January 16, 2006
replacing iWeb's default slideshow
I played with iWeb the other day. A pretty cool application. I didn't like the cheesy slideshow though that it generates for non .mac publishing so I set about to replace that. I figured out a way and posted the solution on the iWeb discussion list. I got pretty good feedback so I'm sharing my 2 seconds of mac community fame here.
Basically iWeb dumps a folder called "SlideShow_assets" into your published folder. You can replace that with whatever favorite javascript or flash slideshow package you want, it just needs to get the image urls info and current slide index from the opening photo page.
I kinda like the Couloir slideshow which is open source under the Creative Commons 'Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0' License. I adapted it to work with iWeb. Here's an example.
You can use the same modifications if you like, download from here.
Whenever you publish with iWeb, replace the SlideShow_assets folder provided by iWeb with this one.
iWeb has a very appealing approach to web content creation. I like using templates that are done by artists and look good but that are not straightjackets like Sandvox and others have.
So will I use iWeb to replace the current codemanic.com content ? Not yet, not completely, maybe in bits and pieces. I'm working on a python publishing script that will push only differences and do other magic and once I have that I might start using iWeb more for codemanic content. Haven't figured out yet how to convince it to allow flash content and there are other restrictions that bug me. We'll see how it evolves. There is hope seeing how iPhoto evolved from almost unusable and slow to an elegant and snappy application.
