The imageloop team just released a new cool slideshow tool which can be very useful for every webmaster who wants to give additional value to his audience: the imageloop Partner Tool.

This tool enables webmasters to offer full slideshow capabilities on their websites, including:

• creation of slideshows (including photo upload)
• modification of slideshows
• edit the style (including color)
• edit the skin
• edit the effect (including color)
• edit the size
• edit the caption settings (including color)

The look and feel can be fully customized. This way all these imageloop slideshow functionalities can be made a fully integrated part of the existing websites. Thanks to the ‘Easy IFrame Integration’ approach the integration of the imageloop Partner tool into any existing website is just a matter of minutes.

Fully Customizable IFrame of the imageloop Partner Tool

By integrating the ‘imageloop Partner Tool’ webmasters can offer cool slideshow features without having to care about

• the programming of the user interface
• the programming and maintenance of the backend functionalities
• additional storage space requirements
• additional bandwidth requirements

Here are just a few examples of possible scenarios:

• (Social) Communities can enable their users to create profile slideshows which show up right beside the classic profile photos, giving users much more room for creative self-portrayal, e.g. in respect of transition effects, colors or even skins.
• Marketplaces can allow all sellers (or maybe only their premium sellers) to create slideshows presenting their offered products. Showing these slideshows on the product details pages could possibly prove to be a strong sales tool as an animated slideshow appeals much more to buyers than simple static photos.
• Online Gaming Communities can invite their users to create summary slideshows of all highlight scenes captured during a successful run.

In all cases the user will stay on webmaster’s homepage as the whole slideshow creation (or modification) process takes place within the IFrame.

As an advanced option it is also possible to create new slideshows from photos that are already existant on the webmaster’s homepage. An intelligent XML handover process - either initiated through a user’s click or through automation – provides this powerful option.

Another advanced option offers automatic slideshow updates via RSS feed on a regular basis. This feature can provide significant additional value e.g. for rating websites (Top 10 Slideshows), sports portals (Current Team Lineup Slideshows) or news portals (Top News Slideshows).

Last but not least here comes the best part of the ‘imageloop Partner Tool’: it is totally free of charge.

You can find detailed information and downloadable PHP and JSP packages here.

Just give it a try!

In case you need some assistance please do not hesitate to contact our support.

Ralf

Hi everybody,

imageloop.com just released version 3.1 of its imageloop PHP language support library for the imageloop API.

This new version reflects several improvements within the imageloop API.

You can download phpLib v3.1 here.

Ralf Z.

Tags: API, imageloop, developer, webmaster, php, library, new version, update

Today imageloop released the new version 2.1 of imageloop Slideshow Switcher.

This minor software update offers two interesting new features:

• ‘Popin’ mode & ‘Widget’ mode: Decide if the Slideshow Switcher acts like a popin (i.e. can be clicked away by the user) or like an embedded widget (i.e. is a fixed part of the html page).
   
• Popin can be made draggable – i.e. user can move the Slideshow Switcher with his/her mouse all around within the browser.

In total there are quite a lot of interesting combinations of Slideshow Switcher options available, for demo purposes you can find just a few here:

• Demo #01: Slideshow Switcher as popin with full overview page, ‘Open Random Slideshow’ option enabled
   
• Demo #02: Slideshow Switcher as popin without overview page, ‘Open Random Slideshow’ option enabled
   
• Demo #03: Slideshow Switcher as popin with partial (highlights) overview page, ‘Open Fixed Slideshow’ option enabled, i.e. it always opens with the ‘Flowers’ slideshow
   
• Demo #04: Slideshow Switcher as widget without overview page, ‘Open Random Slideshow’ option enabled
   

You can download imagelooop Slideshow Switcher v2.1 here.

You can preview the documentation here (this pdf is part of the download above).

Ralf Z.

Additional tags: slideshow, slideshows, webmaster, widget, gadget, switcher, gallery, photo gallery, imagelooop, imageloop

It is the perfect concept for webmasters who want to have a nice gallery of slideshows on their website, maybe even with a User Generated Content option: The Quick Gallery Concept.

Basis for this concept are the easy-to-takeaway imageloop permalinks and the imageloop Slideshow Switcher. If enabled users can contribute their slideshows to a Quick Gallery by simply submitting their slideshow permalinks.

The corresponding slideshows will appear immediately - or if required after approval - within the gallery.

We visualized this concept within a simple demo implementation which you can visit here (admin area here).

For small websites with low traffic and just a few slideshows this solution might be ok. In all other cases we strongly recommend to expand this sample implementation by connecting it to a (MySQL) database for storing these informations:

• all permalinks (approved and waiting for approval)
• all required slideshow attributes (e.g. number of photos within the slideshow, title, description, name of slideshow owner, slideshow creation date, public accessibility)

In this case you should also think about creating a cron job for updating these slideshow attributes on a regular basis and a cleaning algorithm for slideshows that have been deleted or set to private.

You can download the php source code of the Quick Gallery Sample Implementation here.

Ralf Z.

Upon several requests of our partners here is a short overview of the different options of integrating imageloop slideshows and imageloop functionality into partner websites.

Option #01 - Slideshow Switcher (PopIn or Gallery Widget)

In case you want to create a photo gallery on your website based on slideshows you can use our Slideshow Switcher which offers fully gallery functionality within a minimum of space (e.g. 500×400 pixel). It can be configured to act like a PopIn or like a Gallery Widget.

You can see a live example of Slideshow Switcher in Widget Mode here.

You can find additional information for Slideshow Switcher here.

The following options #02 to #04 focus on Web 2.0 websites where users can create and modify own content - e.g. a profile page, a small website or maybe some pages for presenting their products or item(s) (e.g. a platform where users can offer their car for sale).

Basically these three options differ within the depth of integration. The deeper the integration the more options for slideshow creation and modification can be offered on the partner website. This enables the user to perform all these slideshow activities without leaving the partner website.

Option #02 - Easy Permalink Integration

User registration and slideshow creation (including photo upload) take place at the imageloop website. User picks up the resulting slideshow permalink and enters this permalink into an according input field at the partner website.

Once this permalink information is availabe the according slideshow appears automatically at a defined place (and with defined height and width if required) on the partner website. Additional optional full control over colors, effects, styles and more will be available shortly, ensuring perfect visual integration of the slideshow into the look & feel of the web page.

Easy Permalink Integration only requires one additional input field and the according database column at the partner website. Thus the effort to implement this option should be not more than just a few hours.

That’s why we recommend this option for a quick start and/or a short test of user acceptance.

You can find additional information for Easy Permalink Integration here.

Option #03 - Upload Integration

The one time user registration takes place at the imageloop website. All subsequent activities concerning slideshow creation and possibly slideshow modification take place at the partner website. Thus the user stays on the partner website when performing these tasks.

We recommend this option in cases where the average user creates or modifies slideshows on a regular basis, e.g. merchants who want to present their new products intelligently within a cool slideshow.

Option #04 - Full Integration

This option enables the user to perform all slideshow related activities at the partner website, even the one time registration process. Only for reading the imageloop terms and conditions the user might have to visit the imageloop website.

Please have a deep look at the autoregistration sample that you can find within the phpLib v3.0 for a better understanding of this concept, even if you use some other programming language.

Hope this little overview can serve as a little guideline for your imageloop integration efforts.

Ralf Z.

After posting our ‘Easy Permalink Integration’ concept we’ve got very positive feedback from many webmasters for this quickstart solution.

Nevertheless some webmasters (especially those of larger websites) asked us for possibilities of deeper or even full integration of imagelooop functionality into their websites.

They emphasize on maximum ease of use for their users, taking into account some development efforts on their part.

They want to offer their users the following features on their own website rather than on the imagelooop website:

• Creation of an imagelooop account (which is of course free of charge),
• Creation of new imagelooop slideshows,
• Uploading of photos into imagelooop slideshows,
• And some more…

As we listen carefully to our users we decided to extend our imagelooop API. It now offers the functionality of ‘autoregistration’, i.e. the creation of a new imagelooop account via API and joining it (i.e. connecting it) with the existing user account at webmaster’s site.

In order to make this extended API as easy to use as possible we hereby release version 3.0 of our imagelooop PHP language support library for the imagelooop API which now supports the ‘autoregistration’ feature.

phpLib3.0 comes with a complete sample project demonstrating the full integration of imagelooop autoregistration functionality into any website.

Download phpLib v3.0 here.

For your convenience here are the links to the new API functions involved:

• imagelooop.joinUser
• imagelooop.registerUser
• imagelooop.canRegisterUsers
• imagelooop.impersonateAsUser

For security reasons the autoregistration feature is locked by default. For unlocking please contact the imagelooop support team via www.imagelooop.co.uk/support.htm. Send your contact information, the URL of your website and the API key that you want to be unlocked.

Ralf Z.

Additional tags: slideshow, slideshows, webmaster, registration, auto-registration, signup, api, api-key, imagelooop, imageloop

About 24 hours ago we submitted version 1.0 of our brand-new ‘imagelooop Vista Sidebar Slideshow’ to the Microsoft Live Gadget Directory.

When we returned there just a few minutes ago we found a nice surprise: more than 900 downloads of our new gadget. What a kick-start!

The imagelooop Vista Slideshow brings our slideshows directly onto users’ desktops, either docked to the Microsoft sidebar or undocked anywhere on the desktop.

Here is how it looks like:

Docked to the Sidebar	Undocked from the Sidebar

Go and get ‘imagelooop Vista Sidebar Slideshow’ now by clicking here.

Hope you’ll like it.

Thanks for your rating

Ralf Z.

Tags: Microsoft, Vista, Sidebar, Slideshow, Gadget, Widget, imagelooop, imageloop

imagelooop just published a tiny but very useful gadget for all users of Microsoft Vista. Finding cool photos has never been easier - just enter a search term or tag, and after hiting ‘Enter’ a browser window with wonderful photos and slideshows tagged this way will immediately appear on your screen.

You can download and install ‘imagelooop Quick Photo Search’ either way:

• Here at live.com , or
• within Microsoft Vista by right-clicking the sidebar, selecting ‘add gadget’ and searching for ‘imagelooop’.

Not only is this a very useful gadget, but also a nice blueprint for developers on how to create Vista gadgets. It’s really easy, basically all you need is some html and JavaScript knowledge. In order to use our gadget as blueprint, just rename it from ‘imagelooopquicksearch_uk.gadget‘ to ‘imagelooopquicksearch_uk.zip‘. Now you can unzip it and have a look at the very few files it consists of.

Another good starting point if you want to create your first Microsoft Vista Sidebar Gadget is this ‘Gadget Development Overview’ at MSN and this downloadable ‘Sidebar Gadget Tutorial’.

Ok developers, hopefully you now feel inspired to create some great gadgets or widgets, for any of the available gadget/widgets plattforms (e.g. Vista Gadgets, Yahoo! Widgets, or Google Widgets )

Advanced developers can even develop such widgets/gadgets interacting with the imagelooop API, e.g. via the Ready-to-Go imagelooop API JavaScriptLib.

Have a nice and sunny weekend - and some creative ideas for some cool widgets

Ralf Z.

Hi everybody,

due to slight changes within our session handling recently some uploading problems (error 3004) have occured when uploading photos via imagelooop API using phpLib2.0.

Here is a small patch for phpLib2.0 which fixes this problem.

Happy Easter to all of you!

Ralf Z.

The imagelooop team is proud to announce the release of version 2.0 of imagelooop slideshow switcher (formerly known as ‘looop switcher’).

The purpose of this tool is to make navigation between different slideshows as easy as never before. Your website visitors only need to activate the slideshow switcher navigation selectbox, and from there on they can easily switch between the available slideshows by using the mouse wheel or the arrow keys of their keyboard (plus the ‘Enter’ key in Firefox).

That’s almost like watching TV and zapping around with the remote control

Here is a list of all available features of this tool:

• Random option
• Additional (optional) selectbox navigation
• Configurable jump steps
• Support of all currently available slideshow effects and styles
• Full-fledged 17-page documentation

Slideshow switcher offers three different modes:

• Mode #01: slideshow switcher with full overview page, ‘Open Random Slideshow’ option enabled
• Mode #02: slideshow switcher without overview page, ‘Open Random Slideshow’ option enabled
• Mode #03: slideshow switcher with partial (highlights) overview page, ‘Open Fixed Slideshow’ option enabled, i.e. it always opens with the ‘Flowers’ slideshow

You can download imagelooop slideshow switcher v2.0 here.

Tip: Think about using slideshow switcher for a cool random popin on your homepage. Just configure it this way:

• Mode #02
• ‘Open Random Slideshow’ option enabled
• this.showNavButtons = false; (see page 13 of pdf doc)
• this.showSelectBox = false; (see page 13 of pdf doc)

This config makes the navigation elements underneath the slideshow disappear, thus it looks like a simple popin which contains an exciting slideshow.

We hope that you like this new version of slideshow switcher. Have fun with it!

Ralf Z.