Thread: Flash Integrated Photography CMS Site Based on ASPDNSF

We've been working on a prototype flash enabled/integrated site, which shows how to use flash more extensively with the storefront. We'll post more details here shortly on the project, including everything we did to achieve the result. The site is still a work in progess.

We think you'll agree, this doesn't look like your "typical" e-commerce storefront site, but is still powered using AspDotNetStorefront with only minor mods really (about 4 hrs of ASPDNSF mods, done by myself to get to this point).

The site shows flash integration into a real CMS (Content Management System) for a photography site. Teaser images shown below :eeks:.

More information will follow showing how AspDotNetStorefront can easily be adapted to sites outside of the typical/pure e-commerce realm.

You can monitor site progress at: http://www.imoj.com

You can already see the direction the site is moving in, including image galleries, modeled as categories (galleries) and products (images) with flash integration. Seamless skin integration with Flash is also the objective.

We are also doing some very cool things here with transparent topic/.aspx page background images, and nested hierarchical topics, etc. More to come...See later posts. Our designer came up with a truly brilliant solution to doing this (I must admit, I couldn't figure it out), where each page can seamlessly (and very easily) specify a background, using CSS hierarchical rules of override (and surprise to all, the browsers actually render it uniformly!! Hallelujah!)

See Tech log notes below for implementation details.

Long ways to go, like writing XmlPackages to hook up Galleries, and filling out topics...

IMOJ Photography Site Construction Steps (not final. this is rough draft, still being updated!!)

NOTE: the site is not designed to be blazingly fast. all images are saved at near max JPG quality, so broadband is suggested for viewing the site (has nothing to do with the storefront code it is running)...


We wanted to create a site for the photography business, and also use it to show the versatility of the storefront, to go beyond just "ecommerce sites".

We faced three typical options to do this site:

a) write it from scratch in HTML
b) write it from scratch in all Flash
c) Use AspDotNetStorefront as the foundation platform and mod it

all 3 options were evaluated, and the C was chosen (obviously, or we would not be talking about this project here) for these reasons:

a) ASPDNSF provides a TON of site management/infstracture out of the box
b) ASPDNSF works great with "buy buttons" turned off, as a Content Management site
c) we decided we could model "photo galleries" as categories, and images as products. This has TONS of support built in (image management & upload, hierarchical gallery support, images can have titles and descriptions (even with HTML),
galleries can be ordered easyly, published, unpublished, etc. all from within the admin site. Using the string resource mgr in the admin site, we easily renamed "Category" to Gallery, and "Product" to Image
d) we wanted to use topics for misc content pages, but has a few design goals on them: 1) be able to use unique backgrounds for them, and 2) we wanted to be able to ntest topics inside other topics
e) we wanted to use flash also to make the site COOL, as a photography site without flash is kind of a no-no
f) we wanted security, and remote administration to the site (e.g. I can upload new galleries, and photos, even when traveling on the road via browser) and have them appear on the site
g) we "maybe someday" wanted to be able to let users rate/critique the photos. Since we modeled photos as "products", the built in product ratings & reviews instantly allowed this, probably wiht a few mods, we'll see
h) we wanted an integrated blog, and GoldenComm (one of our DevNet Partners) just finished their blog component which integrates seamless with ASPDNSF and the admin site
i) we wanted "maybe maybe someday" to sell the photos, so modeling them as pictures, allows this later, with almost no mods. We just turn on buy buttons if we wanted to =)
j) we maybe wanted some galleries to be 'private'...aspdotnetstorefront already supports that very closely (wiht just a couple small mods), using protected categoreis (galleries) and products (nice!)
k) we maybe wanted protect content also, and password protected topics already do this out of the box
l) we "maybe" should we wanted to show pictures that reveal a bit more, have a site disclaimer (I agree to view thingy) on these sites...again, the site disclaimer in AspDotNetStorefront is perfect, and out of the box works.
m) wanted a site map, poof, it's there (sitemap2.aspx), and then we turned some of the areas off, and customized the layout just a tad. We did have to expand the sitemap to understand nested topics (nested topics will
be in the ASPDNSF core shortly also)
n) we "maybe" wanted watermarking on all images, poof. already supported by AspDotNetStorefront. We decided not to use this yet, but it's available with a simple AppConfig turned on.

You can see now how AspDotNetStorefront can provide a lot of powerful foundation logic when building a site, even if you have to customize it a bit to get it exactly as you want, and even if you don't even care about "e-commerce" for the site initially.

Also, since i'm not a flash guy, I did NOT want the site to be all in flash, where i'd forever be a slave of the flash developers, who get a tad bit costly over time (for good ones anyway)

We had the site "skin" design/concept created by a designer as I wanted a clean polished brand/identity to start with. It's WELL worth it to bring in a professional for overall skin/brand design & development. They can get you started in the right direction, and then you can work within their design as you go.

change "Category" (and categories, and all forms) to Gallery/Galleries
Change "Product" to "Image" (and derivitave forms)

allow style to change topic (or other page) backgrounds, veyr nicely done using PNG with transparency so it flows below top moseover graphics. even see how we did it on sitemap2.aspx (note that we set style runat="server" so our
skinning engine doesn't ignore it. the skinning engine picks the first runat=server element on the body as the contents to render in the skin). This is a Very cool little CSS trick The main css file has a default in case
you want it on all pages, but you can override individual pages (and topics!) to each have their own seamlessly blended in background image

note also how we just used the componenent art horz menu on the INNER skin template pages and we moved it down near the contents. Then we had to massively restyle the component art fonts/colors/css stuff to get it to appear cool and we edited menudata.xml to remove a lot of the default nodes and add some new notes to blogs, and specific topics

this also handles nested galleries and nested topics (due to proir mods for that) automatically. we did add a new token "menu.Topics" which spits out recursive nested topics into the menu, took about 30 mins to code that up

Needed to add a "Topics0" to render out all top level topics into menu! To do this, I had to partially Topics to a partial Entity, so I could leverage all the recursive EntityHelper code and features (minus all the product mapping stuff, which is not needed). Had to change 5 source files (and XmlPackages/EntityHelpers) to do this, but not hard. took about 1 hr.

We then show only those "published in site map" in the menu. It all works slick! So now, this supports nested topic menus and all by doing these simple mods (will be in future core release, this is how we learn and move the platform forward also).

I had to update topics.aspx/cs in admin to allow parent topic id selection and save; but to do, I just copied code from entity edit pages, took about 3 hrs total to do (maybe less for this part).

Some notes, if we wanted to, we could put nested tree nav in left col for topics (and be able to set display orders by level) like with entities. Not required for this site implementaiton, but would be nice to have in the core.

Alter table topic add [ParentTopicID] [int] NOT NULL CONSTRAINT DF_Topic_ParentTopicID DEFAULT((0))

we maybe wanted google/SE's to index our site (not sure...but it's now possible). But for now, we have robots exclude all in robots.txt at site. Not sure I want google indexing this stuff right now, that's not really of any interest yet for this site.

create skin that matches flash

added "nested" topics

flash home page and featured gallery sections

integrate with customgallery flash viewer

custom skin (home template and inner template)

customized site map to only show items of interest (some appconfigs turned off, but some code mods in sitemapcomponentart also)

Again this is rough outline, we'll post a lot more details here in the coming days on all the steps we took to do this site in making the site come to life.

NOTE: BLOG not yet implemented, but will be shortly if GoldenComm can get me their updates (hint hint)

we're still deciding which watermarks to use (PSD embedded or ASPDNSF) and fleshing out topic contents for the meat of the site...so it will take a few weeks to get the site done.

We still have to create the topic content also.

Stay tuned.

The site looks really nice. Good work!

I'm assuming you're managing the gallery images in a Flash application from ASPDNSF? But, when on the sitemap, going to those galleries, none of those images are listed. Are they not published? Or are you not pulling the gallery images from the ASPDNSF database yet? That's where my confusion comes from.

On another note, I see where you're wanting to go with it, and it's going to work out well. With ASPDNSF's XMLPackages, you can easily create data packets to display in Flash applications. Also, with Flash and JS being able to communicate and share data, you can pretty much update and display anything.

Oddly enough, this is actually a side project I'm going to be starting on my spare time(if I can find some), but it will be a fully functional store front in a Flash application based on the ASPDNSF core. Maybe once I get started we can share some notes.

One note for you though: You should enable page history for the Flash application.

Looking forward to seeing the finished project!

Yes, I've not got the galleries hooked up yet. Ironically, the biggest hole we found in flash was it seemingly has no way to display "HTML" anywhere (at least we spent days, weeks actdually, trying to figure out how to get flash to show a "HTML block", a.k.a. Topic, and never found any way to do it)

Ahhh... but it can!! You can also use the external CSS to format those tags and html. So, you should be able to use a "slimmed" XMLPackage and the default skin CSS to display your content. You've just gotta work out your update strings. Quickest and easiest would be with JS integration. I think the toughest part would be making XMLPackages that Flash can except. It doesn't support all HTML, but it supports enough to get the job done well.

Shoot me a pm if you want.

Already PM'd a few days ago, waiting to hear.

One note. I needed to feed the gallery (category) pages with a flash object invocation. That part is easy. just past the HTML (really JS code) into an Xmlpackage, called entity.tiltviewer.xml.config and assign the galleries to that.

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes" ?>
<package version="2.1" displayname="Tiltviewer Gallery - Load the Flash" debug="false" includeentityhelper="true">

	<!-- ###################################################################################################### -->
	<!-- Copyright AspDotNetStorefront.com, 1995-2008.  All Rights Reserved.					                -->
	<!-- http://www.aspdotnetstorefront.com														                -->
	<!-- For details on this license please visit  the product homepage at the URL above.		                -->
	<!-- THE ABOVE NOTICE MUST REMAIN INTACT.                                                                   -->
	<!--                                                                                                        -->
	<!-- ###################################################################################################### -->


    <PackageTransform>
    
        <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:aspdnsf="urn:aspdnsf" exclude-result-prefixes="aspdnsf">
          <xsl:output method="html" omit-xml-declaration="yes" />

            <xsl:param name="EntityID"><xsl:value-of select="/root/Runtime/EntityID" /></xsl:param>

            <xsl:template match="/">
<style type="text/css">
.tablebackground { background:url(images/topicbg/default.jpg) no-repeat; }
</style>
<script type="text/javascript" src="jscripts/swfobject.js"></script>
	<div id="flashcontent">TiltViewer requires JavaScript and the latest Flash player. <a href="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer/">Get Flash here.</a></div>
	<script type="text/javascript">
	
		var fo = new SWFObject("TiltViewer.swf", "viewer", "880", "630", "9.0.28", "#000000");			
		
		// TILTVIEWER CONFIGURATION OPTIONS
		// To use an option, uncomment it by removing the "//" at the start of the line
		// For a description of config options, go to: 
		// http://www.airtightinteractive.com/projects/tiltviewer/config_options.html
															
		//TRANSPARENT OPTIONS
		fo.addParam("wmode", "transparent");
		fo.addVariable("bkgndTransparent", "true");
		fo.addVariable("showFullscreenOption", "true");
		
		//FLICKR GALLERY OPTIONS
		// To use images from Flickr, uncomment this block
		//fo.addVariable("useFlickr", "true");
		//fo.addVariable("user_id", "");
		//fo.addVariable("tags", "jump,smile");
		//fo.addVariable("tag_mode", "all");
		//fo.addVariable("showTakenByText", "true");		
		
		// XML GALLERY OPTIONS
		// To use local images defined in an XML document, use this block		
		fo.addVariable("useFlickr", "false");
		//fo.addVariable("xmlURL", "http://www.imoj.com/tiltviewer/examples/gallery.xml");
		fo.addVariable("xmlURL", "http://www.imoj.com/x-tiltviewerdata.aspx?entityid=<xsl:value-of select="$EntityID"/>");
		fo.addVariable("maxJPGSize","900");
		
		//GENERAL OPTIONS		
		fo.addVariable("useReloadButton", "false");
		fo.addVariable("columns", "4");
		fo.addVariable("rows", "3");
		fo.addVariable("showFlipButton", "true");
		//fo.addVariable("showLinkButton", "true");
		//fo.addVariable("linkLabel", "View image info");
		//fo.addVariable("frameColor", "0xFFFFFF");
		//fo.addVariable("backColor", "0xDDDDDD");
		//fo.addVariable("bkgndInnerColor", "0xFF00FF");
		//fo.addVariable("bkgndOuterColor", "0x0000FF");				
		//fo.addVariable("langGoFull", "Go Fullscreen");
		//fo.addVariable("langExitFull", "Exit Fullscreen");
		//fo.addVariable("langAbout", "About");	
		
		//PRO OPTIONS
		fo.addVariable("frameWidth", "30");
		fo.addVariable("zoomedInDistance", "900");
		fo.addVariable("zoomedOutDistance", "4000");
		//fo.addVariable("fontName", "Times");
		//fo.addVariable("titleFontSize", "90");
		//fo.addVariable("descriptionFontSize", "32");
		//fo.addVariable("linkFontSize", "41");
		//fo.addVariable("linkTarget", "_self");
		//fo.addVariable("navButtonColor", "0xFF00FF");
		//fo.addVariable("flipButtonColor", "0x0000FF");
		//fo.addVariable("textColor", "0xFFFFFF");
		//fo.addVariable("linkTextColor", "0x000000");
		//fo.addVariable("linkBkgndColor", "0xFFFFFF");
				
		// END TILTVIEWER CONFIGURATION OPTIONS
		
		fo.addParam("allowFullScreen","true");
		fo.write("flashcontent");			
	</script>	
            </xsl:template>
		</xsl:stylesheet>

    </PackageTransform>
</package>

So now the galleries all spit out a flash gallery viewer invocation, but the flash object then needs to call back to get the gallery picture (product) data in Xml, So I wrote another package called tiltviewerdata.xml.config, and set that flash object to invoke that.

Some notes on that gallerydata XmlPackage:

it has to be invoked with x- syntax (e.g. x-tiltviewerdata.aspx?entityid=N). the x- syntax strips out all skin base stuff, which of course would not work if the XmPackage is trying to return a raw Xml Doc (which the flash object needs).

Secondly, inside the tiltviewerdata XmlPackage, we have to set the HTTP Header element, so we know how to tell the browser what kind of data we are returning

Code:

    <HTTPHeaders>
        <HTTPHeader headername="Content-Type" headervalue="text/xml" />
    </HTTPHeaders>

This element goes at the same level as the PackageTransform level

e.g.

tiltviewerdata.xml.config (dummy copy, not using real data as posted here, meaning it's not yet hooked up to do the proper entity-product SQL queries, and transform that to this same output, this one is still using canned dummy data)

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes" ?>
<package version="2.1" displayname="Tiltviewer Gallery Xml Data - Feed The Flash" debug="false" allowengine="true" includeentityhelper="false">

	<!-- ###################################################################################################### -->
	<!-- Copyright AspDotNetStorefront.com, 1995-2008.  All Rights Reserved.					                -->
	<!-- http://www.aspdotnetstorefront.com														                -->
	<!-- For details on this license please visit  the product homepage at the URL above.		                -->
	<!-- THE ABOVE NOTICE MUST REMAIN INTACT.                                                                   -->
	<!--                                                                                                        -->
	<!-- ###################################################################################################### -->

    <HTTPHeaders>
        <HTTPHeader headername="Content-Type" headervalue="text/xml" />
    </HTTPHeaders>
    
    <PackageTransform>
    
        <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:aspdnsf="urn:aspdnsf" exclude-result-prefixes="aspdnsf">
          <xsl:output method="xml" omit-xml-declaration="no" />

            <xsl:param name="EntityID"><xsl:value-of select="/root/QueryString/entityid" /></xsl:param>

            <xsl:template match="/">
				<tiltviewergallery>
					<photos>
						<photo imageurl="tiltviewer/examples/imgs/img.jpg" linkurl="">
							<title>Image 1</title>
							<description>This is a regular text description.</description>
						</photo>
						<photo imageurl="tiltviewer/examples/imgs/img.jpg" linkurl="">
							<title>Image 2</title>
							<description><![CDATA[This is a HTML text description. Supported tags are <b>bold</b>, <u>underline</u>, <i>italics</i>, linebreaks<br>and <font color="#ff0000" size="60">font tags</font>. Hyperlinks are not supported.]]></description>
						</photo>
						<photo imageurl="tiltviewer/examples/imgs/img.jpg" >
							<title>Image 3</title>
						<description>This image has no link button becasue the 'linkurl' property was removed from the photo tag</description>			
						</photo>
						<photo imageurl="tiltviewer/examples/imgs/img.jpg" linkurl="" showFlipButton="false">
							<title>Image 4</title>
							<description>This image has no flip button because the 'showFlipButton' property was added to the photo tag</description>			
						</photo>
						<photo imageurl="tiltviewer/examples/imgs/img.jpg" linkurl="">
							<title>Image 5</title>			
						</photo>
						<photo imageurl="tiltviewer/examples/imgs/img.jpg" linkurl="">
							<title>Image 6</title>			
						</photo>
						<photo imageurl="tiltviewer/examples/imgs/img.jpg" linkurl="">
							<title>Image 7</title>			
						</photo>
						<photo imageurl="tiltviewer/examples/imgs/img.jpg" linkurl="">
							<title>Image 8</title>			
						</photo>
						<photo imageurl="tiltviewer/examples/imgs/img.jpg" linkurl="">
							<title>Image 9</title>			
						</photo>
						<photo imageurl="tiltviewer/examples/imgs/img.jpg" linkurl="">
							<title>Image 10</title>			
						</photo>
						<photo imageurl="tiltviewer/examples/imgs/img.jpg" linkurl="">
							<title>Image 11</title>			
						</photo>
						<photo imageurl="tiltviewer/examples/imgs/img.jpg" linkurl="">
							<title>Image 12</title>			
						</photo>
					</photos>
				</tiltviewergallery>
            </xsl:template>
		</xsl:stylesheet>

    </PackageTransform>
</package>

We are going to be using the TiltViewer Flash object to display the actual (inner) galleries, so we're hooking this up now to get live image (product) data from gallerydata.xml.config XmlPackage (just like any entity package would) and spit out the resulting Xml. Job pretty much done then...excepting for some minor tweaks here and there.

again, the only tricks here are we are using url syntax of x- (which invokes the ExecXmlPackage http handler) vs e- (which invokes the engine page, rendered in skinbase) to provide the raw Xml data output, and setting the HTTPHeader element to Xml

And look Ma, in reality, no core code mods were really needed to do this project.

We did make these changes to make the project easier, but there were other ways to do this also:

a) mod to help with nested topics (but that will be in the future core builds)...and even that mod (now that I think of it) could have been avoided by using nested Sections (vs topics), as they have similar capabilities, and sections already support nesting.

b) site map tweaking

The rest is all done using XmlPackages and creative skin/flash/css construction.

And when done, ALL site content, topics, galleries, images, can be managed and maintained remotely just in the admin site

Ok, here is the final tiltviewerdata.xml.config XmlPackage:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes" ?>
<package version="2.1" displayname="Tiltviewer Gallery Xml Data" debug="false" allowengine="true" includeentityhelper="false">

	<!-- ###################################################################################################### -->
	<!-- Copyright AspDotNetStorefront.com, 1995-2008.  All Rights Reserved.					                -->
	<!-- http://www.aspdotnetstorefront.com														                -->
	<!-- For details on this license please visit  the product homepage at the URL above.		                -->
	<!-- THE ABOVE NOTICE MUST REMAIN INTACT.                                                                   -->
	<!--                                                                                                        -->
	<!-- ###################################################################################################### -->

    <HTTPHeaders>
        <HTTPHeader headername="Content-Type" headervalue="text/xml" />
    </HTTPHeaders>
    
    <query name="Products" rowElementName="Product">
        <sql>
            <![CDATA[
			select * from Product P with (NOLOCK) left join ProductCategory PC on P.ProductID=PC.ProductID 
			where PC.CategoryID=@CatID and P.Published>0 and P.Deleted=0 and P.IsSystem=0 and P.IsAPack=0 and P.IsAKit=0
			order by PC.DisplayOrder
            ]]>
		</sql>
        <queryparam paramname="@CatID" paramtype="request" requestparamname="EntityID" sqlDataType="int" defvalue="0" validationpattern="" />
    </query>

    <PackageTransform>
    
        <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:aspdnsf="urn:aspdnsf" exclude-result-prefixes="aspdnsf">
          <xsl:output method="xml" omit-xml-declaration="no" />

            <xsl:param name="EntityID"><xsl:value-of select="/root/QueryString/entityid" /></xsl:param>

            <xsl:template match="/">
				<tiltviewergallery>
					<photos>
                        <xsl:apply-templates select="/root/Products/Product" />
					</photos>
				</tiltviewergallery>
            </xsl:template>


            <xsl:template match="Product">

                <xsl:param name="pName" select="aspdnsf:GetMLValue(Name)"></xsl:param>
                <xsl:param name="pDescription" select="aspdnsf:GetMLValue(Description)"></xsl:param>
				<xsl:param name="pShowFlip">
					<xsl:if test="$pDescription = ''">false</xsl:if>
					<xsl:if test="$pDescription != ''">true</xsl:if>
				</xsl:param>
                <xsl:param name="pImageURL">images/product/large/<xsl:value-of select="ProductID"/>.jpg</xsl:param>

				<photo>
<!--
					<xsl:attribute name="imageurl">tiltviewer/examples/imgs/img.jpg</xsl:attribute>
-->
					<xsl:attribute name="imageurl"><xsl:value-of select="$pImageURL"/></xsl:attribute>
					<xsl:attribute name="showFlipButton"><xsl:value-of select="$pShowFlip"/></xsl:attribute>
					<title><xsl:value-of select="$pName"/></title>
					<description><xsl:value-of select="$pDescription"/></description>
				</photo>
            </xsl:template>

		</xsl:stylesheet>

    </PackageTransform>
</package>

Note, we've made some assumptions here for simplicity (knowing the nature of our site) like finding the explicit large image URL vs using proper image lookup/extension functions (we don't need them on this site).

now I have to upload the rest of the images, and hookup the Blog component. The Blog component will be sold as an accessory to AspDotNetStorefront shortly

Ok, I got the fully integrated (admin integrated) .net blog hooked in. Admin users of the site (me in this case) can blog away to their hearts content.

I still have to tweak the blog css styles a bit when I get a chance.

The site is pretty much structurally done now

Now, I just need time to do the fun things. like add content to the site and do photography

Zalien, No worries.

What we ended up doing on the site, so I can manage all the data in the admin site topics, is to control the Xml feeds to the flash components using topics, so I created this topic called topicasxml.xml.config

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes" ?>
<package version="2.1" displayname="Topic Data As Xml" debug="false" allowengine="true" includeentityhelper="false">

	<!-- ###################################################################################################### -->
	<!-- Copyright AspDotNetStorefront.com, 1995-2008.  All Rights Reserved.					                -->
	<!-- http://www.aspdotnetstorefront.com														                -->
	<!-- For details on this license please visit  the product homepage at the URL above.		                -->
	<!-- THE ABOVE NOTICE MUST REMAIN INTACT.                                                                   -->
	<!--                                                                                                        -->
	<!-- ###################################################################################################### -->

    <HTTPHeaders>
        <HTTPHeader headername="Content-Type" headervalue="text/xml" />
    </HTTPHeaders>
    
    <query name="Topics" rowElementName="Topic">
        <sql>
            <![CDATA[
			select * from Topic T with (NOLOCK) where Name=@TopicName
            ]]>
		</sql>
        <queryparam paramname="@TopicName" paramtype="request" requestparamname="topic" sqlDataType="varchar" defvalue=""  validationpattern="" />
    </query>

    <PackageTransform>
    
        <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:aspdnsf="urn:aspdnsf" exclude-result-prefixes="aspdnsf">
          <xsl:output method="xml" omit-xml-declaration="no" />

	<!-- the topic description actually had the tiltviewer Xml in it, just return it -->
            <xsl:template match="/">
				<xsl:value-of select="/root/Topics/Topic/Description" disable-output-escaping="yes"/>
            </xsl:template>

		</xsl:stylesheet>

    </PackageTransform>
</package>

This very simple XmlPackage now allows a topic to be sent back as a simple Xml response (not HTML), and you just invoke it with this syntax from the flash objects:

x-topicasxml.aspx?topic={topicnamehere}

Note that you use the x- syntax to invoke it, and the {topicnamehere} is the name of the topic (which contains Xml Data) that you want returned.

Remember, the x- is our ExecXmlPackage HTTP Handler, which circumvents SkinBase contents from being sent back (which of course would violate returning a pure Xml Doc)

An example is this:

http://www.imoj.com/x-topicasxml.asp...otographersxml

This is how we are feeding data to the internal flash objects.

Note that the way I wrote the XmlPackage, this only works with DB based topics (not file topics), and the actual Topic should just contain the Xml you want returned (no HTML, head, etc).

Anyway, just another little trick. We'll include this XmlPackage in the core on subsequent builds, as it's quite handy.

WOW This looks amazing!!!

T

I'm putting up a Skin 2 on the site, to show how the same site/content can be displayed, almost completely differently, just using a new skin....still a work in progress right now as I get time. Screenshot below (not done yet of course)...

Notes: ZERO code mods to do this skin (vs prior one). This shows the versatility of our skinning engine. The new skin was simply put up with a new HTML/CSS/Graphic design with new topics. Same exact core code base. We often get asked how flexible the skinning engine in, so this hopefully is a good example of the type of versatility you can experience.

One note, the flash crap (er stuff) doesn't work on iphones yet...so i'll probably write a browser detect into the category (gallery) xmlpackage so if iphone browser is calling in, we just dump the images in <img> tag format in list, instead of flash gizmo.

Very simple to do actually, and I'll write it up here.

Now, if someday, I could actually spend more time on the photography

This site will be updated over the next few weeks, given time to do it

ok, barcode done automagically with image handler now that updates automatically. Took an hr to write...you have to love .net sometimes

Hello,
I found very interesting what you did in your project about integrating flash photography based on CMS ASPDNSF. I would like to do something like you did but with something a little bit different : as you did I would like my products images can be displayed the way you showed them on your home page. These images in the gallery could come from the products selected by customer when they select products from product categories, sub-categories or searches they can do. By default if nothing is selected by customer product images of the default default should be shown. The little difference from here is that I would like that the product information of the image currently selected in the gallery would be displayed besides the image with the usual "add to cart" button of ASPDNSF software.

Actually I suppose you probably finished your project so I would like to know, based on qhat you did if I can do that using the way you did with probably some modifications. As I am not a programmer in that field can you please help me about that ?

thanks !

N.Giroux

Well, the mods I did are a bit technical so far. I'm working on a layout (template) manager for the site now, and will hope to post more on that shortly. Basically, XmlPackages provide the presentation layer, and can separate code/db from presentation, using CSS/etc, so i'd like to "render" entities (e.g. categories, galleries) using any arbitrary layout...so that's what i'm working on now (so it doesn't need a programmer to do). e.g. wysiwyg layout mgmt for xmlpackages. I'll post more as I get time to work on it.

the home page slider could be automated/programmed, but yes, at this time, it would need a bit of programming to setup.

For automated layouts, i've attached some of the candidates below. these are just concepts (all very doable with XmlPackages) but again, we're trying to make these more automated... more coming shortly ... all the images are just placeholders for now (mike picked them...not commenting on that for now) LOL

k. we're making progress. on a generic template engine (for contents, not skins)...more to come soon. we have about 30 "templates" that could be used on entity (category, manufacturer, product) pages now...and are working through the automation logic....so far, looks great.

Hello.. Iam working on flash banner to display my featured products, how can I do this? and display it is a carousel style...

find a flash carousel component. set up it's data via XML pulled from the storefront db, and you're good

Thanks for sharing your work here. I was able to adapt your code for use with a papervison3d based gallery. Were you able to detect for the iPhone? Did you use user agent or use flash detection?

I don't think it's been done on the IMOJ site yet, but we've got some info on detecting iPhone (or almost any mobile user really) by user agent in the manual.

You can have it switch to a different skin or add some code to handle images differently the way Rob mentioned.

Read thru this thread, can you summarize what is now available as core?

Are the templates available in the core?

What rev did they come in at?

Thanks,

Working on template mgr stuff, got sidetracked to prepare for Conference for a while. Thx.

This site looks great.

Would you be able to share code for the Blog? I noticed you have permalinks with the actual blog post title built into the URL. Would you be able to explain how to get the title written into the URL?

Thanks!

the layouts (templates) are almost working stay tuned...I had to put this feature on hold for a while as we focused on getting multi-store version out, but I'm back at it now

The blog component is a simple add-on written by Goldencomm, one of our DevNet partners

OMG this is really brilliant stuff totally impressed