Introducing Photo widget, floating thumbnails for your website
Lots of people have contacted me, asking for a version of my Flickr widget that they could use on their website, without having to use Flickr (or Picasa). Doing such a version was easy enough, but I was hesitant to release it. The DIY version of WP-Cumulus has yielded more support requests than the actual WordPress plugin, and answering all the email has been taking a lot of my time.
One thing I could have done was to simply release the sources for the Flickr widget. But there’s a lot of Flickr/Picasa specific stuff in there that you would need to take out before being able to hook the movie up to another data source. So that would have made things harder for everyone.
If my understanding of the GPL license is correct, I (as the sole author) am allowed to release different versions under different licenses. Here’s what I’ve decided to do. The Flickr widget will remain closed source, and will also remain a hosted service. The only thing you should have on your website is the code snippet. I’ll happily take care of the rest. Below, you’ll find a download link for Photo widget, Flickr Widget’s new brother, which is licensed as GPL.
Version comparison
| Flickr widget | Photo widget |
|---|---|
 |
 |
| Let’s you display Flickr photostreams or Picasa albums on your website | Let’s you display any images you want |
| Needs a Flickr or Picasa RSS feed as input | Uses a custom XML format, from a configurable URL |
| Images are located on either Flickr or Picasa | Images can be loaded from any website, including your own |
| Clicking an image takes you to that image’s page on Flickr/Picasa | Links and target frames can be set per image in the XML |
| Available as a hosted service, using a short code snippet | Available for download, including code examples |
| Up to 20 images shown simultaniously | Up to 20 images shown simultaniously |
| Closed source, will always be free to use | Open source (GPL) |
| Available here | Download link below |
Please make sure you extract all the files from the zip to one location. They all depend on each other. You won’t need to upload the flash sources folder to your server when deploying the project.
Support
Photo widget is the DIY version of Flickr widget. It offers greater flexibility, but is a lot harder to implement. The XML interface allows knowledgeable developers you to hook it up to all sorts of CMS solutions, and anyone with a basic understanding of HTML should be able implement a simple static version on his or her website. If you’re a beginner working with a WYSIWYG editor, you should probably look elsewhere.
I’ve tried very hard to make the examples as easy as I possibly could. Feel free to contact me if you run into trouble, but I can offer no guarantee I’ll be able to get back to you.
Donations
I looked into making this a commercial product for a long time. The main reason I didn’t was because that would have meant I’d have to protect the movie from being decompiled and I’d have had to deal with things like keeping track of payments. And I had no idea what a reasonable price would be. While one user might use it as a small gimmick on a personal blog, another might make it the main interface on a large commercial website.
If your project falls in the latter category, please consider donating. I’ve spent a lot of time developing this, so you don’t have to.
This is the personal blog of Roy Tanck, designer, geek, entrepreneur and WordPress enthusiast. It's also the home of projects like 
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roytanck (995):
Awesome stuff!1
Comment by Qorx — April 10, 2009 @ 12:46 am
Roy, this looks very cool. I’m just getting back into flash and AS after a long hiatus. I’m a little puzzled, though. I can run your example on my server just fine, but I can’t swap out the images with my own using the XML file. I’m not asking you to fix it for me, I’m only commenting that you might be able to make it easier to get at least a static demo running without modifying the AS and recompiling the swf.
Tim
Comment by Tim Piazza — April 10, 2009 @ 4:02 am
Hi Tim. You shouldn’t need to recompile the swf at all to change the images. In fact, the images aren’t even in the fla. The images are defined in the XML, and loaded from external jpg/gif or png files. You might need to insert full paths into the XML, depending on your setup, but that should be it.
Comment by Roy — April 10, 2009 @ 7:59 am
Thank you, Roy. I tried it again tonight and figured out my problem. I was trying to load the pictures from a subdirectory and didn’t have it coded properly. Once I moved the pictures to the same directory as the swf file, I was able to get it working.
I’m going to play with it a little more and see what I can do. It’s a fun widget–I really like it.
Tim
Comment by Tim Piazza — April 11, 2009 @ 3:53 am
HA!
Before U publish this Photo Widget , I made a FLEX version of WP-Cumulus, Photo Widget with your open source .
Now ,I try to make a FLEX ‘s container with the Cloud Widget .
But , I have a problem , How can I push the new photo into Cloud activity？
It’s means that I want to the function updateTags() can auto put the all photo to they need to be position.If I use postionAll() ,I think is not a good effect.
BTW,your Widgets is really cool, Thank you.
Comment by MitoRiko — April 11, 2009 @ 9:22 am
@MitoRiko: I’m not quite sure what you’re saying. The widget wasn’t designed to switch photo’s after it’s initialized. It get the photo’s from the XML once, and displays the first 20 it finds.
Comment by Roy — April 11, 2009 @ 9:29 am
I use the widget as a FLEX control,so I can add a photo any time.
For Example , when I click a button,the widget add a new photo.
Thank you.
mito
Comment by MitoRiko — April 11, 2009 @ 9:45 am
Peeps,
One can also do this:
so that the XML feed is generated by a script as well.
Roy – please add a TITLE or ALT attribute to the tag so that text mouseovers can be used when a image is in focus. That would be cool – PayPal donation waiting
Regards,
Fred
Comment by Fred — April 13, 2009 @ 7:01 pm
meant to say:
param name=”flashvars” value=”feed=photowidget.cfm?cat=111″
tags were stripped
Comment by Fred — April 13, 2009 @ 7:02 pm
Hi Fred. Yes, that’s very much how it’s designed to work. The XML can come from anywhere.
As for the title attributes, I’ll consider that, but since this is Flash I won’t be able to use system style tooltips. I’ll have to design them, and one of the things I like about this widget is that is very ‘design-neutral’. If I’d mimic Windows style tooltips they’d stand out on the mac, etc. And if your website were to have jQuery based tooltips and such things would get even more complicated.
Comment by Roy — April 14, 2009 @ 8:30 am
Any chance of a ALT/TITLE tag text for the focused image? I mean, without that the system is not of much use to say an e-commerce environment, where the user needs to identify a picture. The pictures are small as well… ALT text is a real requirement imho.
JQuery – what’s that? lol. I never use 3rd party libraries; I code everything myself out of core script.
Regards,
Fred
Comment by Fred — April 14, 2009 @ 10:30 am
Hi Roy,
I love your cloud tag and image widget, thanks for all the work. Can I add my name to the list of people that would LOVE to have an alt/image tag on the image cloud.
It becomes so much more useful with that. I tried to take a look at your source to send you some sample code but I’m lost with AS!
Thanks again.
Alan
Comment by Alan Parry — April 15, 2009 @ 12:00 am
wow…is beutyfull…i take this
Comment by ghielz — April 16, 2009 @ 5:35 am
Roy – please can I add my name for the ALT tag feature as well please? I use this widget to show shop pictures from an art gallery, but I need to show a title with the image desperately. Please can the facility be added and I will then purchase. Thanks!
Mark
Comment by Mark — April 21, 2009 @ 11:08 am
Hi,
very cool your widget.
But how can I change the size of the Photos?
GreeZ
Comment by Martin — April 23, 2009 @ 9:19 am
@Martin: The size of the photos (relative to the movie’s dimensions) is fixed. This is done to keep the images from overlapping. If they would overlap, the moment when they overtake each other would look bad. One would simply jump in from of the other instantly, which is not pretty.
If you want, you can edit the Thumb.as class (look for the completeHandler function) to get the images displayed at different sizes. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you
Comment by Roy — April 23, 2009 @ 9:52 am
Hi Roy,
thx 4 the quick answer. I already edited the Thumb.as but what have I to do then, that it works in the swf?
And because of the overlapping: It’s no porblem (I think) because i have only 6 Images.
GreeZ
Martin
Comment by Martin — April 23, 2009 @ 10:38 am
Roy, THANK YOU for making this available! I love it! I put mine on my portfolio home page, with a link back to your blog. Please take a look and let me know if you want me to change anything about link or the wording. I’d like to chime in with the chorus asking for tooltips. I found a tutorial video for an ordinary flash carousel, at http://www.gotoandlearn.com/play?id=33 It gave me the impression that the tooltip would be a movie clip, with the text on it coming from the xml file. I thought maybe the tooltip style you choose, “design neutral” or not, wouldn’t matter much because if I had the fla file maybe I could alter it. But I can’t do the actionscript part.
Comment by juanita — April 23, 2009 @ 11:23 am
Hi – how can i show a text title for the image in focus?
Comment by Simon — April 23, 2009 @ 3:12 pm
@Martin: You’ll have to publish the project (using Flash CS3 or better) and replace the swf file on your server with the one that generates.
Comment by Roy — April 23, 2009 @ 3:13 pm
@juanita: I’ll definitely look into the tooltip thing. The main issue is size. The movie currently scales itself to fit inside the available space. A tooltip would scale along with it, and might become unreadable, or very large. I’ll have to ‘reverse scale’ it. And then there’s the question of what to do when the text is long and the widget very small…
Comment by Roy — April 23, 2009 @ 3:16 pm
Wow, that’s I lot. I was imagining something which would have been, by your standards, a quite inferior tooltip, requiring one to limit the number of characters to something brief, and scaling right along with the pictures. I had no idea.
I saw another tooltip tutorial/demo, where one of the icons in the go-round will remove the item next to it on the fly. http://ccanvas.byethost13.com/carousel.php I hope you won’t be offended that I offer you another link, for I truly admire your work, and I’m not suggesting you do this, I’m only hoping to share with you something which I found interesting.
Comment by juanita — April 23, 2009 @ 4:46 pm
Thank you for nice cumulus plugins, only small problem, not supported specific charset character in other language. Example Czech č,ř,ž,š,ý,ě I think this character charset not adding to source flash
Haw can I adding this symbols.
Thank
Comment by weber — April 24, 2009 @ 3:03 pm
@weber: Please see this tutorial.
Comment by Roy — April 24, 2009 @ 3:43 pm
Wouuaahhh !!! Fabulously amazing.
Thanks a lot for sharing this.
Comment by Olivier M — April 25, 2009 @ 1:30 am
This widget badly needs text/alt support.
Comment by Simon — April 25, 2009 @ 9:49 pm
Where is the option to add a text description to each item in the XML file?
Thanks
silus
Comment by Silo — April 27, 2009 @ 12:34 pm
Need for Joomla!
Comment by Six — April 29, 2009 @ 4:35 pm
Wow…that’s amazing widget.. very nice, good looking
good job Roy..thank’s a lot buddy:shakehand:
Comment by Michael Lynx — May 1, 2009 @ 3:15 pm
Btw Roy, i want to preview this widget on my post.. keep in touch… success!
Comment by Michael Lynx — May 1, 2009 @ 3:36 pm
You are a genius!
I saw the WP-Cumulus widget on http://www.dezinerfolio.com/ and was immediately mesmerized by the sheer genius if it. Most gadgets on the left and right of a page usually just irrigates me. I was so impressed that I immediately started looking around for a way to get my own widget and forgot why I went to the original page till hours later. I love the Photo Widget, but will need to make it work on Joomla which should be possible I guess. I was just wondering if the WP-Cumulus is going to be released so we can use it with a XML file, since this is the one I am actually after.
Thanks for sharing and if I get it working I will visit your donation page.
dM
Comment by dM — May 2, 2009 @ 3:00 pm
Label cloud Why can not I use after I add the label name for the post title. Whether there was something wrong with the editing? Please help
Comment by free music — May 2, 2009 @ 5:28 pm
@dM: WP-umulus is available for download and will use an XML file if you want. I built that feature for me to test the movie locally, but it works really well for non-WordPress (or rather non-CMS) projects. There’s also a Joomla version of the plugin.
Comment by Roy — May 3, 2009 @ 3:13 pm
Where is the option to add a text description to each image please?
Comment by Mike — May 3, 2009 @ 8:18 pm
Hello. I cannot find how to add a title to each image in the documentation. Is the feature available?
Thank you,
Elaine
Comment by Elaine — May 6, 2009 @ 5:16 pm
Hey Roy,
Very cool plugin. Did you create your own 3d system or did you utilize a pre-built (Pvd3d, etc..)
Thanks,
Jason
Comment by Jason — May 6, 2009 @ 11:52 pm
Hey Roy, this is great! how can I use it for my website?
Comment by Ed — May 7, 2009 @ 12:04 am
Hi Elaine. I’m looking into that because it’s a popular request, but currently the flash movie doesn’t support titles.
Comment by Roy — May 7, 2009 @ 10:50 am
Hi Jason. I used some very basic 3D code form an ancient tutorial. I remember rewriting it for AS2 and later AS3
Comment by Roy — May 7, 2009 @ 10:51 am
hi roy, i recently used your cumulus widget, and it’s so beautiful.
thank you very much
Comment by kampiabareh — May 7, 2009 @ 10:56 am
Great widget but needs a way to show a text label. Hwo can this be done?
Rgds,
Martin
Comment by Martin — May 10, 2009 @ 5:28 pm
Does this plugin work with SWFobject?
I’ve tried it several different ways and it won’t display. Reason being I can’t get the flash file to show up on IE6 using the standard code. Any thoughts?
Comment by Noah Kuhn — May 12, 2009 @ 2:32 pm
Nevermind, I was using SWFobject 2.1. It works fine with 1.5
Thanks
Comment by Noah Kuhn — May 12, 2009 @ 2:41 pm
Hi Roy
Just updating you.
No, I am not gonna ask for the text tags everyone is moaning about… I have bigger plans.
PhotoWidget
I got the PhotoWidget working on a Joomla! site by just adding the code from your HTML file in the template PHP file, but I need to know how I can set the speed etc. for the client. Is there a place to view all settings?. They agreed to donate you some once I get it up and running properly (Jippeee!), since they all love it.
BTW: What would be really great is if you could put javascript in the href tag. Then I could allow my javascript to just display a bigger image (preloaded) in a lightbox in the same window without refreshing the page. When I do it now it actually surfs to “http:\\[mysite]\javascript: return false;” or whatever javascript I had in there.
WP-Cumulus
I read what you wrote me back on WP-Cumulus and I tried putting it in using the same codes I used for PhotoWidget, but sadly is will not play. Maybe the XML file can’t look like this:
text to display
I notice from the source of this page that your version at the top has a lot of settings and stuff, and then still a javascript file also. Maybe that is the problem… I don’t know enough.
BTW: I went to that site with BEAR in its name (can’t remember full name) where the Joomla! version is, but they will not allow me to download it unless I go through some weird registration process, and then they warn that it doesn’t work on top of it all.
Is there not a way to just call it like in your PhotoWidget HTML? I can even include some javascript if needed.
dM
Comment by dM — May 13, 2009 @ 10:48 am
Hi dM. The speed is set to a fixed value (1) in ThumbCloud.as. I wanted to keep the number of ‘external’ options to a minimum for this project, but you can simply change it there and republish the movie. That file contains most other settings as well, except for things like the border widht etc, which are controlled within the individual thumbs (Thumb.as).
Unfortunately, Flash uses different intefaces for javascripcall (externalInterface) and simply calling urls (URLRequest/navigateToURL). You can use ‘javascript: …’ with navigateToURL, but there might be sandbox restrictions, depending on where your files are located. The movie currently uses navigateToURL, so it should be easy enough to try. If that doesn’t work, you could edit the clickHandler function in Thumb.as to use externalInterface instead.
As for Cumulus, most of the ways of passing settings to the movie that you’re seeing in this site’s code are WordPress specific. It might help to read this and this. The javascript files is there only to handle embedding the movie into the page. Other ways will work too, but I prefer SWFObject’s simple elegance.
There’s a new version of Joomlabear’s port, so that might also be worth checking out. See http://joomlabear.com/Joomulus/ .
Comment by Roy — May 13, 2009 @ 12:55 pm
Hi Roy
You are a great help, thanks.
I’m off to experiment…
dM
Comment by dM — May 13, 2009 @ 4:36 pm
Is a text title possible for the image so that I can attach a name to the image. Seems a basic requirement.
Rgds,
Rob
Comment by Rob — May 14, 2009 @ 10:48 am
Hi Rob. No, that’s not in there. I might add it in future versions, but I’m not quite sure how it should look and function yet. I don’t want the title’s to cover part of the image, and the titles could potentially be very long. And the movie very small. I also want to avoid having to embed a font into the movie, which would make it heavier and not support all languages. There’s a lot of issues with what I agree would be a nice feature.
Comment by Roy — May 14, 2009 @ 2:23 pm
Hi Roy !
I want ask you how can i make transparent background.
Comment by Great widget — May 15, 2009 @ 8:03 am
Sorry i found it !
Comment by Great widget — May 15, 2009 @ 8:15 am
If you want to have text labels for the cloud images, all you need to do is use JavaScript calls to write out labels into a DIV.
Inside the XML data call a JavaScript function from a hyperlink with the useful “javascript:” prefix, as follows:
image href=”javascript:loadCloudItemDetails(’14046′);” …
In this case my function is called loadCloudItemDetails() and it expects one parameter, which in this case is a product ID. I generate the XML image tags dynamically from an SQL database query btw, but you could also hard-code of course. Now, when a cloud image is clicked, the function is called.
In my case the function code is just some script utilising the innerHTML feature, like this:
function loadCloudItemDetails(pid) {
document.getElementById(“pdetails”).innerHTML = “PID is: “+ pid + “…blah…”;
}
so you get the gist. This way, I can now show details for any cloud image when one is clicked. It has to be a click as the mouseover event is not generated, unfortunately.
Lol, it’s a good job I wrote 3 books on JavasScript many years ago….
Comment by Fred — May 23, 2009 @ 9:07 pm
Hi Roy,
Can I change the limit of images from 20 to 500 for example, directly in the code.
Why did you put this limit?
Is there any technical reason?
Thanks a lot!
Comment by Rodrigo — May 25, 2009 @ 6:41 pm
@Rodrigo: The reason to limit the number of images has to do with performance, but you’ll also see nasty visual side effects if the images start to overlap their neighbors. Making them smaller might help. RSS feeds also seldom have more than 20 images in them.
Comment by Roy — May 26, 2009 @ 3:49 pm
Dear Roy – I love your widget! Thanks For taking the time to create it. I’m trying to embed in a Movable Type blog (4.25) and running into issues with it not showing up. It works fine when you type in the direct URL, but no luck on the Movable Type page. I am using the code located in the object tags in your example file. Any suggestions would be helpful. thanks again for a great widget.
Comment by Tina — May 31, 2009 @ 1:46 am
Hi Tina. Have you checked your site using vaidator.w3.org? If so, please email me the url or post it here so I can take a look…
Comment by Roy — May 31, 2009 @ 9:39 pm
Hi Roy – I tried the markup validator and fixed some issues, however, still running into a block. here’s the URL – http://www.rickywarwick.com/home/photos-1/photos.html
and the code I’m using:
This widget requires Flash Player 9 or better
Comment by Tina — June 1, 2009 @ 11:37 pm
Hi Tina. You should try adding the full path to the images in the XML. Are they in the same folder as the html and the swf? Your code looks OK to me at first glance.
Comment by Roy — June 2, 2009 @ 7:12 pm
Dear Roy – thanks for the suggestions (html was in fact in a different folder) and now all works like a charm! One other question – can I make the background transparent? Many thanks again, Brilliant work! Tina
Comment by Tina — June 6, 2009 @ 2:38 am
Hi Tina. You can add a new param tag to get a transparent background. <param name=”wmode” value=”transparent” /> should do the trick
Comment by Roy — June 6, 2009 @ 11:19 am
Excellent work – I’ve yet to learn AS3 and am stuck back in AS2 land, very nice job on the coding. I wonder how much more work would be involved to morph the open source version into a video feed viewer?
That’d be awesome if you could load small video clips into this and have them rotate around *drools*.
Comment by Cody — June 16, 2009 @ 1:23 am
Hi, Roy. I have a problem!!! I’ ve download your Photo widget[example version], check on Denwer -Server – wow, it works – Cool. But then i’ve copy all this files on my server and check – fail(:. I can see the form for flash movie and background color, but i can’t see my photos!!! Maybe, you have some ideas about?
Comment by Michael — June 23, 2009 @ 5:08 pm
Sorry i found my mistake) Thanks.
Comment by Michael — June 23, 2009 @ 5:27 pm
Hi Roy, it’s me again[Michael, my last 2 message]. Problem – it works in Denwer and my web page with your test.jmp phto, but when I change “test.jpg” photo in photowidget.xml on my photos[i mean change links to my photos, exaple -
1.jpg
] – it doesn’t works. I try to find decide in Flash[photowidget.fly] – nothing. Ideas?
Comment by Michael — June 24, 2009 @ 9:07 pm
Sorrrrryyyyy)). I found it.
Comment by Michael — June 24, 2009 @ 9:20 pm
And a last question – if I want to locate on one php page a lot of Photo widgets, for example – 4. I’ve renamed photowidget.xml in other names[ example - photowidget1.xml], and, of coure changed links to my photos in every XML files, changed scripts – . But it doesn’t work! I think all problems in Flash, i saw in ThumbCloud.js a link [? baseURL + "photowidget.xml"]?
Comment by Michael — June 24, 2009 @ 10:09 pm
Hi Michael. There’s no reason for that not to work. I’ve tested it with four different instances of the movie, all using different xml files and photos. The path specified in the TagCloud class is merely a default used for testing. The ‘feed’ parameter overrides this default. No need to change anything inside the movie at all.
Comment by Roy — June 26, 2009 @ 8:53 am
Ok, thanks!!! It works. But in Opera it displays not correctly, in other browsers it works very cool. In opera i must first of all click on place where this plugin located, and only then it works( i meane – turn around). Maybe, in script in html fle schoud i write somethinhs?Thanks!
Comment by Michael — June 26, 2009 @ 10:53 pm
Sure,It’ s not your mistake, but maybe you know how to deliver from this problem, i have often encountered this phenomenon…
Comment by Michael — June 27, 2009 @ 11:16 am
@Michael. I have no idea how to fix this. Works fine for me in Opera, so there’s nothing to troubleshoot.
Comment by Roy — June 28, 2009 @ 6:47 am
hi Roy,
this widget is amazingly powerful. you are a genius. thanks for the simple soultion. i tried it standalone using html and it works fantastic. however i tried to copy some portion of html code in wordpress using text widget but it is not working. any specific reason? i tried absolute and relative path of files but no use. could you tell me in short what is missing? if it going to be a robust change of your code please ignore. thanks.
here is what i did..
‘backticks’
This widget requires Flash Player 9 or better
‘backticks’
Comment by mals — July 1, 2009 @ 1:19 pm
comment is not letting me to copy paste code. hmm..
Comment by mals — July 1, 2009 @ 1:19 pm
Hi Mals. My guess is that it’s got to do with paths. The XML should be in the same folder as the SWF, and should contain full paths to the images. Because WordPress includes a lot of stuff it’s kind of hard to determine relative paths.
Comment by Roy — July 1, 2009 @ 8:08 pm
Roy,
I’m having trouble opening the source files in Flash8. Invalid file format. I’m trying to incorporate the excellent lightbox image popup facility that is popular on some many websites at the moment, but cannot get to the actionscript.
Comment by Rupert — July 4, 2009 @ 8:00 pm
can i attach this in my joomla site
Comment by roney — July 9, 2009 @ 7:19 pm
Hi Can someone help me create the Photo Widget in Flex
Comment by Nimmu — July 13, 2009 @ 1:07 pm
Roy,
I needto access the swf, xml, and jpg’s from diferent locations..
All of them can be at just 1 folder, but the HTML using it (really generated by PHP) are working from different locations…
Any ideas.. I tried with full path but…
Thanks, and is a really nice work!! Congratulations
best regards
Comment by Javier — July 14, 2009 @ 10:42 pm
Roy,
was my fault, It’s already working! Sorry
Javier
Comment by Javier — July 15, 2009 @ 3:28 pm
Hello, is there a mean to modify the color or to remove the white border for thumbnails ?
Comment by ab — July 19, 2009 @ 6:11 pm
@Martin: You’ll have to publish the project (using Flash CS3 or better) and replace the swf file on your server with the one that generates.
Comment by Roy — April 23, 2009 @ 3:13 pm
Thanks
Comment by ab — July 19, 2009 @ 6:56 pm
Hi Roy,
My site is not a WordPress blog. can i use WP-cumulus for normal website?
Comment by Ramsh — July 20, 2009 @ 5:17 pm
That’s so weird – in my case photowidget only works if the file test.jpg is in the same directory as the swf – no matter what the xml file says at all!
Any idea what’s wrong??
Comment by felix — July 22, 2009 @ 12:37 am
Have been playing around a bit more. It seems to only work if the pictures are in the same directory as the flash file … weird.
Could you do me a favour and do a quick test using the following PHOTOWIDGET.XML:
P6290413.jpg
P9035070.JPG
Actually I just found out that the HREF entry is simply ignored. You can check it out by using my two examples:
http://www.felixsalomon.net/photowidget/1.html works fine cos it uses 1.xml (pics in same folder)
http://www.felixsalomon.net/photowidget/2.html uses 2.xml with pictures in subfolder and doesn’t work!
Both XML files contain three image links: HDR.jpg, aeb.jpg and test1.jpg. All three images are locate din the jpg folder but only the first two are located in the base directory. That’s why example 1 only shows 2 pics – the third doesn’t exist. That’s fine. But why does thesecond example ALSO show two pictures although all three pics exist in the specified directory? Cos it gets the pictures again from the base directory!
(Another proof that that’s the case is the fact that your example.html from the zip package works straight away – although HREF’s are defined that link to images that don’t exist!)
Do you know why?
Cheers for helping me out!
I just don’t undestand it.
Comment by felix — July 22, 2009 @ 1:13 am
Actually your example doesn’t work, I just checked again – no idea where that thought came from … picture is called test1.jpg but in th exml it says test.jpg
Comment by felix — July 22, 2009 @ 1:26 am
Hi Felix. I looked at your examples, and I think you’ve misunderstood the way the xml works. The href attribute specifies the link target for the image (upon click). The path to the image file should be in the tag’s value.
<image href=”http://www.felixsalomon.net/photowidget/jpg”>test1.jpg</image>
should be
<image href=”http://www.someplace.com”>http://www.felixsalomon.net/photowidget/jpg/test1.jpg</image>
Hope this helps…
Comment by Roy — July 23, 2009 @ 8:38 am
Hi Roy,
oh man, that obviously makes a lot of sense …. and from my own attempts I should have noticed. Anyway, thanks a lot!
Have a great day
Felix
Comment by felix — July 23, 2009 @ 9:40 am
@MitoRiko
Hi Tried the photo widget on flex. As a lone application it works fine but wen I add another container( say panel) along with the photo widget to the application, it doesnt display. Can u tel watz the problem n how do I go about correcting it?
Comment by Nimmu — July 23, 2009 @ 9:51 am
Wen i try 2 load the SWF through SWFLoader it gives the following error..
TypeError: Error #1009: Cannot access a property or method of a null object reference.
at com.roytanck.photowidget::ThumbCloud()
Help me out ….
Comment by Nimmu — July 23, 2009 @ 1:09 pm
Hi Nimmu. The movie wasn’t designed to be loaded into another Flash/Flex movie. You’d need to make changes to it before you can do this. Especially in regards to the flashvars and the way scaling is handled.
Comment by Roy — July 23, 2009 @ 6:37 pm
Hi Roy,
Congratulations, very nice and pleasant widget, but something weird here!
I have downloaded “photowidget.zip”, extract all files in the same directory.
When opening “example.html” and clicking on pictures, links are not active!!!
Neither context-menu right-click “Get this widget at roytanck.com”… ????
Using XP ,tested with IE7, Opera 7.64, Google Chrome. With Flash Player 9 (& 10).
With original xml file “photowidget.xml”. (easy to understand and edit)
What could be wrong here? Where is the mistake?
Many thanks.
Arno
Comment by Arno — July 25, 2009 @ 1:26 pm
simply great! thank you man!
Comment by fasterbit — July 30, 2009 @ 1:41 pm
Hi Roy,
Great widget, but I too wish to echo Arno’s confusion – No links are working for me at all!
Any ideas?
PrinterElf
Comment by PrinterElf — July 31, 2009 @ 10:38 pm
What a great widget, got it working in less than 5 mins. For anyone having problems with their images just starting it out with the http:// …. than use absolute locations with swf file and xml file.
See it working on
http://www.stock-wallpaper.com/
See the XML file
http://www.stock-wallpaper.com/rss/photowidget/
Hope that helps some.
Thanks for a great widget.
Brian Jones
Comment by Brian Jones — August 2, 2009 @ 4:45 pm
Hi,
Nice widget but isn’t working locally (on disk)
Links on pics are NOT active!
Or something wrong for me…
Perhaps, making a donation is necessary. I am ready !
Comment by Vincent — August 3, 2009 @ 9:24 am
Hi Arno, PrinterElf, Vincent. Did you try using it online? There may be security restrictions in effect when running locally in a browser.
Comment by Roy — August 4, 2009 @ 8:32 am
Hi Roy,
Thanks for answer!
It is OK when using online. But not locally on disk. (idem with WP-cumulus) ???
Could be usefull and funny.
No security restrictions in browsers. Several tested.
Ready for donation when i can use it (them) !!!
Vincent
Comment by Vincent — August 5, 2009 @ 9:06 am
In case anyone is interested:
http://gallery.menalto.com/node/89968 explains how to use the great Photowidget with Gallery2.
Cheers
Felix
Comment by felix — August 5, 2009 @ 2:05 pm
Superb.
Comment by WemMaster 33 — August 7, 2009 @ 11:37 pm
Thanks Roy – awesome!!
Comment by Naveen — August 17, 2009 @ 7:32 am
Hi Roy,
I just downloaded your photowidget. It is alwsome.
I m trying to use it fore something else on my page, and i want to ad some text to each photo from xml, but i don t know how to do that. My xml should look like this:
picture.jpg
I want to display the picture name on pic. Can you help me. What should i put in actionscript.
10x. Best regards
Comment by md — August 17, 2009 @ 1:22 pm
Hi md. I’m afraid there’s quite a few changes to make to the actionscript. More than I can guide you through in a short comment. I’ve looking into this, and it’s not a feature I’ll be adding in the near future. It would make the movie a lot heavier and/or introduce the unicode issues already present in WP-Cumulus.
Comment by Roy — August 18, 2009 @ 11:38 am
Hi.
I have made a top 10 module from your photowidget, what gets more parameters from xml.
But I have a problem. Maybe you can help me.
Can you send me your email adress on email where I can send the new actionscript?
http://sites.vilaglato.hu/sites/start3/banner/example.html
Comment by md — August 25, 2009 @ 5:02 pm
Hi md. Feel free to use the contact form on this site to contact me.
Comment by Roy — August 26, 2009 @ 9:30 am
Hey,
I would like to use the flicker widget but to remove the ability to click an image and get to the picasa web site.
i.e. to disable the link on the image.
is there some parameter I can pass or change in order to display the link on the image?
Thanks
Jasmine
Comment by Jasmine — September 11, 2009 @ 8:37 pm
Hi Roy,
Really like your image cloud. It is almost exactly what I need. I am about to start messing with the source stuff in Flash but I last used Flash in 2001 and a lot has changed.
What I need is bigger pictures. I realize there is the issue with pics overlapping but shouldn’t it be possible to just make the one pic in the front center position get bigger? Like have it start scaling up as it gets near the front center position?
The other thing I need is for it to rotate automatically when no interaction is present. If you put your mouse pointer on the outside perimeter of the cloud and then slowly move your mouse in a circle keeping your pointer on the outer perimeter it creates just the kind of motion I would like to have happen automatically.
Oh and alt texts, yeah I know you aren’t going to be adding this any time soon but it really would be nice.
I am going to see what I can come up with on my own but I expect this will be way over my head.
Comment by Nash — September 12, 2009 @ 9:37 am
Actually I was just thinking that the alt text doesn’t even need to display on the actual images. It could just display across the bottom (or top) of the whole cloud.
Comment by Nash — September 12, 2009 @ 9:50 am
Hi Jasmine. Since the click behavior is inside the Flash movie, you’ll need the Photo Widget (which works with locally hosted images) and edit the movie a bit to remove the clicks. Some AS3 skills needed I’m afraid.
Comment by Roy — September 14, 2009 @ 10:25 am
Hi Roy,
I’m using your excellent photo widget on my website but unfortunately it collides with the Lightbox script – the flash is always on top when I click on a Lightbox link. Is there a way to fix this behaviour?
Cheers
Felix
Comment by Felix — September 14, 2009 @ 2:18 pm
Found it myself – wmode=transparent will do the trick
Comment by Felix — September 14, 2009 @ 2:31 pm
This is really good stuff, I’ve been looking for something just like this widget.. Thanks
Comment by michael — September 17, 2009 @ 4:55 am
Roy, I try to edit the links inside the XML file to put your PhotoWidget plugin in a “block” inside my Moodle plattform, but the pictures never can be seen. I have followed all the instructions, but all the times the only picture displayed is the “test.jpg” and I dont know what is wrong. I am an amateur in this topics, can you help me?
Comment by Mario — September 19, 2009 @ 1:30 am
RESOLVED. For some strange reason, after shutdown my PC (the server) the plugin works perfect.
Again, many thanks Roy for your effort and your contribution with all of us
Comment by Mario — September 19, 2009 @ 2:13 am
Hi Roy, do you have a version of this in AS2 ?
Comment by PAUL — September 21, 2009 @ 4:47 pm
Hi Paul. No, this was done in AS3 only. Sorry.
Comment by Roy — September 22, 2009 @ 9:19 am
Well I give up Roy..
The action script is just not my cup of tea and I don’t have the time to learn it just now. It is such an awesome thing you made but I sure wish you had made it a little more configurable.
Comment by Nash — September 23, 2009 @ 1:19 pm
someone has problem with the new version of chrome?
in my site teh xml script was working well but now don’t work, but in iexplorer is still working…
(sorry for the english)
anyway good work Roy!
Comment by carlo — September 24, 2009 @ 6:29 pm
Hello Roy!
I just want to know, how can I get the images (9 different images) from the flash library instead the xml file?
Help me please
Thank you very much.
Comment by pcbb — September 24, 2009 @ 11:41 pm
@carlo: No issues here both on Chrome 3 (Vista) and the developer version 4 (Ubuntu). Does the widget work OK for you on other sites that use it, like this one? Or just the example files downloaded and opened in Chrome?
@pcbb: That would require a bit of hacking, but it shouldn’t be too hard. In AS2 you’d even be able to put the linkage names in the XML, but that doesn’t work with AS3′s way of instantiating library items.
Comment by Roy — September 25, 2009 @ 10:24 am
Hi Roy,
olso the example file downloaded and opened in chrome don’t work…
No in this (yours) page I see a fixed image, I checked teh xml code also in dreamweaver CS4 with the option live and is ok. If I open the page in Iexplore the widget also work well
ciao ciao
Comment by carlo — September 25, 2009 @ 7:30 pm
Carlo, could you try another computer? It seems to me you could be having a local Flash issue. The example code is about as basic and compatible as it gets.
Comment by Roy — September 27, 2009 @ 1:06 pm
Hi Roy,
I downloaded your photo widget and it really is great. I have been looking for something like this. My question to you is, is there any way for the widget to be geocoded. Meaning if someone from California visits the website they would see the widget with photos of California. If someone from Alaska visits the website they would see photos of Alaska. I would like to do this if its at all possible. Thank you.
Alex
Comment by Alex — September 28, 2009 @ 4:30 am
I had tried also on other computer. The same issue… but now is working!
thank you
Comment by carlo — September 28, 2009 @ 11:29 am
Hi Alex. If Flickr (or Picasa) were to offer RSS feeds for geographic locations (I’m not sure they do, but they have tons of feeds), that may just be possible. You’d have to get the users coords somehow and make the appropriate part of the feed URL dynamic so you can insert the coords. Let me know if you get this up and running, sounds like fun.
Comment by Roy — September 29, 2009 @ 9:21 am
Hi Roy,
sorry if my question might be too foolish for you.
How can I use this on my wordpress blog? does it function like a plugin?
Thanks
Comment by Greg — September 30, 2009 @ 6:18 pm
Roy very nice,
I have been able to use this in 5 mins.
using it, as it is, because it is that simple and wonderful is what we are doing
i have read everything and i think I might misunderstand, so I’ll be super brief.
few questions:
1) how can I make the background transparent? flash edit I assume
2) how many images allowed? it’s dynamically adding as many images as in the XML
3) upon clicking the images, can it open another HTML page? i believe this is a javascript issue
we just need your basic interface and a way to click to have a popup with more details appear
since we will have about 20 or so images at least, we want to edit just one file simple and easy
in fact our site will just be your widget and our images.
can you assist.
thanks!
Comment by bob — September 30, 2009 @ 6:36 pm
hehe, sometimes, you just have to dig!
ok, so I answered 1&2
but if someone can explain how to have the links reference or call a popup, that would be just great.
thanks!
Comment by bob — September 30, 2009 @ 6:50 pm
all good. figured out all of this. however there are 3 others:
1) in explorer, when you use the flash control, putting the mouse over the object brings a whitish box around the edge of the flash control. is there a way to supress this? reason: we are using a black background. there are a lot of fixes, but they all seem to destroy the usage of photowidget
2) on the popups, we want to specifically size the window, remove the scrollbars and remove the title, menu and controls leaving the user only with a “close” or ‘X” capability in the window. how can I do this in XML
3) with explorer is this an issue? the error, “SecurityError: Error #2028: Local-with-filesystem SWF file file://C:\Documents and Settings\XXX\Desktop\New Folder\photowidget.swf cannot access Internet URL http://www.roytanck.com at global/flash.net::navigateToURL() at rom.roytanck.photowidget::Thumb/::clickHandler()
sorry if I have already asked questions that have been answered
thanks again
Comment by bob — September 30, 2009 @ 9:05 pm
Greg: You can use this on all blogs and other pages that allow Flash. Unfortunately, wordpress.com does not. It’s not a plugin, you imply get an HTML snippet to paste into your site.
Bob:
1) You could use something like SWFObject to get rid of that border. It’s a pesky security feature in IE.
2) That’s all window.open javascript stuff. Please not though that some browsers do not let you hide everything nowadays.
3) That security error should go away when you put things online. If it doesn’t, look into ‘allowscriptaccess’.
Comment by Roy — October 1, 2009 @ 8:55 am
roy, thanks for this
oddly, we love your control so much we are trying to figure a way to use it, and it only for our interface. for this we have 2 more questions:
1) do you know anyone who has implemented or recoded the flash so that when you click an image it expands to fill the whole page and then click again, brings it back to the interface
2) is there anyway to say, upon click, fade out the interface before having it load the next one. Since it isn’t a tree structure itself, we wonder if there is a way to “make” it seem like it is part of a tree
- bob: hopes it can be a really simple fix
Comment by bob — October 1, 2009 @ 10:09 am
and more specifically, yes it is Javascript to launch a new window popup. this details are:
on (release, rollOver) {
getURL (“javascript:NewWindow.scrollBy(30,0); NewWindow.focus(); void(0);”);
}
which is great but then I am hard coding the details. in the XML
2.jpg
it seems that the details or the image href, target, etc., are being passed into html browser from within your flash, so I assume I have to recode for the varaibles that pass in href target and the jpg location?
as you can see i haven’t opened the flash yet. I’m trying to avoid becoming mr flash as that can take a hell of a lot of time and pain.
Comment by bob — October 1, 2009 @ 10:48 am
Bob, the movie as it is now does not really allow you to use javascript: links. Flash has a completely different way of handling javascript (externalInterface as opposed to navigateToURL). You’ll really need to dive into the Flash to get what you want I’m afraid. Currently, only the href attribute is parsed and used to link to using navigateToURL.
Comment by Roy — October 1, 2009 @ 12:01 pm
Roy, thanks for the details.
a great resource has literally literally helped me get the code right: http://www.flash-db.com/PopUp/
now if I understand this correctly, you are using the navigateToURL command which seems to be an AS3 function and getURL is an AS2 function. If you are passing the navigateToURL the href command, I can assume that you store it in some variable? are you sending the whole thing?
Think there is a way to parse it so that I can imbed the necessary variable in the:
on (release) { getURL (“javascript:NewWindow=window.open(‘ShowPopup.php’,'newWin’,'width=400, height=300,left=0,top=0,toolbar=No,location=No,scrollbars=No,status=No,resizable=No,fullscreen=No’); NewWindow.focus(); void(0);”); }
command. Only issue: where are you hiding the AS2 script? I’ll wait to hear from you before I start ripping it all apart looking for it. Good think I spent 3 years as a hard core software developer. If I’m lucky I will be able to find some way to make this happen easily.
thanks again
Comment by bob — October 1, 2009 @ 1:16 pm
Thanks for the answer, Roy. I’m using self hosting wordpress.
Anywhere I can find the tutorial on how to use this photo widget? especially to use it in a wp blog
Comment by Greg — October 1, 2009 @ 4:24 pm
like a good programmer, while stirring the soup, it came to me.
since passing the window size & location varaibles to the AS2 or the AS3 required parsing and then using javascript within flash, of course there had to be an easier way. So want popups of the photowidget viewer of specific sizes and locations and not just as a huge window or tabs? Here is how:
1) create index.html with 2 iframes “main” and “second”
2) in the index.html “main” iframe, place the flash player having it point to “second” as the location where all new pages will open
3) in the iframe HTML for “second” have it open all new pages in “self”
4) in the XML for photowidget viewer specify that for each image, #1, #2, that it open an HTML related to each image that is clicked on within the “second” iframe of the index.html. it looks like this:
2a.jpg
5) in 2a.html you are going to write some HTML and javascript to popup another window (with a specific size & location) and to open 2B.html in that new window not in the iframe “second” – where it would naturally open. Ah, JavaScript, good for this kind of thing.
Because Photowidget cannot directly open new windows with specific sizing and location, without toolbars, etc., a secondary HTML has to take care of this. Hope this helps everyone. Worked in no time for me.
Comment by bob — October 1, 2009 @ 6:04 pm
Hi Roy
I really like your photo widget. I would love to use it to show off some stuff I’ve been doing.
What I’d particularly like to do is to create a tree like structure where clicking a single photo will cause another set of photos to be revealed in a new window and so on so that it is possible to drill down and look at the detail of the various things I have created however I’m having difficulty getting the example code to work as I’d expect – or to work at all (?).
Am I right to think that clicking on the individual picture should open the page defined by the href in the XML? If so can you give me any clues as to why this is not working (at all) when I try this? I would have expected ‘clicking’ any of the pictures would take me to your website but it does not. Maybe it’s my OS (W2000) or browser (IE6) that’s the problem. I have Flash V10,0,22,87 installed.
I am not a programmer though semi literate in this arena so please be gentle! Don’t mind editing the XML though
Many thanks, A
Comment by Alan — October 6, 2009 @ 12:28 pm
Dear Roy,
Many thanks for this wonderful widget.
I want this widget to be transparent on my website. I have this webpage, and wmode parameter is not doing its job (i always see white background around flying images):
I tried to figure out myself how to work it around but i didnt managed so i am asking for your advice.
Thank you very much in advance
Comment by Milosh — October 6, 2009 @ 10:57 pm
This widget requires Flash Player 9 or better
Comment by Milosh — October 6, 2009 @ 10:58 pm
I am sorry i tried to copy/paste my code but didnt managed. I wanted to show that i have <aram name=”wmode” value="transparent" but it is not working. Any help appreciated
Comment by Milosh — October 6, 2009 @ 11:00 pm
Hi Alan. Your assumption is right. Clicking should take you to the link specified in the href attribute. You may need to place your files online and/or use url that are all on the same domain. If that fails I’d recommend trying a newer OS and browser just to rule out w2000 as a cause.
Comment by Roy — October 12, 2009 @ 9:51 am
Hey Roy
I just pop by your site and i need help. Regarding the floating thumbnails, i have a questions! Look at this site http://www.evga.com/default.asp, is it the same principle .. or ? I real need some help, if you got time. Maybe you know where i can find a tutorials.
Andrè
Comment by Doc — October 13, 2009 @ 1:57 pm
Dear Roy!
Thanks for sharing this wonderful script!
What variables should I change in the source, if I want to use an ellipse shaped sphere (I don’t know the correct name of this trigonometrical shape)), so I can use up the space in a 400×200 box?
Comment by Casper — October 14, 2009 @ 9:32 am
Casper: Have a look at this tutorial for WP-Cumulus. The same hack should be possible with Photo Widget.
Comment by Roy — October 14, 2009 @ 10:08 am
Hi Doc. I see nothing on that page that resembles my photo widget. If you’re referring to the sliding bar, the only thing they really have in common is that both effects were created using Flash.
Comment by Roy — October 14, 2009 @ 10:21 am
I should have look around! Thank you very much!
Comment by Casper — October 14, 2009 @ 3:02 pm
How can i force the images to look wider
Comment by babis — October 20, 2009 @ 4:21 pm
Hey Roy,
Loving the picture cloud (PhotoWidget). I’m using it on my website, but I want to enable click thrus from floating pictures to open up a new window that’s centred and without address bar etc… I think it requires the target=”_blank” string in the XML file to be changed, and although I have done this before in Javascript and HTML, I’m lost on how to make it happen from the code within the XML file.
Is it possible to write into the XML something like target=”new.window” with screen position and height and width details? Im’ not that hot on XML, but know this might require external javascript or something. Any advice very much appreciated!!
thanks
Jools (London)
PS – great work – love it!!
Comment by Jools — October 22, 2009 @ 1:24 am
Hi Jools. The problem isn’t the target attribute. The links are handled by the Flash. Unfortunately, Flash uses a completely different component to handle javascript calls. You’d have to rewrite the clickhandler function to use ExternalInterface instead of navigateToURL.
Comment by Roy — October 22, 2009 @ 12:35 pm
Hello Roy:
I wonder if there is an easy way to get rid of the pictures background (kind of Polaroid effect).
Thanks in advance!! Great job.
Javier.
Comment by Javier — November 3, 2009 @ 2:02 pm
Sorry there, I forgot to explain why should I want to get this feature. The thing is that it would look wonderfull if used along transparent images (png).
I have been trying png transparency and it seems to work better your jpg test image than my png files… I don really understad it.
Cheers!!
Comment by Javier — November 3, 2009 @ 2:52 pm
Hi Javier. You’ll need to dive into the Flash movie’s code a bit to remove the border. It gets added in Thumb.as.
Comment by Roy — November 3, 2009 @ 7:52 pm
Thanks a lot Roy. So I found the code lines you told me and just commented them out… and nothing appeared to happen. I presume that I’ll have to compile the flash files (not as php files) in my ubuntu.
I’ll keep you updated on that
Thanks again!
Comment by Javier — November 4, 2009 @ 11:39 am
Javier, you’ll indeed need to compile the Flash movie. A trial version of Flash CS3 or better should do the trick. Apparently you can run it under WINE.
Comment by Roy — November 4, 2009 @ 1:42 pm
I was wondering if there is a way to make the photos rotate automatically without having to have the mouse interact with it?
Comment by Amanda — November 10, 2009 @ 9:24 pm
Hi Roy ! Great Work !!
I’m trying to use photowidget in a University project, and I want to open the URL from a JavaScript in the main html page, but I’m newbie in AS…
I read that It’s necessary to rewrite the clickhandler function to use ExternalInterface instead of navigateToURL, so :
…
import flash.external.ExternalInterface;
…
private function clickHandler( e:MouseEvent ):void {
var request:URLRequest = new URLRequest( _node["@href"] );
var targetFrame:String = ( _node["@target"] == undefined ) ? “_self” : _node["@target"];
ExternalInterface.call(“openLink”, String(request), String(targetFrame));
and I’m not so sure…
because in the JavaScript I receive : “[object URLRequest]”
I think that it’s a type conversion issue ¿? I will keep trying to fix it.
Thanks a lot !!!
Comment by Charlie — November 11, 2009 @ 3:16 am
Hi Amanda. Having it rotate all the time distracts when reading the page and eats a lot of processing power. It’s not very hard to do if you’re familiar with AS3, but I’d recommend against it in most cases.
Comment by Roy — November 11, 2009 @ 2:24 pm
Not familiar at all with action script. I can read it but without comments I don’t really know what it is doing. I understand about the distraction issue but this is not going on a website. I am trying to get it to auto rotate so we can place it on a sign. No one will be available to sit and move a mouse over the photos, plus it would be kind of useless if someone had to do that. So if you could post the code to make this modification, it would really help me out. By the way, you have done a great job with this widget. I love it.
Comment by Amanda — November 11, 2009 @ 2:38 pm
Hello Roy:
what a wonderful job.
Thank you.
I have a small problem:
One odd behavior I found with all versions of your wonderful creation (since good wp-cumulus, until the new Photo widgets, standalone and on CMS, and also with all other instances on the web) which seems almost opposite to the problems of Amanda.
On my MacOSX (Leopard) with all browsers, the flash starts to rotate each time you click anywhere on the screen, even outside of the animation (even the menu of my browser and operating system!) And does not stop never … until I rollover & rollout with the mouse on the animation, then finally slows down and stops.
But I think that is due maybe to a little ‘odd relationship flash-macosx…
I really like your work.
But my Mac is very tired! (as you said to Amanda about the processor work…)
Any Idea?
Thank you.
Idro
Comment by Idro — November 17, 2009 @ 2:36 am
Has anyone created a pre-loader for this yet?
I have tried and every time I do it does not work.
I am not sure what I am doing wrong but if anyone has I’d really like some help.
Thanks
Comment by Amanda — November 18, 2009 @ 2:14 pm
Amanda, the movie itself is tiny, so there’s very little to preload. Once it’s loaded it starts getting the XML and the images, which can take a while. If you’d liek to show soemthing else until all images are loaded you should probably modify the movie to do so.
Comment by Roy — November 19, 2009 @ 9:53 am
Happy Holidays. I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving.
I have a quick question. Is there a way to create this widget so that others can add it to their facebook account? I have seen some widgets that will say add to facebook and it takes them to a login page and then adds it to their news feeds?
Comment by Amanda — November 30, 2009 @ 8:12 pm
Hi Amanda. I’m pretty sure it’s possible, but i have no experience with Facebook’s API. I’ll put this on my long-term to do list, but I wouldn’t hold my breath…
Comment by Roy — December 1, 2009 @ 10:55 am
Roy, Is there a way to integrate this into another Flash file. I’d like to have it appear towards the end of Flash eCard. The idea I have would have it integrated with the ongoing animation of the card. Any help is appreciated.
Thanks and great widget!
Comment by Jon — December 1, 2009 @ 7:59 pm
Jon, you’re welcome to try, but it’s not going to be easy. The scaling algorithm assumes the movie is root, and so do the parts that work with flashvars. If you reroute both you might be able to get it to work.
Comment by Roy — December 2, 2009 @ 9:39 am
Hi Roy,
So from your last comment I suppose that if I want to include the photowidget in a WP template it will have to be at the same directory of the template. Am I right ?
I am having trouble to get it done once in my server.
Thanks in advance.
Javier.
Comment by Javier — December 3, 2009 @ 5:20 pm
By the way, is the widget able to manage landscape pictures? It seem that it only works with squared pictures.
Thanks for sharing !!
javier.
Comment by Javier — December 3, 2009 @ 7:34 pm
Hi again Javier. Yes, if you’re going to include this into a theme the theme folder is the place to put the swf. To get it to support landscape pictures you’ll need to edit Thumb.as some more. The masking takes place in there as well.
I opted for square pictures so their corners don’t overlap. That doesn’t look very good, but it can also be avoided my making the images smaller. It’s also why I limited the number of images to 20. More means they’ll be closer together and start to overlap.
Comment by Roy — December 4, 2009 @ 10:13 pm
Has anyone successfully incorporated a lightbox with this widget? A working example would be great! I’m not very proficient at Actionscripting so any guidance would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance!
Comment by Jon — December 8, 2009 @ 2:42 pm
Sorry the question, do not know anything about flash, and
this widget is not like the others in that you provide
the code, then how do I change their images by
mine, and how do I add to my blog.
Thank request Your work!
Comment by Leninha — December 8, 2009 @ 10:19 pm
Leninha, have you downloaded the example files? The xml file is pretty easy to read and edit. Uploading the files should give you a working movie.
Comment by Roy — December 10, 2009 @ 11:21 am
thanks for help man
Comment by yani — January 1, 2010 @ 11:41 am
Thank you Roy!
This is great, i just made this to dynamically work for PHP-Fusion´s builtin Photo gallery and my Arcade system.
Since you decided to make this free, i will release the solution for PHP-Fusion for free with in a few days aswell.
Keep the great work up!
Best regards
Domi
Comment by Domi — January 5, 2010 @ 6:19 am
Thank you man….
very nice…..
Comment by John Hario — January 6, 2010 @ 2:16 am
Hi Roy!
Great stuff. I was curious to know if you had any ideas as to how I could embed the slideshow into my flash site. It is probably much easier than I am making it, and I am having a hard time finding the resources to point me in the right direction. Considering you obviously know your stuff, and you know others who know their stuff, I thought this may be a good place to start.
Thanks again!
Comment by Kaleb — January 10, 2010 @ 7:06 pm
Kaleb, it’s actually quite complicated. The movie has been designed to be embedded straight into html, and does not work when loaded into another swf without extensive modifications. If you’re a knowledgeable AS3 developer it shouldn’t be too hard for you to rework the Photo Widget open source version.
Comment by Roy — January 13, 2010 @ 1:17 pm
Popup blocker problem with ubuntu and firefox 3.0.17
Firefox prevented this site from opening 1 popup window..
Thanks anyway
Comment by babis — January 27, 2010 @ 10:40 pm
I have been looking all day for a widget similar to this. I will definitely try it! As a note you should think about creating a widget that ‘spotlights’ a previous post from a list you can choose from. That is what I was really looking for but I know I can make your widget work.
Comment by Hailey Erickson — February 10, 2010 @ 2:40 am
Hi Roy,
Can you please explain how can I use your cool widget in blogger?
TIA,
Kianna
Comment by Kianna — February 15, 2010 @ 10:26 pm
Kianna, I’m afraid I can’t. I haven’t used Blogger in ages. I was surprised to see my account still active a whiel ago, but when I last used the service it didn’t even have a title field for posts. However, Amanda may be able to help you out.
Comment by Roy — February 16, 2010 @ 11:57 am
hello roy
i downloaded the photo widget
looks verry nice
but the links dont work on mac safary, firefox, chrome
can you help me with that?
regards, andreas
Comment by andreas — February 19, 2010 @ 11:23 pm
In fact, the images aren’t even in the fla. The images are defined in the XML, and loaded from external jpg/gif or png files.
Comment by vinyl letters — February 20, 2010 @ 12:42 pm
hi there, I tried the flickr widget and its pretty cool, I am trying out the photowidget and cannot seem to find how to make the widget transparent on my testpages, is it only the flickr widget that has that option?? thanks
Marc
Comment by Marco — February 25, 2010 @ 11:22 pm
its cool I got it, I just used the flickrwidget code and changed the url locations of the xml and swf to where they are on my hosting…. this is a great wee tool, Warm regards:):)
Comment by Marco — February 25, 2010 @ 11:33 pm
i cant have! help
Comment by susan — March 2, 2010 @ 10:31 pm
Hi Roy
Partly in response to Alans question on 06 Oct 2009, I was too having a problem with the href not linking.
I had changed the code slightly so I tested again with the code as it was downloaded and it still did not work.
I found that if I run the example.html file directly in my browser i.e. Double click on the file itself! the hyperlinks don’t work, but when I published it to my development server and access it through my local URL it works fine. Not sure if anyone else has found this, I am running Windows 7 with IE8 and Flash 10. at first I thought it may be a bug in Flash10!
Not published this to a website yet although you can see the photo gallery I intend to replace with photowidget at http://www.afrikanwarriors.com/acrobatics-gallery/gallery.aspx
I’ll also include a link to your site once I have implemented it.
Regards
Carl Thomas
Comment by Carl Thomas — March 10, 2010 @ 6:20 pm
Hi Roy,
I downloaded the photo widget, I imported photowidget.swf in my flash actionscript 3 code, without chnge it, but it dosen’t work..It appears this:
TypeError: Error #1009: Impossible to access to a propriety or a reference’s method of object null.
at com.roytanck.photowidget::ThumbCloud()
Can you help me?
regards
Fede
Comment by Fede — March 19, 2010 @ 2:40 pm
Hi Roy!
Excuse for my English, I write through online the translator!
My forum phpbb2. I do not know how at you it is started flash, but I took your two files photowidget.swf and photowidget.xml. In photowidget.xml has changed references to the and that has earned photowidget.swf a file, has inserted in overall_header a code
width=”400″ height=”400″ The size which can be changed
All has turned out, only this code and does not suffice much. Once again thanks for this cloud flash
Comment by Kontrochka — March 20, 2010 @ 1:30 am
For some reason the code has not got to the comment
Comment by Kontrochka — March 20, 2010 @ 1:33 am
Hi, I have used this by placing in my webiste to test it. But when i click on the images it is not redirecting to the page. Can some one please help me understand on this what could be the issue. http://manascreen.web.officelive.com/photowidget/example.html.. Here is my website and i have copied the same example which was given in this page. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Comment by basu — March 20, 2010 @ 7:21 am
Hi Basu. The links need to point to a place on the same domain. The default XML has links to my website that Flash will refuse to process because of potential cross-site scripting issues. If you edit the XML so that the links point to your domain it will probably work.
Comment by Roy — March 20, 2010 @ 8:35 pm
Hi Fede. This movie was not designed to be loaded into other projects. You’ll have to dig in deeper to get that working. For one thing, the flashvars need to be rerouted because they’re in a different movieclip.
Comment by Roy — March 20, 2010 @ 8:40 pm
Roy. Once you get all the bugs out and it is easier to use, I’d recommend putting it out on the Joomla.org web site as a new extension for Joomla user to use on their open source web sites. You will probably finf thousands will use this and offer suggestions for improvements etc., Just a thought.
Thanks, I like it and will try using it.
Comment by Jeff — March 21, 2010 @ 1:09 pm
Roy
I have downloaded and extracted and tried uploading to my Joomla 1.5 site but keep getting error message, unknown archive type or Error! Could not find a Joomla! XML setup file in the package.
Am I doing something wrong here?
Thanks
Comment by Jeff — March 21, 2010 @ 1:33 pm
Hi Jeff. This widget wasn’t designed for Joomla specifically. It’s doesn’t need anything beyond Flash, so no CMS. If someone were to create a Joomla plugin around it that would be great, but right now I’m offering this as a DIY solution for knowledgable web designers and developers.
Comment by Roy — March 22, 2010 @ 12:23 pm
Roy,
Great stuff! We implemented your photo widget and it looks great. But since we used mod-rewrite, the XML path only works in the root directory. I tried to put feed=/flash/photowidget.xml or even feed=http://fundville.com/flash/photowidget.xml there but it didn’t work. I checked your code and couldn’t see any reasons. I even tried the SWFobject way but it didn’t work either. Kind of strange….
Jerry
Comment by Jerry — March 28, 2010 @ 12:12 am
I have been trying to figure this out and now it seems like a crossdomain security issue. Flash probably will not let you load an XML file from an URL. Something may need to be done in the script to fix this issue. Thanks!
Comment by Jerry — March 28, 2010 @ 4:40 am
Has anyone implemented this successfully with wordpress? I got the same XML path issue and it only worked in the root directory, not individual post.
Comment by Jerry — March 28, 2010 @ 4:49 am
Jeryy, if the movie is on http://fundville.com (without the www) and so is the XML it should work. That rules out any sandbox trouble. Is the /flash folder in de root? If it’s in the theme (which I’d recommend for reasons of clarity) you should use bloginfo(‘template_directory’) to get the path.
Comment by Roy — March 30, 2010 @ 1:41 pm
Roy,
Still couldn’t get it work for the mod-rewrite. But thank you very much for answering the questions! Great product!
Comment by Jerry — April 2, 2010 @ 1:30 am
Thanks!
I am studying FLASH.
Comment by BUN WODNER JAX — April 12, 2010 @ 2:31 am
Hi Roy
Thank you for very cool widget!!
I implemented it on my site and it looks great !
http://www.lirigal.com/tags.aspx?user=Liri&kw=instruction&plang=en&
Comment by Liri — April 23, 2010 @ 2:05 pm
Hi Roy!
great work! just one question, is it possibe to create single swf file with xml and jpeg embeeded?
thanks
Comment by Jay — May 13, 2010 @ 9:39 pm
Hi Jay. Possible? Absolutely! It will however require a few things to be rewired, and you’ll lose a lot of the flexibility that the movie currently has.
Comment by Roy — May 18, 2010 @ 12:10 pm
Hy Roy,
Thank’s for your great plugin and sources.
I succed to add a TITLE/ALT for each image but I still have a problem :
The font resize is not as fluid as image resize, you don’t seem have this problème on your Tag cloud plugin.
I tried to add AntiAliasType but there is no difference.
Do you have an idee for this problem ?
Thank’s again
Eric
Comment by Ricozor — May 21, 2010 @ 10:40 am
I have also an other problem when the swf is loaded for the first time :
I have a sphere of 8 images and 2 of them have the same position.
but it ‘s doing this only once time.
If you reload the page the problem doesn’t appeared
here is the result : http://www.brainstorming.fr
Comment by Ricozor — May 21, 2010 @ 1:31 pm
Here is the example white titles : http://www.brainstorming.fr/test/photowidget/example.html
Comment by Ricozor — May 21, 2010 @ 3:16 pm
Ricozor, you’ll have to include (embed) the font into the Flash movie to get smooth motion. I’ve not been able to recreate the issue with two images being in the same position on my end.
Comment by Roy — May 26, 2010 @ 10:29 am
Hello, this a great gaddet.
But I have problems to see de source.
The question is: It was made in flash cs4?
Comment by HeiwaNoSenshi — May 26, 2010 @ 7:56 pm
No I have CS3 and no problem to open it.
Comment by Ricozor — May 27, 2010 @ 9:44 am
HeiwaNoSenshi, CS3, so it should open in CS4. The source code is in external .as files.
Comment by Roy — May 27, 2010 @ 10:54 am
Thx for your Help Roy,
I succied, here is the final result : http://www.brainstorming.fr
Comment by Ricozor — June 7, 2010 @ 9:11 am
Hi Roy,
As a huge fan of wp-cumulus, I was delighted to find you do a photo version
I’m a little stuck getting this going on my test WordPress blog. I get the dreaded “This widget requires Flash Player 9 or better” 
I had gone through earlier comments, and ensured that I had the full path to the images , but was still stuck. So I then also added the full path to the “example html” code you provided and it now works fine.
(e.g. changed param name=”movie” value=”photowidget.swf” to param name=”movie” value=”http://mywebsite.com/photowidget.swf”)
I didn’t see that specific step mentioned (sorry if I missed it) so thought it may help someone else out if they encounter the same problem. I’m guessing it was to do with the location of the directory in my WP setting, but as you say, finding relative paths in WP can be a challenge, so this was another way of getting it to work.
KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK!
thanks
Tracey Rissik
Comment by Tracey Rissik — July 5, 2010 @ 6:24 pm
in coppermine gallery?
Comment by Rouse — July 17, 2010 @ 2:14 pm
Ricozor,
Can you please publish your source files? That way we can all use the alt functions on our files.
Your version of this looks great and i think others will agree.
Are you will to share your knowledge?
Thanks
James
Comment by James — July 19, 2010 @ 2:15 pm
I don´t speak very well english, I speak Spanish
I like photowidget
I saw a page web http://www.rickywarwick.com/home/photos-1/photos.html on Safari and
I saw the transparency as white, is not transparency
I want to do a photowidget but it is not see on Safari
Thanks
Comment by ilse — July 27, 2010 @ 12:16 am
Excellent piece of work Roy!
Love it!
Congrats.
Comment by Bas — July 31, 2010 @ 5:11 pm
Hi Ilse. Recent versions of Safari should have no trouble with flash transparency. What version and OS are you using?
Comment by Roy — August 4, 2010 @ 11:37 am
Hi Roy, thanks you very much, excuse me my english, I update Safari and I saw excellent, it is beautiful. I think so trouble my laptop because before I saw it Internet Explorer 8 and I saw excellent and now it is not appear. I am using Windows Vista that my laptop have when I bought.
Thank you very much
Comment by Ilse — August 6, 2010 @ 1:37 am
cool, Thank you so muck~~
Comment by Justin — August 20, 2010 @ 1:59 pm
Hi Roy… u r widgets is gr888…
…
but would u pls help me how can i change the background of it….
Comment by Naimish — August 27, 2010 @ 2:12 pm
Naimish, if you set the background to transparent, you can add a background to the surrounding html element.
Comment by Roy — September 1, 2010 @ 9:00 am
this widget is really cool but for some reason when i paste the code to my website it doesnt work at all, the only thing that shows up is the ‘get this widget ‘ link i’ve tried adding a picture feed from picasa and flickr neither worked.
confused???
Comment by clair — September 1, 2010 @ 5:55 pm
Hi Clair. I’m assuming you’re using the Flickr/Picasa version, not the “Photo Widget” described in this post? If so, does the preview that you get in my blog work? If so, the issue is probably with other code on your website. You can use validator.w3.org to check your site for errors. Some, especially “XML parsing errors” can cause the widget to fail.
If the preview doesn’t show any images either, the issue is probably a wrong feed URL.
Comment by Roy — September 2, 2010 @ 9:17 am