Getting iBox to Work With Textpattern
October 9th, 2006Hello fellow nerds!
I’ve been using Textpattern for my client sites where they want a portfolio consisting of a small gallery of images for each of their projects. I also wanted to do something different than an image pop-up, which requires some maintenance and can be difficult to train clients on if they aren’t as geeky as I.
In order for multiple images to be associated to an article in Textpattern, a plug-in is necessary. I used the excellent zem_article_image plug-in found here (documentation here) written by Alex Shiels. The problem is that I also wanted to use a very nifty Javascript called iBox (demo here) that does a nice little efffect with images associated with thumbnails. Since Textpattern builds a thumbnail from a large image, I just had to get the plug-in to spit out a rel=”ibox” in the link tag around the thumbnail. I found what looked like the place in the plug-in code where the image tag was being written and I added the necessary code to make iBox work. Pretty straightforward, but due to my lack of understanding, it took several hours of subtle syntax rearrangement until I had the plug-in spitting out the right code.
If you are interested in the code, you’ll have to first download and install the original plug-in on your Textpattern install. Then edit it and copy/paste the code in this text file. I haven’t heard back from the plug-in author, so if he doesn’t like what I’ve done, I’ll pull down the file.
Hope this helps somebody. I wish I knew PHP better, but getting this to work was pretty much like the scene from Galaxy Quest where the nerd (the person playing the Mac in the most recent Apple ads) realizes that fiction has become reality and freaks out. o
Um, Jon, this is totally off topic, but are you aware of the extreme right wing nutjob website linked to Blurbomat through Google ads? Under “Dennis Hastert is awesome” over to the left. It is “Liberals Must Die” and it is so scary that I kind of think it’s a joke. Anyway, it seems antithetical to your typical lefty sensibilities.
Oh, and BTW, sorry to hear that Heather is feeling depressed. I’m sure that she will rebound and fight this nasty disease with all the courage she has shown in the past. The Internet is pulling for her.
Very cool.
There’s also something similar called Lighbox JS:
http://www.huddletogether.com/projects/lightbox2/
Jon,
Lightbox is huge in comparison to iBox. Lightbox is very cool, but iBox is 11k total. I believe Lightbox is something like 148k of Javascript.
Lightbox is definitely cool. I looked at that when I was in the dark hours of iBox not working.
It would be great to see MoveableType incorporate some JS library functionality. What with Scriptaculous, Prototype, Lightbox, Thickboxk, iBox, etc. all floating around out there, seems like a natural progression for the platform.
Wow! Version 2 is quite bloated compared to version 1!
Obviously, it has been a while since I last played with it.
Jon, knowing how you feel about Crocs, I thought I’d share this amusing link from gofugyourself.
http://tinyurl.com/zvo6g
So I think my hubby might be reading two blogs now…mine AND YOURS.
Oh, yeah, and Crocs rock!
All the geekdom is quite interesting and all. But why are there BOOBS that come up to the right side of your blog, with the caption “3 out of 4 bloggers agree”? I’m kind of afraid to click on it! They are so taut, they might blow up.