contact page yourself.

Colour controls for each section of the page.

Simple clean look, with scrolling galleries, a popular look currently.

All HTML and CSS, so compatible for a wide range of users.

Full User Guide (that took a bit of time!)

Controls for menu and Identity Plate placement (left, centre, right)

Full Lightroom 2 SDK code, including new Output Sharpening code.

Requires only minor HTML for line breaks, otherwise code free for the User

Requires no HTML editor

Optional Right Click and Drag Disable

There's a wealth of stuff changed from the original proof of concept code I had with HS Web. Again, as with LRB Graduated Filters, I've put a lot of work into this and approached it as a commercial venture. I am aware though that the appeal of such a gallery is relatively limited. Most people already have a website, so something that creates an entire site is less of an appeal that a simple gallery to show off. However for those looking for something quick and easy, this gallery allows you create a whole website with a little advance preparation and some text entry. To add your email address, you edit one file in an text editor once, and then export and upload.

The cost of the plugin? €10 (about $15). VAT chargable in the EU. Updates will be free to current users.

Sample Website | User Guide | Support




Update: I've added a support thread to Lightroom Forums.
Update: Now at version 1.01.

LRB HScroll Web for Lightroom 2.0

Stemming from the original Hscroll gallery that I published on Lightroom-Blog, I sat down and pondered about how one would go about the creation of an entire website from within Lightroom. In truth it’s not easy to do, but with a simple amount of preplanning and a fixed number of images per gallery, I’ve implemented a way to do it. Obviously this is a version 1.0 gallery, and I’ve already started to consider how to improve it further, but as Lightroom 2 has just been released, it’s time to get this out there. (Just to clarify I mean this is version 1 of this gallery, but it's for Lightroom 2 as it uses new features only available in LIghtroom 2-if there is enough interest, I could remove these and rewrite the photoSizes code).
Obviously doing this takes time, so if you find this useful, please use the Donate button on Lightroom-Blog.com. Being on the net and using bandwidth isn’t free, so anything that comes back will help offset this cost!(I'll also send on a version of the gallery minus the LRB link!)

HSW needs some basic preparation. First decide the number of images you want in a gallery to show your work. In portfolio terms 20 is huge, so it makes a good number to start with. Set the Images per Gallery slider in Appearance to 20. Next decide on the number of galleries and use the tick boxes to select that number. If you select 6 with 20 imags each, you then need 120 images in a collection to create the website. Use the collection to sort the images into the order you want them in on the website. Remember to work each set in the Images per gallery number.

If you see this, it's because you didn't read the section above and don't have enough images selected. Images per gallery X Number of galleries= The required number of images.

Use the Site info section to name the galleries, and set the text on each page. You can also change the names that appear in the menu itself. I recommend leaving the .html files as is, unless you want to specifically rename them yourself.
HSW assumes you will use a minimum of 3 galleries. If you use less it will break currently (due to the way images are assigned to the Home, About and Contact pages). I'm considering a random script that will show a random photo on the home, about and contact pages.
This is also the first time I've created a basic Readme, so go easy on me. As well as leaving comments, I've started at thread over at Lightroom Forums.

Download | Sample | Install Instructions | Readme PDF

Web Gallery production and other news.

Lightroom-Blog has been quiet recently. Trust me it's not intentional. I'm actually very busy with Lightroom related things, along with actually working!

I've gone as far as I can with the Flash Gallery I mentioned before and I'll be releasing it when I get time to write a quick readme/instructions for it. I will probably supply a logo free version file for those making donations(and then asking-helps with the mind reading!).

I'm updating HScroll to Version 2.0 at the moment. It's mostly ready, but I'm awaiting the V2 release so I can add any new gallery features that might appear.

When I initially created the menu system for both Scroll galleries, it was to ease creation of a website for users, something not possible with Lightroom default galleries. Both Matthew Campagna and Joe Capra took the menu idea a step further in the meantime with Pages and LRG Complete. Not to be outdone, I've created a single page that creates a whole website with a home page, about page, contact page and 3 galleries with 20 photos in each. There is a full menu system. This is also awaiting a V2.0 release, but I could drop code to make it 1.4 compatible easily. You can see an example of this gallery in action here.
The contact page uses a PHP form rather than a straight email address. I wrote this myself to prevent 3rd party licensing issues with scripts. I may include this in the standard HScroll gallery also. The final version of this website gallery will also have a few nifty features, so I'll probably be accepting donations for this, as it was a lot of work.
Please leave comments here, letting me know what you think. The contact form in the sample is not connected, I don't want mail from it!

I'm also very busy with rewriting sections of my Lightroom book for GMC pubs. I had it mostly finished when V2 loomed on the horizon, so I'm now hastily rewriting old sections, while adding in new things, such as Local Corrections. This is a basic book, under commission from GMC, but it does contain more advanced tips also. More details will follow as I'm allowed to release them!

During the waiting period I also started a potential eBook on creating web galleries. It's about 2/3rds done, but on hold for now. I'll get back to it after the Lightroom book is done. It's not a full sized book, so I don't think it will make the print phase at any stage.

I'll be doing more speedlink posts also, just to keep up activity here!

Sneak Preview: Lightroom Blog Flash Gallery

I was inspired by the Flash Gallery Beta gallery that I posted about a few days ago. With the hard work of figuring out how to make Lightroom write the XML done (I'm still thanking Matthew for directions!), I figured that maybe I should actually write my own SWF. I've never done much in Flash and 30 days is a short time to get to know it, but I managed to get my website up and going, along with creating the gallery I'm about to show you.

LRB XML Flash Sample Gallery

Features so far:

Full rather than cropped thumbnails

Slideshow

Click on the left of the photo to go back, click on the right to go forward.

Title and Caption information.

Vertical images are centred, unlike Flash Gallery Beta

Scrolling thumbnails

Toggle the thumbnail bar on and off


Things to look into:

Transitions look better in the Lightroom Preview, even with a fast connection Added a cross fade. Not 100% sure on the code, but it seems to be working.

Option for cropped thumbnails Happy with centered full thumbs.

Full Screen Mode

Drop Shadows on the thumbnail bar and main slide Done

Flyout with Collection Name and Description

Like I said, feedback is appreciated. And yes I'm aware I need to go back and edit the captions for typos!

Flash Gallery Beta for Lightroom

Flash Gallery Beta is a project by an anonymous developer. It looks cool, but hasn't been updated recently. I do really like how it looks, despite the faults (the main one being it doesn't center vertical images). It uses an XML file to get the images, so I thought this would be a good project to get to grips with creating XML from Lightroom. Boy, was I ever right.

Lightroom only allows one AddGridPage, which is where the photos get created and assigned in the Grid. I'm not using a grid for this, but I still need the images created. The trick was to create a dummy page and then have the real page with the flash file rename to index.html. I also had a little help from Matthew Campagna with the XML creation. I was on the right track, but Matthew gave me the right turnoff, directing me to his XML Shadowbox Index.

This version for Lightroom is quite basic. It has Background Colour control, Jpeg Quality, Identity Plate and Copyright Watermark support. I've no access to the .FLA file so I've no control over the gallery features. The swf file weighs in at 11k so it's tiny! Other features are a full screen mode and thumbnail scrolling.

Download | Install Instructions | Sample Gallery

Warning: Due to the way Lightroom handles Flash in HTML galleries, this will preview on a Mac, but may not preview on a PC. Finally, the crop ratio inside the gallery is 4X3, so you may want to crop to this to fill the gallery screen. Enjoy.
Update: I've justed added a Page Title Control and the About Menu.

FrogJS Web Gallery

I've about oh... 5 or 6 different galleries on the go in development. Just fitting different ideas in and trying to learn more advanced CSS and more javascript. Here's a basic translation of the FrogJS Gallery created by Eric Puidokas for you to play with.

The internal scripts mess around with the Lightroom live_update.js, so stuff doesn't live update. For that reason, I've removed a lot of control from it.

If you do want to mess about with it, feel free. To force a refresh, untick and then retick Title or Caption in Image Info. Sorry it has to be that way, but while I've studied basic Javascript, this is beyond me!

Download | Sample Gallery | Install Instructions

This is not intended to be anything special, just an exercise for myself, but if you are interested in hacking together your own gallery, there's enough information inside the gallery and the FrogJS page to see how it all fits together..

For once, this is as is and is unsupported. Enjoy.

Horizontal Scroll Lua V1.0

Well, with the introduction of the new VScroll in the past few days, I've knuckled down into getting my original Horizontal Scroll gallery into Lua and with more control. While Lua Galleries are a whole new learning curve after busting through XSLT, they're very powerful. An understanding of CSS can lead to have a great deal of control in the gallery settings. Building the galleries is not overly difficult. It's very logical, but time consuming as you've no true debugger and it's a game of "will Lightroom ignore the gallery", because there's a missing comma somewhere. Enough of the gallery building talk.

HScrollLua 1.0 is a horizontal scrolling gallery. It's a single page gallery with all the image appearing on one page. No thumbnails, just the preview sized photos.
Features:

Single Page Scrolling Gallery

6 Menu items, one for contact info, the others are customisable from the Right Panel

All important colours are changeable

ID Plate can be positioned anywhere in the header (side to side control)

A border can be applied to a photo, with selectable size and colour

Free

Download

View a Sample Gallery

To install the gallery, you need to go to User/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom, (On XP got o C:\Documents and Settings\User\Application Data\Adobe\Lightroom -Note that Application Data is a hidden folder, on Vista C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom\ ) where User is the name you log in with. Look for a folder called Web Galleries within. If it's not there, create it yourself. Unzip the file into this folder and restart Lightroom.
The new Gallery will apppear in the Right Hand Panel, in the Galleries Pane.

I recommend that you create an alias/shortcut to this Lightroom folder for future use.

Vertical Scroll Gallery: Update to v0.1.2

I've been thinking that with my 3rd Party Developer badge at Lightroom Forums, I should really do some updates on the Galleries I created ages ago. So I have. It's not like I've received much in the way of support requests or anything, but I have added the most requested: separate width and height. I'm also doing it directly rather than the non.CSS way Matthew Campanga uses. I did in the past, but for some reason I got it working fine using agmSizes. As to why it worked this time, I have no clue. Matthew is a far superior gallery coder, though, but my method uses similar ideas, i.e. mapping to intermediate variables. If you want to discuss more about coding galleries, mention it in the comments. We might persuade Ian Farlow of Lightroom Forums to open a forum for us.



Gallery features:

5 editable menu links, with internal commenting to allow more,
Vertical scrolling,
Photo Border with Colour,
ID Plate support, with sizing,
Copyright Watermark support,
Almost every colour editable,
Free..

Did I say Free?

I did this as a Lightroom Birthday present. I'm running out the door right now to work, but I'll add a sample gallery and more detail later! back in and adding more information!

To install the gallery, you need to go to User/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom, (On XP got o C:\Documents and Settings\User\Application Data\Lightroom -Note that Application Data is a hidden folder, on Vista C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom\ ) where User is the name you log in with. Look for a folder called Web Galleries within. If it's not there, create it yourself. Unzip the file into this folder and restart Lightroom.
The new Gallery will apppear in the Right Hand Panel, in the Galleries Pane.

I recommend that you create an alias/shortcut to this Lightroom folder for future use.



Download the UPDATED 0.1.2 gallery
View a sample Gallery
Download the template for the sample gallery (and photo at the top!). To install, unzip the file. In Lightroom, in the Web module, Right click on a Preset and choose 'Import.." from the menu. Choose the unzipped file.


Notes: The ID plate should be 300px wide for best results, but there is a logo height and width control to help if it's bigger.
While I have dotted borders around the menu and the scroll area, you can hide these by making the border colour the same as the background.
You can add a photo border with selectable size and colour.
Most of the colours can be changed.
The Add Copyright Watermark tickbox does work, but you''ll need to click the Quality control to force a refresh. This is the same in the Lightroom HTML gallery.
The Scroll CSS uses a code that is not supported in all browsers. It does tend to break gracefully, by ignoring the code and allowing you to scroll the page instead.

VScroll Lua gallery

As promised, here's a version 1.3 Gallery for Lightroom. It's by no means a feature complete gallery, but it should be useful to those looking to build their own. It is a working gallery though, but still pay attention to the fact that it is a 0.1 release. It contains a similar menu system to the older XSLT Not so Simple Scroll gallery.

Download

Sample Gallery

This gallery uses .lrwebengine file extension when unzipped. Mac users can double click on the file to automatically install it. You see the following dialogs during the process:



On XP go to C:\Documents and Settings\User\Application Data\Lightroom -Note that Application Data is a hidden folder, on Vista C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom\ ) where User is the name you log in with. Look for a folder called Web Galleries within. If it's not there, create it yourself. Unzip the file into this folder and restart Lightroom.
The new Gallery will apppear in the Right Hand Panel, in the Galleries Pane.

Gallery Notes: This gallery uses the CSS overflow-x and overflow-y tags. Safari 2 does not support these and while not beautiful, it fails gracefully enough that the images remain visible. I can't test on IE6 or IE7, so comments are graciously received. Because the tag is new enough it fails badly on IE5 Mac. There's a silly border issue on the ID plate, that I forgot to fix on Firefox (it took longer to write about than to fix), but it's fine other than that.

Scroll Extra

Still messing around with XSLT/XML and HTML galleries in Lightroom.
Here's an extension gallery that uses Andy Rahns info in this blog post. Read the original article and use the new locations mentioned also. What I've added is a scrolling mechanism in CSS and made it a little prettier using snippets of code from around the net. Scrolling uses overflow in CSS, while using LI to control the look of the nav bar buttons comes from a variation on the Listmatic site.

I've created a single page scrolling gallery mostly to avoid grid coding/preview pages and pagination (areas I need to study more first). It uses ID plate/Watermarking and Jpeg Quality. I have the JPG quality at 70, but moving the slider appears to do nothing. These last features are cut and paste code from the Lightroom HTML gallery, used in a 'cookbook' form, so I may have missed something essential.

Things of note:
The background files to the page, the ID Plate and the Nav buttons are included in the gallery.xml file using the 'filePath' command. As is the CSS file.
You can, if you want to, hard code links to files on the internet, but on a Mac Lightroom will open them in a browser when you first run the web gallery. John Beardsworth says this doesn't happen on PC.

The nav bar in the gallery can have its links edited in transformer.xslt. I plan to work on code to do this inside Lightroom at some stage.
I've been up all night messing with this so I should crash before work ;)