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1. RaynerApe
   Member
   Posted 8 years ago #
   

   I would like to start from the end of the thread name - I'd like to thank Owen for the awesome image handling plugin which by far beats every other alternative. It was also the only one plugin of this sort that I managed to run without any serious trouble.

   Yet, I find the missing of several fairly simple options very irritating. Let me start with the absence of GIF and PNG support. While I am not sure if GD library can create thumbnails of those, it would be nice if support for them is not excluded - if they can't be thumbnailed, at least the original image can be scaled down to thumbnail proportions. Perhaps as a new option in the config file - extensions that are presented as thumbs but are not thumbs, instead scaled down originals.

   The next thing I tried and found impossible to do is put thumbnails within the post, with <div align=left/right> and the fext floating around it, which is a popular design. I would love if future versions allow putting thumbs not only above and below the text but within the text as well, with optional align (perhaps with checkboxes next to the Preview checkbox). If several thumbs are put within the text, then only one shows up on a row.

   Finally, this is a rather specific feature request that's not too hard to do as far as I know - I would like to be able to tell the plugin to download a page off the net and store it locally instead uploading it from my computer. My future blog will feature commentaries on computer games, and I would love to ease my life by using Exhibit to download the big screenshots by itself rather than I having to first download it myself, then upload it. If someone has to do this three of four dozen times a day, he'll know what I'm talking about.

   I hope Owen visits regulary the boards these days so he can see my little post. I am planning launch of my blog very soon and any information if such changes can be made to Exhibit in near future would be very nice. Thanks in advance!

2. ringmaster
   Member
   Posted 8 years ago #
   

   I don't visit the forums regularly any more, but I'll try to answer some of your questions here.

   Exhibit didn't have GIF support because at the time GD (the graphics library that Exhibit uses) did not support GIF due to the Unisys patent on the LZW compression used in GIF. This patent is now expired worldwide, and GD supports GIF files. PNG files weren't supported because I'm lazy.

   Exhibit provides at least one option to insert thumbnails into your posts that you can style yourself. This would be done with CSS and a custom class that you create. It's not too difficult.

   Extracting images from external sites sounds like a decent idea, but I'll have to think about it more. There is some issue regarding copyright when using other people's pictures, especially when talking about screenshots and such.

   I'm not sure if any of this will make it into a new version of Exhibit, but I'll keep it in mind for whatever I do next.

3. RaynerApe
   Member
   Posted 8 years ago #
   

   Thanks for the reply, Ringmaster! And here come the questions:

   1. Is there a chance that we will see GIF and PNG support in the next versions of Exhibit? Please...

   2. I didn't understand the whole class idea, I know I can change the design of the box where the thumb is shown, but I can't get it (or I don't know how) to appear within the text, or next to the title, or similar.

   3. The "extract from other website" idea isn't that copyright-infringingly-dangerous as you might think. First, it's not about putting other people's images stored on their website on my website and stealing bandwidth - the image is downloaded once and stored locally. It just saves my downloading and uploading of that image by using the host's superior speeds. If Exhibit doesn't do it, I would have to do it by hand, and nothing can stop me. The reason I need is to download and store screenshots from official game websites that are released for free and are meant to spread - that's the point for releasing them, after all. I simply don't have the time and bandwidth (especially upload, im horrendously capped at 4kbps) to work by hand with each screenshot, especially if a game releases 20-30 at once, 200-300k each. With Exhibit downloading them automatically, I could do this in several minutes instead half an hour.

4. ringmaster
   Member
   Posted 8 years ago #
   

   1. Unless something goes horribly wrong, Exhibit will not be getting GIF or PNG support.

   2. You're going to need to obtain a book or training on CSS. I am not a CSS tutor.

   3. This is not in Exhibit's feature set and I currently have no intention of adding it.

   Sorry if this is brusk. I've been trying to imply that Exhibit's feature set is frozen without actually saying as much. Uh, oops.

5. RaynerApe
   Member
   Posted 8 years ago #
   

   Thanks for the straightforward answer on this. I apologize if I have been pushing too far for those features.

6. ina_kulot
   Member
   Posted 7 years ago #
   

   I have a question: my page contents disappear when Exhibit is activated. The posts work fine, no problem there. But when Exhibit 1.1d (asy) is activated, my pages, except for the Archives and the Contact Me pages, only have the heading. The contents all disappear! I'm using Blix 0.9.1 as a theme.

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