jQuery Slide Show for home page

I have a customer who is presently using a cobbled together flash manager to be able to easily change out images for his slideshow banner. It is database driven so that the customer can activate and inactivate his images and upload his images with ease. Great concept - poor delivery in the end.

This is not the first customer I've run into with this need so I'm planning on a jQuery and database driven slideshow mod. My present customer cannot afford the cost so I'm looking for other website owners or developers who want to contribute to this development - with either money or help. Please pm me if you are interested.

If I can get enough support, I will release it as a free contribution.

jQuery is definitely the future and I believe it's planned for inclusion in the big 2.0 release but the need & desire is now.

I can use any one of a many jquery slideshows and integrating it into the cart isn't much of a job. Developing the admin addition is the most time consuming part of this. I have the flash manager example but it's not a good example of zen cart coding.

If anyone can think of another well-done contribution that allows image uploads and table data management that i can quickly adapt, that would be great as well.

Just a thought.

What I do is use the banner manager to upload the images for the slideshow to their own banner group. Obviously, I don't use this banner group for anything else on the site. Then write a sql query that retrieves these images based on the group name. That lets me create a group of images that I can then build into the jQuery slideshow.

Takes a very limited amount of coding that way.

not a bad idea, though training the customer to do it right every time would be the kicker. I'm aiming for something foolproof - or should I say customer-proof. They want that and the banner manager is a bit daunting.

well, my attitude is that you are going to build a module that uploads images and writes corresponding information for each image to the database.

That's what the banner manager does.

So, even if you think that the banner manager is too complex and the clients can't work out that they put the slideshow images in the the slideshow group then don't spend too much time looking for a module that has the features you want so that you can adapt it. You don't need the module - if you adapt anything then you should adapt the banner manager. Just clone it and leave out the bits you don't want.

Argh, that's not a bad idea. I'll look into it!

FYI - picflor azul has uploaded a template that has a jquery slideshow on the front page. It might spark an idea or two.

http://www.zen-cart.com/index.php?main_page=product_contrib_info&cPath=40_53&products_id=1784

pdxdoug:

FYI - picflor azul has uploaded a template that has a jquery slideshow on the front page. It might spark an idea or two.

http://www.zen-cart.com/index.php?main_page=product_contrib_info&cPath=40_53&products_id=1784

Thanks but that's the easy part. What I'm wrestling with is administering it - the functions that the banner manager has in it.

niccol:

Just a thought.

What I do is use the banner manager to upload the images for the slideshow to their own banner group. Obviously, I don't use this banner group for anything else on the site. Then write a sql query that retrieves these images based on the group name. That lets me create a group of images that I can then build into the jQuery slideshow.

Takes a very limited amount of coding that way.

So then the only thing the banner manager does for you is ability to upload and keep track of the images? Your query then finds that banner group to display? Just want to be sure I know what you've done in that situation.

I started looking at the banner manager and the first requirement for a mod normally for me is to see how not to alter core files. In the cart the banner functions are called in a init functions file which also loads the whos online, featured, salemaker functions and then updates expirations in this line:

$_SESSION['updateExpirations'] = true;

So in reality the only way to do what I want is to follow suit. However, I don't want to customize this core file. How else could one do this? Is there a way to add in this same coding another way?

Or should I simply look at extending the banner manager to include a new function to display a banner group as a unordered list? That actually makes more since to me.

Since I've already run into placement choices for a slideshow, I just realized that the banners all sidebox does what I want and can be easily placed whereever it's needed.

So can rewrite that sidebox for this particular function. Great shortcut I think. I am missing anything? Can it really be this easy?

delia:

So then the only thing the banner manager does for you is ability to upload and keep track of the images? Your query then finds that banner group to display? Just want to be sure I know what you've done in that situation.

Well, in my case that is how I do it. I simply create a banner group that is for the slideshow. Then write the sql query to find all the images in this group. Then use these images in a slideshow.

It works for me but I understand the limitations of the method.

Yes, banners_all, is a work around too, I guess.

Hmmm, I think that you are complicating a bit on the issue with the functions. What I'd do is adapt banner_manager.php in admin to provide the capability to upload and annotate images from admin. For the front end I'd rewrite all the functions anyway . On first glance that means that the 'mod' would contain a SQL statement to create a new table, a adapted_banner_manager.php file for admin (along with the language files and boxes), a set of functions for the front end, and a chunk of pasteable code to put the slideshow wherever you wanted. Oh and the jQuery obviously!

Actually, it would be kind of cool to have a configuration option too that allowed users to choose what type of slideshow they wanted. And allow future developers to add new styles of slideshow easily. But that is icing on the cake.

But perhaps I am missing something. I have only glanced at it :-)

Got something working. Contact me if you are interested.