The slideshow process in osCmax 2.5 RC1 has had me baffled for a couple of days (well at least the hours that I have had available to look at it during those days).
First up was a bit of redundant code that I flagged in a bug report and then finally getting to grips with the fact that the {slideshow} element in the main_page.code.php file is not in fact the complete deal but just the javascript bit and that the page modules section {modulecontroller} also needs to be called from the html page.
Once I danced around all of this to gain an understanding of how to get the slideshow working in the main index page, I then faced the admin console for the slideshow.
Annoyance #1 is that the slideshow images page includes a short cut to the slideshow settings page but the slideshow settings page has no corresponding return button requiring a 4 step menu traverse which is painful particularly with a glidepad and no mouse. But due to the hard coded construct of the configuration process for editing admin items it is a major task to change the system to fix this annoyance. Another day.
For future reference:
- the main settings page in the admin is controlled / presented via the configuration.php file
- the index code for the file makes it difficult for link backs
- the file permissions process will need to be allowed for
- the current menu process on the left and the edit process on the right might need to change
- some of the showcase js script options are not offered in the slideshow settings
There was no second annoyance just a desire to recreate the slideshow elements that the FreeCSS_Sky stylesheet had included. The FreeCSS_Sky stylesheet template included not just an image slide but associated text. I think this is a great option and in order to adapt osCmax to replicate this I needed to add an option to the database and the slideshow tools to cater for the text object.
The process will need to include:
- add the extra database fields to the slideshow table and the configuration table
- modify the javascript populating file slideshow.js.php to read the fields
- modify slideshow.php to present the fields in the admin
- modify the javascript that actually does the work to present the new data
But this is for another day.