How to create a Spry Gallery

Question

Sorry for the rudimentary question, but I want to actually create a spry gallery like the one in the demos, but I am lost as to where to start (using Dreamweaver).
Thanks, Don

Answer 1

Hi,
The basis of the photo gallery is a spry master region and a detailregion.
Let's say your spry dataset is called photos.
The thumbnails within the master region are just like something below
<div spry:region="photos">
<div spry:repeat="photos">
<img src="{thumbURL}" spry:setrow="photos"/>
</div>
</div>
and the current image being displayed sits within this markup.
<div spry:detailregion="photos">
<img src="{imageURL}"/>
</div>
When you click on the thumbail it sets the current row of the photos dataset to that of the thumbnail.  The detailregion automatically listens for this changes to updates it markup to show the matching full size photo for that row.
You then add some classes or div ids and css to style your photos and you have your basic photo gallery.
If you want to be able to select different galleries then you have different XML datasets for each gallery and on clicking the appropriate link or select item you run code like below
photos.setURL("gallery1.xml");
photos.loadData();
photos.setURL("gallery2.xml");
photos.loadData();
photos.setURL("gallery3.xml");
photos.loadData();
This will reload both the master region (thumbnails) and the detailregion (currently selectedphoto).
For the slideshow effects you just use Spry effects and the setrow functionality triggered via a timer (setInterval) i.e. here's some sample code from one of my pages
function pauseShow()
clearInterval(StartSlideTimer);
Spry.$$("#slideshowPlaying")[0].innerHTML = "";
function startShow()
clearInterval(StartSlideTimer);
StartSlideTimer = setInterval("fadeOutContentThenSetRow()", 6000);
if (shuffle)
Spry.$$("#slideshowPlaying")[0].innerHTML = "<p>You are playing the slideshow in shuffle mode</p>";
You can see the working page here www.thehmc.co.uk/photo.html
Our club pages works with our photos and albums on our Picasa account because that way you don't need to produce the xml, Picasa does that via it's rss feeds.
Feel free to use any of the code I've written in your pages or start with a basic version as I've outlined at the top - that's how the above page started out then I styled it with css and added the fancier stuff once the basics were working.
Regards
Phil