Fresh Shashin Support Thread

Update: I’ve written a new Shashin post, so this thread is now closed.

My last Shashin post has about 60 comments, so it’s time for a fresh thread.

I’m back to work on the new version. It’ll include Flickr and Twitpic support, and a WYSIWYG interface for adding photos to posts. I only have at most a few hours a week to work on it though, so look for it around late January.

39 Comments

  1. Tobi November 24, 2009

    Hi and great Plugin!
    Thanks for your Work but i have a Problem.
    The Design looks like bad but I could not find the error?
    http://www.generation-hunfeld.de/?p=33&shashin_album_key=5
    the right Side isnt white

    Thanks fpr your help
    Tobi

    PS: Sorry for my bad English

  2. Mike November 25, 2009

    Hi Tobi – your page looked good to me, using Firefox 3.5. All the borders and spacing looked symmetrical. What web browser are you using? Let me know and I’ll try looking at it in the same browser to see if there’s a problem.

  3. DuckPuppy November 25, 2009

    Continuing the discussion from the previous thread…

    Yes, I’m using Chrome… good to know it’s a known problem and a fix is on the list. I can be patient. 🙂

    http://www.duckpuppy.com/picasa is the URL where Shashin is being used right now as a test.

    This is in regard to the problem of somehow getting into a state where the link to return to the album list stops working. Given the bug in webkit affecting the next link, I wonder if it’s not related to that somehow. They’re not the same (one is unclickable, the other is clickable but just redisplays the current page), but maybe related.

  4. Aaron November 25, 2009

    Hi, I love Shashin, and when album pagination comes to fruition, I can completely move away from kpicasa albums. I noticed today when I was testing in IE 8 that there is an error reported in the webpage:

    ————————————

    Webpage error details

    User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; Trident/4.0; Comcast Install 1.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0)
    Timestamp: Wed, 25 Nov 2009 20:48:37 UTC

    Message: Object doesn’t support this property or method
    Line: 22
    Char: 5
    Code: 0
    URI: http://www.rockpatch.net/wp-content/plugins/shashin/display/highslide_settings.js?ver=2.4.2

    ————————————

    Does this mean anything to you? Do I have something misconfigured?
    Thanks,
    Aaron

  5. Mike November 25, 2009

    Hi DuckPuppy – thanks for the additional info. In the next version, when you click an album cover to view the album thumbnails, I’m planning to load them via AJAX, so this part of Shashin is going to change. Thanks for your patience.

  6. Mike November 25, 2009

    Hi Aaron – The line of code that’s listed in your error message is a fundamental part of using Highslide (the photo viewer included with Shashin) – I’m surprised you’re getting an error there.

    Let me know what you clicked that triggered the error, and I’ll see if I can reproduce it.

  7. Aaron November 25, 2009

    I don’t have to click anything. Just visit my site (www.rockpatch.net) with IE 8, and you will get the little error icon at the bottom left of the window. Click it and you will see the error. I only use the random image part of Sashin at the moment.
    I think it is related to my kpicasa albums plugin, which is also using sashin’s highslide functionality, since http://www.rockpatch.net/media/test-album-map/ seems to be fine.

  8. ptuna November 25, 2009

    Hi, I think your Shashin plugin is the best Picasaweb plugin around and thank you for your great work. I’ve been wondering if there was a way to add a link to download the hi-res version of an image (larger than the 800px max). That way, if say my parents wanted a print quality image of my kids, they can download the hi-res version (800px is not print quality). I believe there’s a Picasaweb url parameter imgmax=d which serves the full hi-res image for download, but not web display.

  9. Courtney November 29, 2009

    HELP! My Shashin has suddenly stopped working! Very dependent on Shashin as my photo gallery/slideshow on the site and all the sudden it is not working. I have tried re-setting the settings and nothing happens. I have 59 albums so afraid to uninstall and re-install as I might lose those. HELP MIKE what to do???

  10. Mike November 29, 2009

    Hi Courtney – it looks like you’re using a link tracker plugin that is interfering with Shashin – please see here for details:

    http://www.toppa.com/shashin-wordpress-plugin/#shashin13

  11. Mike November 30, 2009

    Hi Aaron – sorry for the delay – I finally got a look at your site in IE 8. Yes, it is related to the kpicasa plugin. The Highslide javascript fortunately is not being included twice, which is good, but it’s css for highslide is included along with Shashin, and both are also setting javascript variables. The short answer is to not use both plugins. If you really need to use both, let me know – I can advise on how to suppress the Shashin javascript variables and css (although that may end up creating other problems…)

  12. Mike November 30, 2009

    Hi ptuna – thanks for the suggestion. I’ll see if that’s possible and if so, I’ll put it on the to do list for a future version.

  13. COD December 1, 2009

    I’ve been using Shashin for a couple of years to display random photos at http://darkhorsefencing.com

    It’s throwing a “Shashin Error: unable to retrieve random photos.” error and I don’t know why. Nothing has changed on the site recently, other than WordPress 2.8.6, and it was working fine immediately after the upgrade.

  14. Marek Blazek December 1, 2009

    Hello Mike,

    can you or someone else put here easy howto integrate shashin with fancybox? Its look like, that it is not only plug&play plugins combination.

  15. Aaron December 1, 2009

    Mike, I only need to use the kpicasa plugin for the album pagination… I would be more than happy to go completely Shashin when that feature is added. 🙂
    Aaron

  16. Mike December 2, 2009

    Hi COD – a few questions for you:

    * Are you using Shashin anywhere else on your site, and if so, is it still working?

    * Are you using the random photos widget or are you calling the random photos function directly?

    * If you go to the Shashin admin page and click on an album, do you see thumbnails of the album’s photos?

    Mike T

  17. Mike December 2, 2009

    Hi Marek – I have not used fancybox myself. If you review the Fancybox documentation, and then go to the Shashin Settings page and scroll to the “Other Viewer Settings” section, you should be able to set it up.

  18. COD December 2, 2009

    Hi Mike,

    I tried deactivating and reactivating the extension earlier without results. After reading your answer above I pulled the widget out of the sidebar, then put it back in and changed the thumbnail size just for the heck of it, and it started working again.

    Thanks.

  19. miguel December 10, 2009

    Dear Mike:
    Thank you for such a useful and configurable image gallery plugin and, especially, for the extremely detailed, well-written and clear documentation, an element much too often amiss among plugin developers.

    I am integrating a WP page for the pre-school my son attends in which there is need to have both one picture gallery and one video gallery. I have thoroughly researched the plugin options available with the criterion of ease of management -since the school teachers will be updating the page and its galleries- and, by far, Shashin is the best solution.

    And I have attempted to integrate Shashin but am stuck and am not sure what it is I am not doing correctly to display the albums.

    Could you send me in the right direction?

    many thanks,

    miguel

  20. Mike December 11, 2009

    Hi Miguel – I tried your URL, but got an “internal server error” message. Let me know the syntax you used for the Shashin tag (or which widget you used) and let me know when your server is back up, and I’ll take a look.

  21. miguel December 11, 2009

    My apoologies for the server being out; looks like a .htaccess parameter was blocking it.

    It’s up now, though.

    I am using this HTML syntax:

    [salbumthumbs=2,1,n,n,center]

    [salbumthumbs=1,1,n,n,center]

    The ‘video’ and ‘pix’ divs are floated. But you can see the whole HTML in View Source. Below is the CSS:
    /* video & picture galleries*/
    #media {
    /*overflow:hidden; */
    width:100%;
    height:370px;
    padding-top:30px;
    }
    #pix {
    width:360px;
    height:360px;
    background:#CCC;
    float:left;
    }
    #video {
    width:360px;
    height:360px;
    background:#CCC;
    float:right;
    }
    .clear-block:after {
    content: “.”;
    display: block;
    height: 0;
    clear: both;
    visibility: hidden;
    }

    .clear-block {
    display: inline-block;
    }

    /* Hides from IE-mac */
    * html .clear-block {
    height: 1%;
    }
    .clear-block {
    display: block;
    }
    /* End hide from IE-mac */

  22. miguel December 11, 2009

    Sorry, the correct HTML syntax is:

    [salbumthumbs=2,1,n,n,center]

    [salbumthumbs=1,1,n,n,center]

    thank you!

    m

  23. Mike December 11, 2009

    Hi Miguel – the syntax you have for salbumthumbs looks fine to me. So the first thing to check is whether the albums were added to Shashin successfully: please go to your Shashin “Tools” management page, and click on the title of one of the albums you added. Does it show you the thumbnails for the photos in the album?

    If the photos are there, then try using a different tag, and try using a Shashin widget, just to see if they work. That’ll help me ascertain whether you’re having a problem with just this tag or a more general problem.

  24. brad December 11, 2009

    Hi, I’m not getting past adding albums. I FTP’ed it over and activated it, but when I go into settings to configure my picassa albums I get redirected to the wp-admin login screen. It won’t take my password and I’m stuck there.. odd.

    I have php version PHP Version 5.2.11, and mySQL version 5.0.77.

    Any idea why? I have one existing widget that uses picasa too.

    Thanks,
    Brad

  25. Mike December 12, 2009

    Hi Brad – I’ve never heard a big report like this one before. The only thing I can think of is that the account you’re using doesn’t have sufficient access rights. I’d have to double-check the code to make sure, but I think Shashin requires you to have at least rights to edit posts.

  26. miguel December 12, 2009

    Hello, Mike:
    Both albums display thumbnails when clicked on the album title, in Tools >Shashin.

    I tried the following tags anew:
    video: [simage=32,200,n,center,none,12]
    picture: [salbumlist=1,n]
    without success.

    I then activated the widgets:
    Shashin Single Image
    Shashin Random Images
    but nothing appears on the sidebar.

    BTW, I have the following activated plugins:
    Akismet
    File Uploader
    WP Database backup
    WP Password

    Let me know what additional information I can provide you to figure this out.
    And, so very many thanks for your help.

    Miguel

  27. Mike December 14, 2009

    Hi Miguel – I’m sorry to say I don’t know what’s causing this. I’ve never seen this problem before. The shortcodes are not being parsed for you, and it sounds like the widgets are being ignored, but the Tools and Options pages are working. That’s very strange.

    The only thing I can suggest is to try temporarily switching themes to the default WordPress theme, and temporarily deactivating your other plugins. Let me know if that makes any difference.

  28. Janne December 15, 2009

    Hi,

    and thanks for a wonderful plugin! I love it and it seems my site is becoming too dependent on it. 🙂

    I’m currently having issues with videos in Picasa. I’m able to bring them to a post and play them just fine. But after maybe five hours from adding the video, it stops showing and displays the note This video is currently not available. Please try again later. and it never recovers (well, not in a few days at least). All this time the video displays fine in Picasa Web Albums. The strange thing is, that this currently happens only with my latest album of eight videos. The older albums work ok.

    I CAN make the video work by deleting the imported album and re-importing it. However, this again only works for a few hours or so. It is also inconvenient, as the video ids change and I need to change them in the posts.

    I change the album to public, when importing the albums and then change it back to unlisted. It doesn’t make a difference if I let it stay public. Older videos also work as unlisted. I don’t know the authentication mechanism, but to me it sounds like there’s an expiring authentication or something similar.

    Comparing the older video links to the newer, expiring ones, there seems to be a difference, but it’s hard for me to tell what the actual problem is.

    The expiring one:
    http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?videoUrl=http://v12.nonxt4.googlevideo.com/videoplayback?id=1c7dd******1c68e&itag=18&begin=0&len=2147483647&app=picasa&et=INVALID&el=INVALID&ip=0.0.0.0&ipbits=0&expire=1260877639&sparams=id%2Citag%2Cip%2Cipbits%2Cexpire&signature=65254F8E1B6C8916******CBF88B48DB1A57A1F4.72AFDF833CEDD6818FD0EC3B7BA4D20111BCACE6&key=ck1&autoPlay=true

    is notably different from a working video link. (I replaced some numbers with *s there. I can send you the actual link privately, but I guess you see the difference from this.)

    Has Picasa’s importing mechanism changed somehow or would you know what else might be wrong? I can provide you with additional details and help you investigate the issue, if you want.

  29. Mike December 15, 2009

    Hi Janne- I sent you a reply by email. I’ll post the resolution here in case any one is experiencing this.

  30. Ernest December 15, 2009

    Hi,
    thanks for the great plugin! I’m having some trouble getting the widgets/sidebar to work. when i try i get the “unable to retrieve photos error”. It seems to work okay when i just input in post/page.(see site pls)
    all albums show up (with pics) in the admin page, and i believe i am using all updated software
    thanks!

  31. Mike December 20, 2009

    Hi,great pluggin!

    I am having a similar problem as Janne, with videos only playing for a couple of hours after adding them. I am also having a problem with highslide and videos – they will only play in highslide if I am logged in. Photos work fine, logged in or out.

    Many thanks,

    Mike

  32. MikeR December 21, 2009

    Mike,
    I’m using two “Album Thumbnails” and “Random Images” widgets. The “Random Images” widget is behaving as I want using HIGHSLIDE. However the “Album Thumbnails” is not firing HIGHSLIDE. I looked into the code and see that _getDivMarkup does not have the javascript code in it in ShashinAlbum.php. Is that by design?

    As a consequence of the javascript not taking over the click event, I also see that the title link points to my last post, not to picasaweb.google.com as the link on the picture does. I don’t believe that is by design.

    regards,
    MikeR

  33. Mike December 21, 2009

    Hi Ernest – sorry for the delay getting back to you. I can’t tell much from the error message on your site. Just to make sure, did you configure the widget in your WP admin? (the “widgets” link under the “Appearance” tab). If that part is ok, try using a widget other than a Shashin widget (if you haven’t already) just to make sure you’re not having a general problem with widgets.

  34. Mike December 21, 2009

    Mike and Janne and anyone else having trouble with Picasa videos:

    Picasa has changed the URLs for its videos. This change happened sometime in the past month. The video URLs now expire – it appears they are good for 10 hours. I did a Google search and couldn’t find any documentation of this change. Unfortunately I don’t see a way to “translate” the new URLs so they’ll look exactly like the old URLs (they each have different encrypted keys), but I’m going to experiment with altering them in other ways to see if I can get them to work indefinitely.

    The reason old videos are still ok is because Shashin doesn’t check for a change in URL when syncing. For the sake of syncing quickly, it only checks for changes in certain fields. If you do something like change a caption on an old video, then it will update the URL and all the other data.

  35. Mike December 21, 2009

    Hi MikeR – yes, it’s intentional that the album thumbnails widget links directly to Picasa rather than using Highslide. This is because Highslide requires thumbnails of photos to be on the page so it can expand them, and this isn’t practical to do with all of an album’s photos in the sidebar. But in the next version of Shashin, I’ll add support for Highslide’s new thumbstrips, which will make this possible. You can see an example here: http://www.highslide.com/examples/gallery-thumbstrip-above.html

    I’m not sure what you mean by the title link pointing to your last post. Can you give me a link so I can see?

  36. MikeR December 21, 2009

    Mike,
    Yes, the example you provided is what I am looking for. I can Beta for you if you like.

    My site is http://www.newmarketstingrays.org. On the right you can see the two plugins. Hover over the picture, then hover over the title link of the picture. You will see the different links.

  37. Ernest December 21, 2009

    Hi Mike,
    yeah, i have tried other widgets in the sidebar and they work fine. I also had a diff picasa plugin that used widgets and it also worked, so i dont think i have a general problem with widgets.
    Im not sure what u mean by “configuring” the widgets, but I did go through appearance-widgets and drag the shashin widget to the sidebar, selected the album, left the default values. is there anything else i need to do? is there any other way to get a slideshow into the sidebar, besides the “automated” way in the admin/widget section?
    thanks. hope ur boys are doing better!
    Ernest

  38. Mike December 22, 2009

    Hi MikeR – you found a bug! I’ll fix it in the next Shashin update.

  39. Mike December 22, 2009

    Hi Ernest – you’re getting an error message from Shashin in your sidebar, so the widget is being called, but something is making it unhappy. Try using this php code in your sidebar instead of the widget:

    <?php echo Shashin::getRandom('any',160,1,1,'n','center'); ?>

    This will give you one random image at 160×160, chosen from any of your albums. This is the function the widget is calling in the background, so lets see if this works.

    Note your theme should have a statement like this in its sidebar:

    <?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar() ) : ?>

    The code I gave you needs to go after this opening “if” statement, and before the closing “endif;”

Comments are Disabled