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TelaFirma - X-Cart Dynamic Image Generator

 
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  #11  
Old 11-19-2005, 03:27 PM
 
jsa jsa is offline
 

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Thanks for answering all those questions. I'm pretty sure I asked almost every question people were thinking, but didn't ask, so hopefully this will drum up more sales for you.

Quote:
Originally Posted by TelaFirma
All the product images, category images and popup images in the RideQuality site are done with this mod. You can also see examples at:

www.AngelaCarolPearls.com
www.AngelaCarol.com

I was actually poking around these sites last night, trying to figure out what was done by your mod or not. I now understand the footprint your mod uses - files in files/cache.

My end opinion: wwwwwwoW!

Especially with the pearls and girls, this is almost indistinguishable from making all the thumbs yourself manually with photoshop.

I also like how you've reworked the product.tpl pages for Angela's Pearls - how you have a big huge image with only the order button to your right, then the description down below. You made it a LOT closer to a hybrid between Sephora.com & Overstock.com, which is what I eventually want. You do some great work!

I'll definitely be picking up your mod for at least the product.tpl and popup page, so I can use enormous JPGs there. That's the big plus to me.

See, my thumbs are all .gif transparencies due to a color changing DHTML effect I have going on (just like your pearl site, except it changes color slightly) so I don't know if I'd want to use your code on those. I'd have to get rid of the color changing effect, in order to switch those to jpg or another format that doesn't support transparencies.

I want to use your mod for a slightly different use than accentuate, because I personally don't have the "jaggy" problem you talk about. My catalogs thumbs are all made just just for the catalog. I do have an issue with some of the mods resizing the thumbs, though, but of course you can't predict how it'll work with those.

You know, after looking at all these sites, I can definitely say this should be a defacto standard mod... and if you look at my signature, well, you know how familiar I am with mods.
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  #12  
Old 11-21-2005, 03:25 PM
 
lkbryant lkbryant is offline
 

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shouldnt this feature be implemented from XCART by default?

i find this pretty rediculous that someone else in the community has to make such mod and , *cough* sell them....
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  #13  
Old 11-21-2005, 03:57 PM
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TelaFirma TelaFirma is offline
 

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jsa - Thanks for the compliments on the sites. There has been a lot of time spent on them. This mod is actually something that grew out of the need I had for Pearls by Angela Carol. I wanted good clear images for every page that the pearls were shown on and I also wanted to have small, clear thumbnails for the detailed images - and I didn't want to do it all in Photoshop.

one thing that you might consider with your existing site is to try PNG graphics. PNG will support transparancy and this mod will work with PNG.

Just a though.
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  #14  
Old 11-21-2005, 05:37 PM
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groovico groovico is offline
 

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What portions of the cart does this mod affect? Looks pretty darn neat, just wondering how much needs to be changed to accomodate it.
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  #15  
Old 11-22-2005, 03:00 AM
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TelaFirma TelaFirma is offline
 

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Quote:
Originally Posted by groovico
What portions of the cart does this mod affect? Looks pretty darn neat, just wondering how much needs to be changed to accomodate it.

Not much needs to be changed at all. The products.tpl and the products_t.tpl file already use a setting in Admin to set the width of the image, so there is no change there (unless you really want to). The largest change is in the product.tpl file - but it is just replacing the the thumbnail code with some new code.

Also, if you have customized a cart skin, and you have set the image X width, then it will use this setting to generate the thumbs.

Outside of that, you just replace the product_thumbnail.tpl with a new one.

In other words the changes are very very minimal.

In terms of Admin functions and working with images - nothing changes. I think that this is the single most important thing for people to realize. You just upload a nice size image (via whatever method you are used to using - CSV, one at a time...) as the tumbnail for the image. This mod takes care of automatically creating new ones where and when necessary throughout the site. There are no extra buttons to push, no extra processes that you have to start running in the background, no weird way of assigning images to the product. The same goes for the Detail images. Just upload nice one as you normally would.
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  #16  
Old 11-22-2005, 03:38 AM
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TelaFirma TelaFirma is offline
 

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Ok, since there have been so may questions asked about this Mod I am compiling a FAQ and posting it in this thread. I will be amending THIS post when there are new questions to add.
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1) Are the resized images Photoshop-like in quality?
When the image is resized to a smaller size, an unsharp mask is also applied to slightly sharpen the image. Just like with all images, the bigger and better image that you start with, the better it will look when sized down. So, if you start with a good quality image and the size of the image is such that there is enough information in the file, then you will have a very nice thumbnail when it is sized down.

2) Is this by installation only, or can I get the mod and instructions?
When you purchase this, you will receive an package with all the files necessary and the instructions to install it.

3) Will it work to provide the required thumbnails for Mods that use thumbnails, too, like Recently Viewed and Instant Search?
Some of these Mods that are made by other developers will include the Thumbnail URL (path) as part of the product array that is built - some do not. Since this image mod requires the files to be in the File System, it uses this field in the products array to find where the file is. So, Mods like ezUpsell which DO include this field it will work fine with. I unfortunately can not speak for all Mods that have been posted on this forum or for all Mods that are developed by other people as to whether this piece of information was added to their products array or not. The good news is that if it is not there, then it will not break the function of the add-in. It will just function as it always has.

4) Does this mean that the mod allows different sized thumbs for product page, product listing, shopping cart, and popup?
Yes - There will be 4 settings in Admin. One for Product Page, one for Catalog pages, one for Pop-up and one for the thumbs that are created for the popups.

5) Can you set the quality options to decide how much the images get compressed?
For JPEG images (which most product images should be as GIF images are only 256 colors and JPEG is 16M colors) the image quality is set by default to 80. This has proven to give the best quality/file size combination. The size of the files created are very comparable to those produced by Photoshop.
GIF files are set to 256 colors.

6) What if I have created a custom thumb, can you override the ones generated by this mod?
Not by default with this Mod. I am sure that if you are good with Smarty, and you understanding PHP then you would be able to write your own section of code to exclude certain things from being processed - but the way this is set up by default, that is not included. Personally I do not think that this is necessary. The images created are 100 times better than what you would have with X-Cart by default.

7) Once I install this mod, what do I have to do to get the thumbnail image to display?
Once this is installed, it will automatically generate new images for the different places they are called. The key to this is to start with a larger image. So, lets say that when you add a product, you insert an image as a thumbnail that is 400px wide. When that product is displayed on the product listing page, a new image will be generated for it that is, say, 100px wide. This setting (100px) is something that can be set within Admin also. There is nothing special that you have to do to make this work after it is installed.

8) Does it do it on the fly?
Yes... and no... Yes, the new images are generated on the fly, but they are also stored in a cache directory. This keeps the server from having to generate a new one when this exact image is called for again.

9) My images are not stored in the database, is that a problem?
Actually this Mod will only work if your images are stored in the File System, so no problem there. However, if you do have your images stored in the database, it will not prevent the images from displaying. They will just display as they normally would in an un-modified installation.

10) How do you tell the store to use the new thumbnail images?
This happens automatically. New images are automatically generated and displayed where they are needed (and normally called). The width for the thumbnail on the product listing pages is set in Admin, as well as the width of the image on the individual product page, the width of the popup image and the width of the thumbnails for the detailed images. Again, the key here is to start with an image that is at least as large and what your popup will be.

11) Can I set the dimensions of the images? How is that done?
All the widths of the images are set within Admin. There are 4 settings. One for the Product Listing pages, one for the Product Page, one for the Detail Image Thumbnails and one for the width of the Popup Image.

12) What is required for me to use this Mod?
First you have to make sure that you ahve GD support turned on in PHP. To do this, you can go to Admin in X-Cart, click on "Summary" in the right hand Admin menu. Scroll down to the Environment section and look for the entry for PHP. There should be a version number beside of this and a link titled "Details >>". Clicking on this link will open a new window with all the details about your PHP installation. Scroll down and look for a section simply named "gd". It should look something like the following:

GD Support enabled
FreeType Support enabled
FreeType Linkage with freetype
GIF Read Support enabled
GIF Create Support enabled
JPG Support enabled
PNG Support enabled

Outside of having GD Support enabled in your PHP configuration, the only other thing that is necessary is that your product images be stored in the File System.

13) What version of X-Cart will this Mod work with?
This Mod was intended for X-Cart version 4.0.x . I have not tested it with any previous version.

14) Do you have examples of sites that are using this Mod?
Yes. You can see this Mod in use at:

http://www.AngelaCarolPearls.com
http://www.AngelaCarol.com
http://www.RideQuality.com

There are a whole host of others, but I do not have the owners permission to post the links to the sites.
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  #17  
Old 11-22-2005, 10:32 AM
 
lkbryant lkbryant is offline
 

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when setting the dimensions, is it only width that you can set?

can you also set the dimension according to the height??
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  #18  
Old 11-22-2005, 11:36 AM
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TelaFirma TelaFirma is offline
 

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The dimensions are set by width. This Mod resizes the images, it does not crop. Since that is the case, the width is all that is necessary.
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  #19  
Old 11-22-2005, 02:39 PM
 
lkbryant lkbryant is offline
 

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i dont think i explained to you clearly.....

i dont want the image to be cropped.....



so lets say, if i have a cell that is 150x250

and then i set the max-width to 150 from your mod,


can all images fit in that 150x250 cell ?

whether the images are 200x800 etc... ?
or
400 x 1200 ?

i really dont care if the images resize to the size of a peanut....

but if i dont set the maximum height, how would it be able to fit in that 150 x 250 cell just by width alone?

if i have a one long image, wouldnt it still distort the cell since it will only resize by width?


for example:
if i have a 400 x 1200 image, and lets say i set the max width to 150,
won't the height of the resized image come out to be 450 ? therefore, distorting the 150x250 cell?

SO if i set maximum height to to 250, it should fit in that cell by resizing the image to 83x250....

im guessing this is not possible with your mod?


let me know if this works or not.

thanks.
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  #20  
Old 11-23-2005, 10:07 AM
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shan shan is offline
 

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i got this but didnt use it yet as it ...

...would not delete old images if you deleted or changed a product
...saved all images one directory instead of splitting them to subgroups such as thumbs, detailed, icons, products etc

a good mod so far though but could do with a bit of tweaking
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