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[Doof]

A couple of things...

1. I went to use your Website Creator plugin last night and noticed that when I selected it, the Auto Equalizer plugin shows up instead. I'm assuming there's a bug somewhere with the Auto Equalizer that overwrites something with the Website Creator, since no matter which I choose in the list, I get the Auto Equalizer (and since I installed WC before AE). It's possible that it would happen the other way around if they were installed in the opposite order.

2. To fix issue number 1, I uninstalled both plugins and then tried to re-install WC from the plugins page. The mjp installer still isn't working correctly. Did you ever get this fixed?

3. Have you done any work on WC since your original release?

[nila]

Hey Doof,
I never got the mjp working because I'm pretty sure it's not a bug with my installer.
It's a bug in MC and I cant fix those.
The reason I'm pretty sure it's not my installer is that it works FINE if you dont use the mjp which is MC.
The actual install actions of the mjp are the same ones that both Rhino and Kingsparta use.
MC Seems to be deleting setup files before they're finished being used by the installer.

I'd just put a direct link to it on the site so people could download a setup program but we cant do that on the site, it has to be an mjp


I cant check the installers now as they're at work and u just missed catching me there.
I'll re-make BOTH the installers when I get a chance and upload them and fix some issues with them that were causing some people to get the 'plugin not found' error.
Finally worked out what was causing it - a bug in Setup Factory so it wasn't registering the ocx's properly on some people's systems.


I'm gonna make website creator from the ground up and change a few things.
It's gonna be ALOT easier to select pictures etc as you'll now see the thumbnails etc.

The new versionwill support loading themes etc so will be ALOT better.
I've just been busy at work and didn't have much time.

Also, MJViewItemAutomation was broken for a while which slowed me down.
I'll try work on it alot over the next week or so and get it done.


I have a feeling what it might be causing - check the registry and see what the values are for the ocx for the two plugins. - I have a feeling the setup on one of them is probably calling the ocx from the other plugin.

Never really had much feedback on either so figured no one was interested in either so didn't really put much effort into updating/checking them. sorry.

[Doof]

Well, I certainly hope you continue work on WC. When you first released it I knew that I had no immediate use for it, but that I would once Christmas was over and I got my digital camera.

Unfortunately the plugins page isn't working right now, but I did manage to track down the setup program you posted a link to a while back, so I was able to get it reinstalled.

While I was using it I ran into a bug. When I select a playlist of photos that I took with my camera and choose the Select Files button, WC displays an error message for every image in the list. The image is "ERROR: 6-Overflow". Not sure what that means, but I'm wondering if it has something to do with the size of the images. They were all taken at 4.0 Megapixels, and each one is 2304 x 1728 and 564.9 KB in size. I get that message when WC is populating the box with the list of error messages (once for each image) and when WC is creating the site (again, once for each image). But it still creates the site just fine. So it's not a serious bug, whatever it is. Just a little annoying.

I also have some ideas for improvements if you ever decide to work on it some more.

[nila]

I'll definitely continue it.
Right now I'm looking at re-making it completely and also am looking at making just a 'Power Image' plugin.

As I'm sure you noticed I'm totally unhappy with the tagging in v10 and think it's not at all suitable for tagging images with the panes.

As such the plugin might have two parts - the website creator and also a tagging part.
It'll be like the panes except it'll be tree's instead of panes so you can group items.
U then just drag and drop nodes onto images to tag them.

Then of course there'll be the website part of it.

I'd love to hear your ideas. Better to know them from start rather than after as it means I can build them straight in from the start.

[Doof]

Well, really the only ideas I had were to include the ability to specify a certain database field to act as the caption for the images. I know you can't retrieve a list of the database fields, but allowing us to just enter our own should suffice.

Also, include some sort of aspect ration preservation on the thumbnail/large image creation. Even if it meant we could only choose the size of one of the dimensions.

And one more thing I'd like is for the large image pages to have a link that takes you back to the thumbnail page.

Other than that, I think it works great.

[nila]

Doof,
You can already do this.

Just enter into any of the caption fields:

[The MC Field Name]

It'll fill them in from the MC values.
I think it works for most captions.

The aspect ratio it should do too - there's two options as to whether to make it exact or to make it keep its ratio.

[Doof]

Ok, maybe I'm just confused about some of the terminology used in the plugin, then.

For instance...

I can see where I can specify the image size, and there are two options "Fit in Box" and "Exact Size". I'm assuming that Exact Size adjusts the aspect ratio in order to make the image the size I specify. I'm not sure what Fit in Box does, though. I was wondering if it made it crop the images to make them fit the size I specified. I didn't really play with it to see, though.

Also, what's the possible range of numbers for the quality? And what effect does that have, exactly?


And I found where you can put in your own fields... not sure why I didn't notice that before. It seems to have troubles with the Artist field though. I put [Artist] and [Name] in and it always spits out "[Artist]" rather than actually filling the actual Artist name. [Name] and [Genre] seem to be fine, though.

[Doof]

Oh, and the overflow error message I mentioned definitely seems to be linked to large images. When I run it on smaller images, I don't get that message.

[nila]

Hmmm,
Wierd, it doesn't load up the images I dont think,
could u e-mail me a couple of the images to:

Doof_is_going_to_spam_me @ . britcrew.com

10 or so would be cool.

i'll try have a look, it must be a bug with VB6 and it's picture thing.

If they're big files actually, it might make more sense if you go here:

http://www.britcrew.com/upload.php

Use that to upload them, copy the link to them after they're uploaded and just past all the links into the e-mail so I get 10 links instead

I'll try test it, I hope this isn't the case as it'd mean my new version is gonna have even more issues

[Doof]

Ok, I sent them. The zip file was about 4 MB, so I hope they get there ok.

And I figured out why I kept seeing [Artist] instead of the actual Artist name... the Artist tag was empty on those files.

Any chance the plugin could just display nothing when the database field is empty?

[nila]

yeah

I'm workin on the plugin right now tryin to re-make it.

Hopefully I'll get it done relatively fast and it's going to use MC's build in feature in the SDK to fill in template strings (never realised that was there originally so made my own)

[nila]

Ok, maybe I'm just confused about some of the terminology used in the plugin, then.

For instance...

I can see where I can specify the image size, and there are two options "Fit in Box" and "Exact Size". I'm assuming that Exact Size adjusts the aspect ratio in order to make the image the size I specify. I'm not sure what Fit in Box does, though. I was wondering if it made it crop the images to make them fit the size I specified. I didn't really play with it to see, though.

Fit in box basically means 'maintain ratio' - it'll just resize the image but keep it's ratio and make it fit in the box.
Figured 'fit in box' was the most laymans way to describe it.
It doesn't crop anything for either option.
'Exact size' can be good for thumbnails as it'll squash them a bit but makes the output page look alot cleaner.
Wouldn't recommend it for the main images however.

Also, what's the possible range of numbers for the quality? And what effect does that have, exactly?

Range is 1-100.
It's jpeg quality settings.
Put in say 10 and your images will be very obvious square blocks that look TERRIBLE but are small file sizes.
put in 100 and the file sizes will be huge but quality is near perfect.
If you want near perfect though you should however use between 85-95 as the values (for the full sized images).
These values tend to give near perfect output with the best compression available.
Obviously though you might want to tweak it to make better quality images, or faster load times - your choice.

And I found where you can put in your own fields... not sure why I didn't notice that before. It seems to have troubles with the Artist field though. I put [Artist] and [Name] in and it always spits out "[Artist]" rather than actually filling the actual Artist name. [Name] and [Genre] seem to be fine, though.

I'll look into this and try fix it so this build is relatively stable while I'm working on the new version (You wont even recognise it as the same plugin it's going to look so different.).


I've uploaded both programs with new setup files.
Uninstall everything you have now and try these ones, both should work and install fine.
Let me know if there is any problems.

http://www.hostrus.co.uk/tmp/AESetup.exe
http://www.hostrus.co.uk/tmp/WSCsetup.exe


Wish we could get these hosting on jrivers servers but their plugin page isn't even working right now what to speak of saving files that aren't .mjp

Anyway, I'll leave them there for now.

Let me have feedback and comments etc

[Doof]

Fit in box basically means 'maintain ratio' - it'll just resize the image but keep it's ratio and make it fit in the box.
Figured 'fit in box' was the most laymans way to describe it.

I actually think it's just the opposite. "Make image fit in box" seems to imply that the program is going to do whatever it needs to to make the image fit the dimensions (both length and width) that you've specified. Whether it crops or squashes isn't clear. I think that "Keep Aspect Ratio" is the more common term for this.

Range is 1-100.
It's jpeg quality settings.
Put in say 10 and your images will be very obvious square blocks that look TERRIBLE but are small file sizes.
put in 100 and the file sizes will be huge but quality is near perfect.
If you want near perfect though you should however use between 85-95 as the values (for the full sized images).
These values tend to give near perfect output with the best compression available.
Obviously though you might want to tweak it to make better quality images, or faster load times - your choice.

Any chance this could be turned into a slider? Currently there's no indication of what a valid value is until after you've entered in an incorrect one.

Also, some option to keep the current quality would be nice.

[nila]

I'll speak to Rhino about the quality thing.

He made me the converter program in C++ so that it'd be fast and do the job WELL.
I'll see what he says


I'll change the pop-up as well to say - value between 1-100

Did the installers work ok?