Image Handler 4 (for v1.5.x) Support Thread

[DivaVocals]

Greetings IH4 experts, I have a general question about this mod. Will it help reduce the amount of server overhead my site is generating? I'm being pestered by my hosting company to reduce my CPU usage. I am on a VPS. Running my site through various website speed check sites, the biggest thing that keeps popping up negative are my images.

Here's my site if anyone wants to take a peek:

heathersheavenlyvapes.com

IH4 as the opening thread (and readme) states will optimize your product and category images.. However, if you have other optimization issues on your site, or images in other places on your site (non product/category images) IH4 will not resolve those issues.

[weif]

Tried to search but got too many results to go through them all...

Anyway, the problem is that some images are in GIF format. JPG images are resized correctly, but the GIF images aren't resized at all.

Before I go deeper into checking what is wrong, I wanted to ask if IH4 actually supports resizing GIF images, or if there is any known "issues" or "fix" to this.

There are issues in many cases related to resizing .gif images, and a lot of on-the-fly image resizers either can't resize .gifs, or don't because of issues. The biggest issue I've seen resizing .gifs is that since they are already in indexed color mode, you almost always get really bad looking images. In addition, there are copyright issues with publishing .gif images on the web that you should be aware of...

I can't speak as to whether IH4 should handle .gifs for you or not, but I would strongly encourage you to replace those .gof images with either .png or .jpg versions, which will address the issue you are seeing and the problems with resizing .gifs.

[Design75]

I'm not sure if this has been reported, but IH4 has an outdated /admin/includes/modules/category_product_listing.php

It appears as though the version in IH4 is from 1.3.9c

There have been many changes to this file since 1.5 it would seem. There are a few security enhancements along with the fact the enable/disable buttons on this page have been changed from a link to a form.

IH4 breaks these buttons in ZC 1.5.1

Simple fix is to update this file with the version from 1.5.1 and then around line 352 make sure this line is in there:

<?php echo '<a href="' . zen_href_link(FILENAME_IMAGE_HANDLER, 'products_filter=' . $products->fields['products_id'] . '&current_category_id=' . $current_category_id) . '">' . zen_image(DIR_WS_IMAGES . 'icon_image_handler.gif', ICON_IMAGE_HANDLER) . '</a>'; ?>

This seems to be the only change this file requires.

And that is exactly one of the reasons I hate the auto installer of this mod. Don't get me wrong, I like IH, but now you have to do the installation twice. First the installer overwrites your files and after that you still need to compare your files for correct code, and add your own customisation again.

[DivaVocals]

And that is exactly one of the reasons I hate the auto installer of this mod. Don't get me wrong, I like IH, but now you have to do the installation twice. First the installer overwrites your files and after that you still need to compare your files for correct code, and add your own customisation again.

Ummmm no you actually don't.. and if you look at the readme, we do explain how to apply your customizations BEFORE your IH4 install.. If this part of the readme doc isn't clear, I am all for suggestions on how to improve it..

The modification that llynix posted can be applied to an EXISTING IH4 install without requiring a RE-INSTALL of the module..

[nigelt74]

Yep IH4 supports GIFs, an example from my test site is the original GIF image here as uploaded



and the product listing here


where image handler is, well handling it

As for any patent issues with gifs, I am fairly sure those patents expired 10 years ago

Tried to search but got too many results to go through them all...

Anyway, the problem is that some images are in GIF format. JPG images are resized correctly, but the GIF images aren't resized at all.

Before I go deeper into checking what is wrong, I wanted to ask if IH4 actually supports resizing GIF images, or if there is any known "issues" or "fix" to this.

[llynix]

Ummmm no you actually don't.. and if you look at the readme, we do explain how to apply your customizations BEFORE your IH4 install.. If this part of the readme doc isn't clear, I am all for suggestions on how to improve it..

The modification that llynix posted can be applied to an EXISTING IH4 install without requiring a RE-INSTALL of the module..

I wouldn't call it a modification. IH4 probably introduces some security problems and breaks the enable/disable button in zen cart because of legacy code in that file. It's a bugfix not a modification.

I dunno about the auto-installer. I thought it was a pretty good idea but honestly didn't look into how it works. I'm curious as to why you include a default file in the installation package. Why not just backup the existing version on the site?

I do think that even with me patching the correct file on my site.. I didn't change the backup or the default so upon uninstalling It would break my site again. So my patch above is incomplete.

That's why I didn't roll a patch myself. I really don't even have time to write this message :)

Thank you for the hard work on IH4.

[DivaVocals]

I wouldn't call it a modification. IH4 probably introduces some security problems and breaks the enable/disable button in zen cart because of legacy code in that file. It's a bugfix not a modification.

bugfix/modification.. 6 of one half dozen of the other.. point is that right now it's a modification that folks need to make to the IH files until I submit an update to IH4 (plan to do this next week)

I dunno about the auto-installer. I thought it was a pretty good idea but honestly didn't look into how it works. I'm curious as to why you include a default file in the installation package. Why not just backup the existing version on the site?

Ummmm it does "backup the existing version on the site". I do believe that we make mention of this in the readme.. It's certainly been spoken of a few times in the forum.

http://www.zen-cart.com/showthread.php?194740-Image-Handler-4-(for-v1-5-x)-Support-Thread&p=1117911#post1117911

Finally, finally, for those who are saying that the auto-installer is a bad idea the thought is that it just does exactly what you would do if you installed manually. It doesn't do anything new or different. It finds the active template and installs into that. In the same way as one would do by manually. The only difference between this installer and installing manually is that it always creates back-ups of overwriten files. Which has been a source of many many problems on the support threads.

[niccol]

Personally i think that the jury is still out on the auto installer.
more experienced users do not like it because it reduces ones freedom a bit.
on the other hand there have been a lot less questions from less experienced users that end up being due to messed up installations.
So what is the right answer?
As far as the question about reverting to previous versions of files. well this is a thorny issue. Do you revert to the version that existed prior to IH install? Well maybe but also maybe not. because other modifications may have been made to that file since theIH install. so without knowing what a user has done the best thing seems to be to provide a before installation file back up and an original file version.

[DivaVocals]

Personally i think that the jury is still out on the auto installer.
more experienced users do not like it because it reduces ones freedom a bit.
on the other hand there have been a lot less questions from less experienced users that end up being due to messed up installations.
So what is the right answer?
As far as the question about reverting to previous versions of files. well this is a thorny issue. Do you revert to the version that existed prior to IH install? Well maybe but also maybe not. because other modifications may have been made to that file since theIH install. so without knowing what a user has done the best thing seems to be to provide a before installation file back up and an original file version.

The BIGGEST benefit has been that less experienced users have had FEWER issues since the release of IH4. This support thread is FAR FEWER posts than any previous IH support threads..

Plus this is NOT the only Zen Cart module which includes an auto install feature. Ceon URI and many of the Numinix modules also contain auto installers. The idea is to ease the install and cut down on the number of install related issues. Even so, I do not think that more experienced users are hog tied from doing their own thing at all.. A couple have expressed this opinion, but these same users are not IMHO being encumbered because of the introduction of an auto installer..

[DrByte]

I personally have found the auto-installer to be a show-stopper, especially when I'm trying to integrate with a site that's making many other changes to similar files. And especially with FEC (now, admittedly there were several other addons adding more complications, especially the css/js loader mess, but that's a side issue and I don't mean to mix other matters into this thread).

I confess that I've not studied all the documentation greatly in recent days, but last I looked it didn't seem like there was an obvious way to bypass all the safeties built-in to the autoinstaller so I could just merge the necessary changes into the core files which needed it.

It actually was the biggest task for an upgrade I was doing to an otherwise heavily customized site. I was amazed that it took much longer to do IH4 than everything else. Granted, I suppose if I were up to speed on all the inner workings of the mod then maybe that might have made things different. Actually the more I think about it, I think I just skipped using IH altogether.

Maybe it deserves another try. I'm just writing this in response to niccol's last post, to cast my vote for skipping all the automated file changes, at least for those who wish a more conventional approach.

JMHO