I've done a few projects now where the client wanted a video gallery and wasn't happy with the video support built into CS. I have to admit that adding videos in CS is cumbersome, and if you want to make a specific gallery you have to commit a forum to it, create a custom aggregate page, and just kind of fake the whole thing out.
One of the solutions that I came up with was customizing the file gallery to work as a video gallery. It works great, you get all the benefits of the fine grained permissions of the file gallery, the multiple nested folders. Videos can be uploaded directly through the browser window, instead of or in addition to FTP. I've even added support for automatic thumbnail generation of formats that are supported by windows explorer thumbnails.
The downside is that it's a lot of code change, the source of which is not available to the general public and you are bound by the limitation of your CS license within the File Gallery.
My thought was that the File Gallery could be made to be so much more. Why limit it to just downloadable files? We could even do away with the photo gallery and just move the functionality into the File Gallery. Make it an all encompassing Media Gallery.
You could setup a folder, specify what file types are allowed, be they videos, photos, or documents or zip files. The Entry Viewer would handle the display appropriately.
Those root "group" folders that don't really make a whole lot of sense as they are used now, could be used instead to break these galleries out to personal galleries, and behave much like the Photo gallery does today. They could be used to break the galleries up into multiple tabs, so you could have a photo gallery tab, a video gallery tab, an audio gallery tab, however you want to configure it.
One of the things I'm working on now is a Media Player that will handle whatever type of file you throw at it and render an appropriate display. If it doesn't understand they file type (which are configurable) it defaults to just rendering a download link.
In my opinion, something like this could make CS more flexible and agile to the needs of it's customers.
Just a thought.
Posted
Jul 13 2006, 04:17 AM
by
michael