What should replace Dynamic MoPics?

[michael_s]

Hi,

There have been hundreds of posts by people who cannot use DynamicMoPics for one reason or another. It has been the single largest headache for support here at OSCdox. I do not quite understand why, but it seems that this mod is not working with PHP 4.3.8 (at least on the 5 servers I have tested).

With that in mind, we are moving away from dynamic mo pics in favor of a system that is easier for a non-experienced end user. Please voice your opinion in this poll and thread.

I have included a list of the many image handlers out there, but I may have missed a few. Please vote for your choice, and if it is not on the list, feel free to add your opinion in a reply.

The image handler that gets the most votes will be in the v1.8 release. Democracy in action!

Here is a list of all the mods in the poll so you can read up and make an educated vote:

Ultra Pics
http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,1642/

More_Pics_6
http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,1611/

DynamicMo Pics (if you want to keep it in oscmax)
http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,1114/

3 Images
http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,1346

Additional Images Module
http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,1032

[Will]

dynamic mopics works for me! awesome and quick... I would personally vote for a bugfix for dynamic mopics that makes it work with PHP 4.3.8

[groggory]

if you end up ditching dynamic mopics in favor of say...ultrapics. Just make sure to leave it at least available for the rest of us who will want to upgrade to 1.8. But I agree with the person above me. Lets just bugfix mopics. I have more than 600 products and many have more than 7 extra images. I can't imagine having to manually configure them online.

[dreamscape]

I am the author of Dynamic MoPics and have asked a few times for someone getting errors on PHP 4.3.8 to give me some info on what is happening, as I cannot reproduce any errors on PHP 4.3.8. It works fine for me on this PHP version, and so I cannot fix something if I don't know and cannot see what is going wrong.

I still question if the latest version was installed or not - I dunno I have not looked - as some of the errors people seem to be getting I cannot reproduce in the current version (i.e, they've been fixed in an earlier or the current version)

[groggory]

I know for sure that they are happening on my server. If you'd like I'll set up a base MS2 MAX install for you and give you an FTP login to it to play around. Hopefully then you can see the problem. PM me if you're interested and I'll get back to you with a login.

[dreamscape]

Also, you definitely should not keep the "old" dynamic MoPics. It has some issues and concerns that I will be addressing in version 3.0, that I plan to release within the next week or two.

Improvements will include:
• CSS controlled layout of extra images
• Do not link to popup window if the big image does not exist
• Pop-up the window to the size of the larger image instead of popping up to 100x100 and resizing after the image loads (which is dumb)
• Added support for other image types/extensions (jpeg, tif, & tiff are the most requested extensions to be added)
• Turn image types options in checkboxes and have the module search for the next image of those types - what I mean is, you will be able to mix gif, jpg, bmp, etc types for the thumbs and large images and it will find them; whereas now all extra thumbs must be the same type and all large images must be the same type
• Attempt to make naming scheme more user definable - this is because some people do not understand the current naming scheme… fine, I'll let them define their own.

The only remaining semi-major problem I see is that some people are not aware that you must FTP up the product's images. This could be alleviated however with some type of file manager in the admin, perhaps on the product input pages, and perhaps re-written or geared towards being an "image manager". It could just basically be a glorified FTP GUI to upload your images. This would allow people who are more comfortable working in the admin the ability to upload all their images from their, be able to upload them in bulk or at any time for any product or any number of products provided they are named according to their custom scheme, and still allow those who prefer the method of a normal FTP client to keep doing that.

[michael_s]

I have removed dynamic mopics 2.2 from the osCMax codebase and installed version 3.0. It is a great improvement in ease of use and function. Thanks dreamscape!

It will be included in the next maintenance release of osCMax, and I will most likely just package up the changed files in an upgrade pack.