ARI sexy lightbox - how it works

1. Installation.

Somebody else already installed this, so I can"t report on that but I suppose it all goes the way you"re used to when working with Joomla.

2. Creating a menu item.

Not really an issue, as this is a module. It"s not a photo gallery component, with an overview page of your galleries like Morfeoshow is. Created a test article with menu-item anyway, first to be able to publish modules on this page as well as to see how displaying modules within an article looks. Inserting a module within an article can be done standard joomla with or with the fancier plugin ModulesAnywhere! from NoNumber.

3. Config of the module/plugin.

The system plugin has some parms for the lightbox. As far as I can tell you can override them in the module, so I left them the way ther were by default. What might come in handy is the description of the plugin, here it gives you some html-tips if you want to show inline content, external pages or images in the lightbox.

The module can be copied as many times as you need it. The first parms you find in the module are also for the lightbox. My biggest concern here was whether to pick a black or white layout ;-)
What I noticed is you can set the slideshow parms, and that"s something to consider: the slideshow only shows when the visitor clicks and the lightbox pops up. Makes sense, although it might not be what you want --> then you need another gallery component.

Next important step is to choose the type of the module lightbox. It can be: Image gallery, Picasa gallery, Flickr gallery, inline content, remote content and module. Since I am focused on images, I will only be using the first three options.

3.A. Picasa gallery

With the type Picasa gallery, you have to fill in your picasa userid (usually the first part of your gmail account). Also, you need the NAME of the picasa gallery. So no hassle with looking up the picasa albumID, just the name. Then you can set stuff like the size of the thumbs, pop-up-image, number of images to be shown, etc.

3.B. Flickr gallery

For the Flickr gallery, you need again the Flickr API-key. In my post about Morfeoshow is explained how to get one. Also, the photosetID is used, to determine which photo"s are to be shown. Again, you can select the thumb-size etc.

Both the picasa module as the Flickr module are showing file-names. I guess you need custom styling to get rid of them, if you want to. Haven"t tried that yet.

3.C. Image gallery

So what if you have your own images, onsite? You can place them in a directory within your site and upload them with ftp. You can put them in the mediamanager, but you could also create your own directory. That makes no difference.
You can also provide your own thumbs (and tell the module where they are), or let the module generate thumb (and tell the module how to generate them, resize, crop and resize...). Generated thumbs can be generated in greyscale as well, which is kind of cool, or rotated, so you can create a look as if the pics were thrown on the table, which is cool as well.

Another cool thing is you can point it to more than one directory, just list them in the parms (f.i. images/stories/yourfolder). Also, there is an option: scan subfolders, so you can display latest images from several subfolders if needed. Gotta wonder what it will do with the loading time of your page, though....

If you want to display filenames, titles and stuff, you have to put the info in a csv file. Now while this is very nice, it can also be time-consuming.

3.D Type of gallery

For all three galleries you can choose the default layout (built with tables), the custom layout (Do-it-yourself) or the simple layout (one image, click to open gallery). For me, the question is when you would need to use a custom layout. Since the default layout provides the possibility to specify a container class, you can create different views for your copy-modules and to me, that seems easier to do that using the custom layout.  

So... endless possibilities. And if the default layout really  isn"t enough, well, then you"ll have to dig into the custom layout stuff.

4. Displaying your galleries.

With the modules, you have endless possibilities of displaying them within your site. And, if you still want them within your content, you can load that specific moduleposition in your article. Or: try ModulesAnywhere! from NoNumber.. it is great!

5. Conclusion.

Very nice extension, with endless possibilities. I haven"t used the other options, include content or include external content, or even load module (your login in a lightbox, cool), but it certainly gives you several ways of publishing galleries from your own material or your flickr or picasa albums.

The only downside I can think of is that you can"t play a slideshow directly, it only plays in lightbox mode. Well, you can open it upon page-load, but that would annoy your visitor, IMO. So for slideshows within your content, you"d need something else.

Another thing to consider, but that is with every gallery, is the page loading time. With FTP, there are no limitations in uploading your pics, but unlike with Morfeoshow, you aren"t prompted to make your images smaller.

Onto the next.... Phoca Gallery