Quick Start Guide

Photo Album Pro is a highly customisable image slideshow plugin for web professionals. By using this stack, you can easily build a powerful image slideshow (without needing to touch any code)! Completed slideshows are simple for your website users to navigate on many different devices, and show your photographs at their full potential. Photo Album Pro is built on-top of the popular Monoslideshow plugin.

Photo Album ProPhoto Album Pro

Photo Album Pro is a sensible alternative to the free photo album page style that ships with RapidWeaver. It has many more customisable settings; plus the ability to place it in a webpage with other content and stack types, for a more ‘integrated’ appearance.

Key features

A few reasons why you should use the Photo Album Pro stack:

  • Pure CSS, HTML and Javascript. No antiquated Flash or SilverScript code is used. There are also no additional external Javascript frameworks (like jQuery) required. This means that Photo Album Pro works reliably across a broad range of web browsers and devices. No special web browser extensions or plugins are required to view the slideshow.
  • Up-to 25 images are supported in this stack; the safe limit for people accessing your website through a mobile device.
  • Strong emphasis on performance through use of efficient source code and subtle animation effects which don’t clobber web browser performance.
  • Search-engine optimised, through use of customisable image titles and ALT attributes.
  • Works in page content containers and ExtraContent regions in supported RapidWeaver themes. It can also be @imported into non-Stack pages using the PlusKit plugin (not included in the purchase).
  • On touch-based devices like iPhones, iPods, iPads, newer smart phones and Android tablets, finger-swiping the slideshow provides an alternative method of navigation.
  • A broad range of easy-to-use style and behavioural settings have been built into this stack; giving you greater freedom to customise the slideshow to your liking.
  • This slideshow stack supports use of image titles and captions, which are blocks of content floated over the slideshow images.
  • Stunning, video-quality animation effects, including Ken Burns zooming and panning.
  • Ability to navigate the slideshow using thumbnail images.

System requirements

This stack requires RapidWeaver 5.3 or later and Stacks 2.5 or later. It will not function correctly on older versions of Stacks or RapidWeaver. Photo Album Pro is compatible with most RapidWeaver themes, but we are unable to test nor guarantee compatibility with all themes. Some themes do things differently with content regions and images, which may (on occasions) result in breakage. An internet connection is not required to preview this stack, as it does not require the use of jQuery from Google’s CDN.

RapidWeaver is available to purchase and download from Realmac Software

The Stacks plugin is available to purchase and download from Yourhead Software

Installation

After the download has completed (of either the demo version or full version) double-click the .zip file to uncompress the stack (if your computer has not uncompressed the .zip file automatically). At this point you should see an icon in the form of a blue and yellow lego brick icon. Double-click this to install the stack. RapidWeaver will open (if it is not already open) and tell you that the stack has been installed.

The Photo Album Pro iconThe Photo Album Pro icon

If for whatever reason installation has failed, try downloading and installing the Stacks plugin again. This will confirm that you have the latest version of Stacks installed on your computer and attempt to force your computer into regaining association with the .stack file extension. Should installation problems persist, please contact YourHead software for further technical support.

Remember to restart RapidWeaver for the new stack to become available to you in the stack element library.

How to use Photo Album Pro

Step 1

Add a Stacks page to your RapidWeaver project, if you have not done so already. In RapidWeaver, click File > Add Page in the menu. Alternatively click onto the existing Stacks page you want to add a Photo Album Pro stack to, by clicking the page in the RapidWeaver Webpages list.

Step 2

While viewing your stacks page in RapidWeaver edit mode, click on the Elements Library button, in the dark grey toolbar at the top. This is indicated by a white 3D box icon. In the stacks element library, find the Photo Album Pro stack. Click on its icon shown and drag the Photo Album Pro stack into your main page area. At this point you will be presented with something that looks like the screenshot shown below.

This is what youll see the first time you add a Photo Album Pro stack to your pageThis is what you’ll see the first time you add a Photo Album Pro stack to your page

Each slide is represented by a light grey box, in the middle of the page. The placeholders for images and captions are shown. Stack settings are presented in collapsable groups, in the righthand side pane.

Step 3

Drag and drop images into the placeholders shown (indicated with a downward pointing arrow). For best results; we recommend images not exceeding 200kb in size and saved at 72 dpi. Images can be of any size you want and be in JPG, GIF or PNG file format.

Step 4

In stacks edit mode, double-click your images (or select the image and click on the blue Edit button in the Stacks toolbar). Give each image an ALT attribute. This ALT attribute is used as the image title, for each image. At the same time you should also make sure no constraints are applied to the image width or height. See the settings below in the screenshot.

Image settingsImage settings

If you look carefully at the above screenshot, you will see that both the File Name and ALT Tag settings were updated with the name of the image. In the group of Layout settings, the Max Width and Max Height options were disabled.

Click on the blue Done button in the Stacks toolbar, when you have finished making these edits to each image.

Step 5

Remaining in stacks edit mode, double-click the ‘Caption content for the image goes here’ box, and insert the caption content for each image. This is shown in conjunction with the image titles, and will be layered over your image. Captions can comprise of plain text or basic HTML markup.

Step 6

By default when you first add a Photo Album Pro stack to your webpage, a total of three slide placeholders will be presented to you. Photo Album Pro supports up to 35 slides (placeholders). To display more placeholders, change the Slides setting, shown in the Photo Album Pro Settings.

Step 7

Photo Album Pro has many customisable style and behavioural settings available. These can all be accessed in the stack settings. You may wish to customise some of these, to suit your project or personal preferences. Hovering your mouse cursor over each setting will display a small informational tooltip, about what each setting does.

Step 8

In the RapidWeaver toolbar, click on the Preview button. At this point, your page will be rendered in RapidWeaver preview mode, so you can see what you completed Photo Album Pro would look like in a web page. At this point you can either go-back and make more changes to your Photo Album Pro stack, or you can publish the website, so it’s available for anybody else to view online.

The finished stackThe finished stack

Important notes

  • All slide placeholders must have an image provided, otherwise the slideshow will not display.
  • Each image should ideally not exceed 200kb in size, ensuring that your page continues to load quickly. Images should be in web-safe JPG, PNG or GIF format, at 72 dpi.

Further help

For general questions about RapidWeaver like project setup, page settings and publishing contact Realmac Software or post your question to the RapidWeaver community forums.

Enquiries about the Stacks plugin (like installation problems and plugin updates) should be directed to Yourhead Software or the RapidWeaver community forums.

Questions specific to the Photo Album Pro stack can be submitted through the Chillidog Software website. We aim to answer all enquiries within a few days. Providing a link to your webpage with the Photo Album Pro stack on and detailed information will permit a faster response.

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