Fresh when it gets here from
Julie Barrett
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Well. My big project over the last couple of days was a bit of a makeover for the Photo Gallery.
I did this for two reasons. One, I wasn't entirely happy with the gallery software I had; and two, I need to create one from scratch for a new client. That gave me the opportunity to dig in and redo it using some freeware tools, but adding a .Net kick.
Here's the situation: The client would like to be able to add and delete pictures from the directory and then have them automagically show up on the gallery. I discovered that their hosting service supports .Net, so I was able to draw on my existing skills.
I started with SonSpring Hoverbox Image Gallery, but quickly decided that I needed a combination of that and Lightbox 2. Enter the Suckerfish HoverLightbox Redux, which uses a combination of the two projects.
Of course, what I was missing was the ability to read a list of files from a directory. This is where .Net came in. It's possible to a Data List and bind the list of files as a Data Source. From there I had to adjust the CSS as the code that works perfectly in the HTML version doesn't play nice with the Data List. That took some serious trial-and-error as I'm not the CSS wizard that my son is. I did learn a lot today, though!
Yep, I need to add some more pictures and do some tweaking on what's out there. But this is good enough that I can demo it to the client.
Tags: Pictures