So Cool Iris is here to stay...

I wasn't crazy about this thing to begin with, and now that I've seen it on my own site, I like it even less. 

When I clicked tha little "Launch Cool Iris" button, I was reallly expecting some sort of full screen slide show.  What happens is, you are prompted to go to the cool iris web site to get the browser plugin  OK..fine.  I installed the Cool Iris browser plugin for FF.  Well after installing the plugin, I got to view the photo album on my site alright, but I have to view it through the cool iris website through a url that looks something like this:

http://www.cooliris.com/tab/#cs=11&url=http%3A%2F%2Fyoursite.com%2Fm%2Fphotos%2Frss%2Falbum%2FBaseball%2Fowner%2Fhouston

Well at least it opened up a new browser tab and was nice enough to leave my site open on some other tab.  Now my members will have to jump back and foirth between 2 tabs.  Sweet.  I do find it a little annoying, that if you view an album through the cool iris website and click on a photo to view it, then click on your website tab, when you go back to the photo view via cooliris.com, you are suddenly looking at a blank black screen... gotta love it!

Will somebody please  put me out of my misery and just shoot me?

hi houston you are right in some things but i think cooliris its very nice feature in album and users will like this feature

maybe there are will be some option to remove it

It's all about advertising.  Sure Cool Iris is a cool flash photo viewer, but what do you think it's really about?

Advertising, that's what its about.  People will be viewing your sites photos via the Cool Iris web site, and your members will be looking at that advertising menu in the upper left corner of the screen. Maybe some people think its a good idea to have a Dolphin sites members view album photos through a different web site in a different browser tab, but then again, maybe I'm the only one that sees problems with that.  It's hard enough to get people to stay on your site... why provide another mechanism to lure them away?

To me, a flash album viewer that did everthing locally would be far less objectionable, and there's no shortage of open source flash photo viewers that would do the job locally.  Just wait.... you'l be able to by this very feature as a Dolphin 7 mod for a hundred bucks or so.  Hmmmm.... I wonder who will offer this first....

Houston This is already offered.. :) 
for version 6 and 7. Like what I write earlier in a another treath.

I think the D7 mods on expertzzz.com have  disappeared.  I didn't see it.

It's part of what created a stir.  There were D7 enhancements beiing sold before the package was officially released.  I guess people were getting upset at seeing enhancements where they were most needed.  I believe what was said, was something to the effect that Boonex coders know what is really needed the most, so they are were already selling mods to make up for those shortfalls in the main script.  Now why would anyone get upset at something like that?..... go figure.

I actually downloaded the cooliris extention for firefox months ago....and found it was full of bugs. I quickly removed it. Im a bit puzzled as to why a third party viwer is beind used. It obviously can't be customized, can it? Isnt that the point of Dolphin?

It's not a bad viewer, but if it cant be customized......I won't be using it. I personally don't like the "Embed" button. Some people are all about viral pics and vids....but my site won't be. I will be attempting to use the private features. Seems to be a conflict in there somewhere.

There are quite a few flash viewer that could have been used for an album viewer.  I really don't understand how this one can appeal to anybody.  The part about having to view a slideshow fullscreen through cooliris.com is something I just can't live with, so I won't be using this plugin.  I guess I'll be purchasing that flash D7 gallery mod.

As an alternative, I may work on having a larger image pop up on a mouseover of photo thumbs.  Example: http://www.moneytreesystems.com/css/picpopup.html#

Oh well, the slightly larger popup image on mouseover idea was rejected.  I'm amazed at how no one seems to have any concern over their site's members viewing album photos through some other website.

As for me I think that LightBox2 could be a much better solution. This is a very simple but quite elegant photo viewer: http://www.huddletogether.com/projects/lightbox2/

I sent this link to Victor, asking him to have a look...

Michel, I suggested that a long time ago.... no one listened.  There's a derivative of lightbox, called lytebox that works a little better with the way Dolphin renders pages, but all the functionality is identical.

It's obvious to me, that there is some new directive in place at Boonex to get Dolphin 7 released by whatever means necessary.  In regards to album photo browsing, Cooliris was an easy shortcut to take, so they took it.  Any new feature request, however small, will most likely be denied.  Cooliris has done a good job marketing their little flash photo viewer... personally I don't see what the rage is.  I cannot grasp the logic of  my website contacting cooliris.com to browse albums full screen, no matter how hard I try.  I just don't get it.  That's isn't saying that I don't underrsatnd the logic from CoolIris's point of view.... They get to inject that stupid menu in the upper left corner of your screen that leads to all kind of advertising.

So.... if you decide to enable the CoolIris plugin on your Dolphin 7 site, any of your members that click on that 'Launch CoolIris' button, will then view the album photos via cooliris.com in a new browser tab.  Not only do you have two seperate album navigation systems adjacent to one another, you've just opened a new website in a new browser tab to view the album photos.  If you then cliuck that 'Go to photo page', the page opens in the new browser tab, not the original.  Then people can click on a different album on the view photo page, and be placed in a position to again press that 'Launch CoolIris' button... go to photo page..etc.  Pretty soon, people on your Dolphin 7 site that are actively browsing albums, will have ten browser tabs open, and wonder what the hell is going on.

Maybe in some parallel universe, where the laws of logic work in reverse, this all makes sense... but not in the one I live in.

I had a look at lytebox... Nice :-) I think that it could be quite easy to integrate this viewer (picture, diaporama, HTML content) into Dolphin7, even working with Privacy Settings.

Mail sent to Victor and Andrew suggesting to replace CoolIris with Lytebox...

Michel, for some reason, I doubt that CoolIris will be replaced.  I think the best we can hope for is to provide Lytebox integration as an option.   I'd like to see it as an option on the view photo page.  I don't think it can be anything more than an alternative album browser.... lyteframe just frames existing content, and probably won't lend itself well to loading dynamic content.

It's just one option.  Like I said, the biggest problem I have with CoolIris is the fact that it will inevitably be directing traffic AWAY from my site, and that's just not something I'm willing to live with.  It's hard enough to attract members... I don't need another mechanism to lead them to other sites.

I've been looking at some other flash gallery options that will work locally.  It's a pretty simple concept... just use the RSS feed of the album to load the pictures into the flash applet...... sounds simple anyway.  I would have no problem at all with a flash album browser, that didn't contact some other website and didn't have all this other junk built into it.   (Just load yoursite.com/plugins/cooliris/swf/cooliris.swf in FF and see what come up)

I don't like this cool iris, not only that is using a outsite website, I don't like the whole plugin. 
So I will not use it for my sites at all. 

I want a fast loading flash viewer like the one I have now on 6. 
Not only for viewing, but also the albums are only visible on the frontpage. 

So I will need to buy then a updated version for Version 7. 

I've been doing a lot of searching for a suitable replacement.  I didn't find any open source flash media browsers that looked promising. Everything I looked at was either way too complex, or lacked some of the functionalities that are needed.

I did find a commercial flash app that looks like it has all the right features.  It's a very simple flash media browser, and I think it would be a good replacement for cooliris.

http://flashnifties.com/index.php

It works with photos, videos, and MP3s.

• Media descriptions are displayed when hovering on the media
• Forward and Back navigation arrows appear when hovering on left or right side of media
• Link to media page can be displayed
• Has a side menu that can be used for selecting different albums

Something like this can probably be used to consolodate everything on the albums page into one tidy little viewer.   Still... I would rather see ajax enhancements and some consolodation of the albums/photos pages, and maybe just use lytebox as a popup slideshow.... then leave the fancy flash albums mods as a feeding frenzy for boonex employees.  I think being able to browse through albums on the view photo page and load comments and photos without refreshing the page would look very professional.... slopping in a flash viewer looks too much like an afterthought.

I just now got an answer from Victor saying that, after a hudge discussion, BoonEx decided to leave (I think that you have to read: to keep) CoolIris only which can be disabled...

Hi Houston :-)

I share your mind about CoolIris... I hate D7 Avatars too, but this kind of animated and speaking avatars could be OK for me :-))

I don't even know what this cool iris is, lol. I can't see it anywhere on the demo installed.

Cooliris is a flash based viewer for photo albums.  If enabled in your admin section, it will appear below the block of album icons.  I have noticed that it does not appear below your own albums IF you are logged in, but it will appear below other members albums block.

Cool Iris is rubbish i disabled it!

It seems like the people here are just to lazy to do anything properly!

I agree, Cooliris is about as cool as spit on a hot pancake griddle.

In fact, I still have not found a reasonable photo mod for Dolphin. They all suck. The best attempt so far has been the PhotoDeluxe by Ilbellodelweb but even that is sadly lacking in features and usability.

I think it was something they thought would be cool, but then they realized it wasn't, and now they don't want to talk about it.