v1.6.1 - April 29, 2008

• [upd] Updated Gallery Remote support to allow fetching images from the server.
• [new] Added new config.php option: $_MG_CONF['update_parent_lastupdated']. If set to true, the last updated field for all parent albums will also be updated.
• [fix] Featured albums now support sub albums in dropdown list attribute.
• [fix] Fixed issue where featured album would error if album used custom thumbnail size.
• [fix] Gallery Remote did not automatically sort media on upload.
• [fix] Entering invalid data for Remote Media would cause a 'header already sent error' when Chameleon is selected as the theme.
• [fix] Fixed bug in non-javascript rating calls - resulted in blank screen.
• [new] Added support for new MooMenu inteface for mgMediaBrowser.
• [enh] Modified AJAX rating to use MooTools, eleminating the need for behavior.js.
• [fix] Changed windows.addEvent('domready') to windows.addEvent('load') to resolve domready bug in MooTools v1.11.
• [upd] Updated swfobject.js to v2.0.
• [fix] Improved error checking on profile integration.
• [fix] Some external command-line utilities (like 'ffmpeg.exe') output all info to stderr instead of stdout. This would cause problems with the upload status page. Now redirect all output to stdout.
• [fix] Auto sorting by title was reversed.
• [fix] Fixed issue where auto tags would return the actual auto tag code instead of nothing if the album was hidden, but had access via permissions to the auto tag.
• [new] Implemented a shared global option (for all gllabs plugins) to ensure that the MooTools JS library is loaded only once.
• [fix] Updated auto tag code to support m4v video files.
• [fix] Now properly support m4v video files. Safari will now download with the correct extension.
• [fix] Fixed a bug where the owner id of an album would reset to admin after edit.
• [fix] Auto play was broken with MGflv player.
• [fix] In FF, using Clean theme, the MGFlv player would not center.
• [fix] Media Gallery would return the wrong path for image files under certain conditions.
• [fix] CTL links pointed to old version, now reference the Caching Template Lib wiki page.
• [fix] Wiki links pointed to old wiki site.
• [fix] Auto tag defaults were coded to only allow 2 characters for entry.
• [fix] Fixed SWF playback error - flashvars variable was not set properly.
• [enh] Made the loading of Mootools optional (in the event that another system loads Mootools.
• [enh] Made lightbox slideshow where it can be disabled - this is used in the event that the slideshow javascript conflicts with something else. This will automatically disable all lightbox functionality in Media Gallery.

Media Gallery has added several new key features in v1.6, below is a quick list of new or enhanced features in this release:

Release 1.6.0 of Media Gallery will remove support for Geeklog v1.3.11 and older.

Media Gallery now requires that you install the Caching Template Library.

The Caching Template Library is a replacement template engine for Geeklog. A template engine facilitates a manageable way to separate application logic and content from its presentation. This allows the programmer to focus specifically on the application and the template designer to focus on the presentation. It also allows site administrators to easily manipulate the look and feel of their site without having to know the application or become a programmer.

The benefits of the Caching Template Library are that it adds the following new features above the stock Geeklog template library. These features benefit both the site administrator and the plugin developer.

• Compiles templates to PHP code for enhanced page load speeds
• Adds logic processing to the templates
• Ability to specify multiple locations to search for templates

The media rating system has been completely reworked in Media Gallery 1.6.0. It now supports a visual star based rating and uses AJAX (if JavaScript is enabled) to rate the media without having to refresh the page. If JavaScript is disabled, then the rating will require a page refresh.

All rating information is now stored in the database to facilitate some additional reporting and to prevent users from rating an item multiple time.

There are new restrictions on how the rating works:

• You cannot rate media that you own (uploaded)
• You can only rate media once. Media Gallery will store both the User ID and the IP address. If either match for a media item, rating will be disabled.

When you Reset Ratings using the Media Edit Screen, the rating history is also deleted so users will be able to rate that item again in the future.

Media Gallery has been modified to use the standard .plugin styles that are included with Geeklog v1.4+. Past versions of Media Gallery included a separate style sheet. Now, Media Gallery should better fit the current style (theme) of a site since it will use the same style sheet the rest of the Geeklog site uses.

If you have customized the Media Gallery style sheet in the past, you will need to apply your styles to the standard Geeklog style sheet.

I'm open to feedback on this change. If you have an opinion to share, please do.

In prior versions of Media Gallery, you would create a 'podcast' album by selecting the Podcast attribute in the album editor. This functionality has changed. Now, selecting the podcast attribute simply changes how the RSS feed is generated. It does not affect the album's look and feel. To emulate the old functionality, we will use the per album themes to select the Podcast album theme.

In previous versions of Media Gallery, there was a small slideout MP3 player displayed below the thumbnail for MP3 files in a podcast album. To enable this slideout player in Media Gallery v1.6, you have a new Album Configuration Attribute called MP3 Ribbon Player. Enable this attribute and the slideout player will display below the thumbnail in the album view.

In prior versions of Media Gallery, all uploaded image media was converted to JPG format. Media Gallery now no longer performs this conversion, instead it keeps the image media in its native format, at least for JPG, PNG, GIF and BMP image types.

Media Gallery now supports an internal search feature that will return the search results in a standard album view format. You can configure how the album view will look by modifying the new configuration options located in System Options → Display Options

Media Gallery will also use the Index Skin for the search results. You may ask why we didn't create a specific configuration entry for Search Results. Since the Media Gallery Index Skin only uses the gallery_* templates and no others, we decided to simplify the code a bit and share the same value. Since the Search Results will use the album_* templates, you can easily share this setting without conflict.

Media Gallery has supported keywords for each media item for some time, but there really has not been much functionality with them. New to Media Gallery v1.6.0 is that the keywords are now hot links that will display all media items with that same keyword when selected. This leverages Media Gallery's enhanced internal search feature.

MP3 media is now always played using the Flash MP3 player.

For albums that contain several MP3 media files, there is a new Slide Show option called MP3 Jukebox. This will display a screen with a Flash based media player that will play all MP3 files in the album.

There is a new auto tag, playall, this will embed a small Flash based MP3 jukebox in your article or static page.

New in v1.6.0 is the ability to now select which FLV player you wish to use. The default MGflv player developed by Wayne Patterson offers a great user interface and feature set. The FlowPlayer FLV player offers the ability to customize the skin which can give you a little more flexibility with integrating into your site.

To select which player to use, there is a new configuration option in System Options → Display Options

Flash Video Player

You select to use MGflv or FlowPlayer as the default Flash Video Player.

All the FLV playback templates have been consolidated down to 2 base templates:

• flvfp.thtml - The FlowPlayer template
• flvmg.thtml - The MGflv template

You can now customize these 2 templates and it will be reflected in all FLV playback areas. This includes inline, pop-up, local FLV and streaming FLV.

Media Gallery supports using FlowPlayer as the default FLV player. One of the features of FlowPlayer is the ability for you to customize the look and feel. Starting with FlowPlayer v1.19, you can now 'skin' the player.

The FlowPlayer author has released a separate tool for skinning. It is called the FlowPlayer Skinning Kit and is available at http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=133868&package_id=146998&release_id=524349

The kit is designed to run out of the box on a Windows workstation. It requires that you have the Sun Java runtime installed and also Apache's ANT system installed. You can download Sun's latest Java runtime here. You can get a copy of Apache's ANT system here: http://code.google.com/p/winant/

The kit runs from the command line. CD to the directory where you unpacked the distribution package and run ant. The generated player is placed in build/FlowPlayer.swf. By default it generates the default player with the gray skin.

To create your own skin replace the image files in the images directory! The names of the files are fairly self explanatory and there is some supporing comments in the included xml/Skin.xml.tmpl file.

To use it on Linux or Mac you need to replace the included swfmill binary with the version built for your operating system. Swfmill is availabe for download in their site.

Please refer to the README file included in the package for more info.

Media Gallery now supports 3 main templates to control the look / feel of the media view. If the media type is video, the view_video.thtml template is used. For audio, the view_audio.thtml template. All other media types use the view_image.thtml template.

This will allow you to have a custom look / feel for video or audio files. For example, if you have an album that only holds video files, you can change the color scheme or other attributes for videos simply by editing the view_video.thtml template. The changes will only affect videos, no other media type. Thanks to Richard Towler for this idea.

Media Gallery now supports an option that will allow you to move the templates into your theme layout directories. This means that you can now have a separate look / feel for Media Gallery for each theme you have installed on your site.

If you want to move the templates to your theme directories, there are 4 steps you must follow:

1. Copy the contents of plugins/mediagallery/templates/ to layout/themename/mediagallery/
2. Copy the contents of public_html/mediagallery/images/ to layout/themename/mediagallery/images/
3. Copy public_html/mediagallery/style.css to layout/themename/mediagallery/
4. Edit the Media Gallery config.php
   • comment out the following line:

$_MG_CONF['template_path'] = $_CONF['path'] . 'plugins/mediagallery/templates';

  * uncomment the following line:

 $_MG_CONF['template_path'] = $_CONF['path_layout'] . 'mediagallery/';

Remember you will need to copy the files above to all of your theme directories. Now you can have a custom Media Gallery style.css for each them. You can even customize the images used in Media Gallery per theme. For example, the little envelope icon used for Media Gallery post cards can be changed for each theme.

I have enhanced the filecheck utility in Media Gallery to now verify every file included in the Media Gallery distribution. It also reports if any unknown directories or files exist within Media Gallery directory structure.

The main reason for this feature is to allow you to clean up old Media Gallery files. As Media Gallery has grown, some files have been renamed, moved, or simply deleted. FileCheck will help you with the housekeeping.

Also, it provides a method to detect if something or someone has installed files in the Media Gallery directory tree. A very simple security check.

I have added support for album themes. This means you can select a different style sheet and templates for each album. Currently in the development release there is only the default theme, but I will develop a couple of others before final release.

Updated on Album Themes

If you wish to create a custom set of templates for a 'theme', you only need to copy over the templates you are going to change, you do not need to copy every template over to the new skin/ directory.

This feature can also be used to make local modifications to the Media Gallery template files and not worry about them being overwritten during an upgrade.

These are just the major feature improvements, there have been several other minor enhancements and additions as well. See the full ChangeLog file in the distribution for more details.