Ok, so we’re allowed to have one (1) size option for thumbnails in all galleries, and they can be either cropped square, or not. This is my only option?
But what if I want to have a gallery page of all of the lovely staff for my clients website, and their photos have been sensibly taken in portrait format, I do NOT want the thumbnails for this gallery to be cropped, that would be just wrong. And then there is to be a page with a photo gallery of the staff picnic where people have enjoyed taking happy snaps in both landscape AND portrait formats because that is what suits, so I need these thumbnails cropped.
On further very tentative investigation, with some very unintuitive Graphic User Interface (GUI) I am finding to be very confronting, I discover that the one thumbnail size fits all option ISN’T my only option, but merely a default option. So how do I use my default option wisely?
- There may be gallery pages for general information like the afore mentioned staff photos, and outings happy snaps.
- There are the rotating banner images with a banner gallery per page or section.
- Then there are the product images galleries.
Ok, so the client is most likely to be updating the products pages and/or the trade and media pages more often and more ongoing than the other galleries so if they get stuck or confused with the unfriendly GUI (who wouldn’t?), so I choose to set the default thumbnail size and cropping to suit the products, for example:
Gallery > Options > Thumbnails
Thumbnail settings:
Width x height (in pixel) x These values are maximum values
Set fix dimension Ignore the aspect ratio, no portrait thumbnails
(this option being ticked will make your images cropped square, thus tidying things up in the case of a gallery with both portrait and landscape images),
Now, for the staff portraits I will have to generate different, more appropriate thumbnails:
Gallery > Manage Gallery
Gallery : Our Staff
*** Click the checkbox here:
| ID | Thumbnail | Filename | Alt & Title Text / Description | Tags (comma separated list) | exclude |
|---|
This will select all of the images on the current page in the current gallery, if there are more than one page you will have to *** repeat the full process per page ***.
From the [Bulk actions v] drop down list choose the option “Create new thumbnails” and then click the (apply) button without any fear of bad repercussions what-so-ever (I still can’t). We now have a dialogue window, PHEW!
| Width x height (in pixel) | x These values are maximum values |
|---|---|
| Set fix dimension | Ignore the aspect ratio, no portrait thumbnails |
I’ll make the thumbnails bigger to show off their friendly faces [200] x [200] and untick the “set fix dimension” checkbox so as to show the portraiture instead of having the photos clipped into a square. ***
You get the picture, (^o^) (^/^) pardon the pun.
Carol is the CSS guru here at WebAware, and will occasionally be writing guest posts — like when I ask her to document how she manages to convince a plugin to jump through some hoops! — Ross