Extension talk:SimpleViewer.php

This extension is designed to integrate the SimpleViewer flash gallery into MediaWiki. SimpleViewer is available for use free of charge for commercial and non-commercial purposes.

Example

• http://mintmedia.co.nz/research/index.php/Mint_Media:Sandbox?action=purge

Installation

Note: MW:Extension:SyntaxHighlight GeSHi contains nice concepts for installation in conjunction with third party software

• Create a folder called SimpleViewer inside your wiki extensions folder
• Download the SimpleViewer.php script
• Save the script into the SimpleViewer folder as SimpleViewer.php
• Download the SimpleViewer flash application from Airtight Interactive
• Unpack the zip and save the resulting simpleviewer folder inside exensions/SimpleViewer
• Add this line to LocalSettings.php

require('$IP/extensions/SimpleViewer/SimpleViewer.php');

• Check that the extension in installed by looking at Special:Version on your wiki. SimpleViewer should appear under Parser hooks
• Create a test page containing the text:

{{simpleviewer:src=Gallery test}}

• Create an article called Gallery test with the content

*Image:Foo.jpg
*Image:Bar.jpg
*Image:Pic.jpg

Where the image names are replaced with the names of images you have uploaded to your wiki.

• Go to the test page. You should see the gallery appear.

Bugs

• Does not parse wikitext of gallery src article so DPL queries and templates will not work as expected
• For some reason the head script containing swfobject.js only seems to load when action=purge other wise the non-flash message is displayed.

Further work

• Image thumbnail requests are sent a redirect header so it takes two HTTP requests instead of one to fetch each thumb and image (inefficient)
• Perhaps hook to ParserBeforeStrip to get around the fact that we don't have a parser object available at this stage.
• Parameters other than src in the parser function don't work
• Provide full control and pass all available parameters to SimpleViewer via parser params
• file_get_contents with HTTP wrappers is used to obtain the HTML of the image article contents to display when the image is clicked (inefficient)
• Thumb and image sizes are currently hard-wired are ready to be hooked in with params