Table of Contents

1. Preface
1. Description
2. Copyright
3. Exposé features
4. System requirements
5. Disclaimer
6. Acknowledgements
   
   
2. Installation and Customization
1. Downloading Exposé
2. Installing and Upgrading Exposé
3. Displaying Exposé in Joomla!
4. Customizing the Layout
5. Linking directly to collections and albums
   
   
3. Managing Your Media Collection
1. Anatomy of the Album Manager
2. Photo and Video Settings
3. Creating Collections and Albums
4. Uploading Media
5. Editing Filenames, Dates, Locations & Descriptions
6. Creating Thumbnails
7. Moving Collections, Albums and Media
8. Album Manager for Windows and Mac OS X

Contents

1. Preface
   
   
1. Description – Exposé is a Flash-based component for Joomla! 1.0.x which allows you to create eye-catching slide shows of your pictures and videos on the web. It is based on the stand-alone gallery software Exposé by Ivan Dramaliev which is available at http://www.slooz.com. The small footprint of the Flash clips and an intelligent loading of resources allow even dialup users to have a seamless experience viewing your photos.
   
   
2. Copyright - Exposé is free for personal use ONLY. Neither the original version nor any modified version may be distributed.
   
   You can purchase a one-site license for $50 USD if you'd like to use it in a commercial setting, such as selling or advertising goods and services. This commercial license also allows includes a license for Album Manager for Windows and for Mac OS X (see below). To register expose, click the PayPal link found at the following url:
   
   

http://www.slooz.com/trinkets.php?proj=expose

3. Exposé features

· Standard installation via the Joomla! component installer

· Nesting of albums, and assigning thumbnails to albums and album collections

· Picture upload and resize

· Flash video (.FLV files) upload

· Copyright and watermark addition during resize

· Assigning a description to each collection, album & image

· Image strip view for previewing images

· Customization of the interface layout, sizes and the button icons

· Playing slide shows

· Image pre-loading

· Multiple streams per video

· SpeedSense mechanism for automatic stream assignment based on the user's bandwidth

4. System requirements – Exposé consists of a front-end application to display your photos and a back-end ap lication to upload and manage your photos.
   
   The front-end application simply requires the Joomla! content management system (version 1.0.x). End users (i.e. your site visitors) will need to install the Flash Player 7 for their particular browser.
   
   The back-end album manager, in contrast, has strict system requirements which allow the administrator(s) to upload and resize your images and upload your flash videos. Ensure that PHP version 4 or higher, the GD library, DOMXML library and the iconv library extensions are installed on your web server. Of particular note is the DOMXML library; if this is not installed, the back-end login will not be successful and will ‘hang’ during authentication).
   
   If your host does not support these requirements, you may still use the Exposé to display your photos/flash movies in Jooma!. However, you will have to use the Album Manager desktop application to upload and manage your collections/albums/files. See section 3(h) below for more details.
   
   To see if your server has the required extensions, please create a file named phpinfo.php on your server and paste the following into it:

<? Phpinfo(); ?>

Once you have created the file, run it in a web browser and make sure in the output that you have the required extensions.

You also need to configure php.ini. PHP settings can be changed in php.ini, as described in the PHP documentation.

· safe_mode: safe_mode must be disabled in order for Exposè to work correctly

· disable_functions: The disable_functions directive must not include the functions exec and set_time_limit

· file_uploads: file_uploads must be set to On if Exposè is to be able to upload files from your computer

· upload_max_filesize and post_max_size: These configuration parameters control the maximum file size that can be uploaded. Adjust these from the default 2M setting to something larger if you have problems uploading pictures from higher resolution cameras.

5. Disclaimer – This software is provided ‘as-is’ and no warranty is offered or implied. Your use of Exposé signifies that you will hold harmless and protect any and all contributors to this project if harm in any shape or form results from that use.
   
   
6. Acknowledgements – Exposé for Joomla! (com_expose) was born from the popular gallery software Exposé by Ivan Dramaliev at slooz.com who maintains the Flash source code. The port of Exposé to the Joomla! application framework was performed primarily by Josh Brien at gotgtek.com with help from Victor Drover at anything-digital.com. Josh and Victor maintain the forums and codebase, and Victor created and maintains the project documentation along with Steinthor Kristinsson. Steinthor has also added new administrative features to the backend.
   
   This software includes the AMFPHP component, and a JPEG encoder, courtesy of Uro Tinic and Cristi Cuturicu. This package also comes with the Medrano font, courtesy of Tepid Monkey. See the readme.txt file in the in the following location for more information:
   
   <joomla_root>/components/Exposé/expose/manager/fonts/
   
   Finally, mad props to all the friends of Exposé who took the time to post their issues on the forums and keep this project going forward.
   
   
1. Installation and Customization
   
   
1. Downloading Exposé – The Exposé packages are available as zip archives from the url below.
   
   http://forge.joomla.org/sf/frs/do/viewSummary/projects.expose/frs
   
   
2. Installing and Upgrading Exposé – Exposé is installed using the Joomla! component installer. Login to the administrative back-end of your Joomla! installation. From the main toolbar, select ‘Installers > Components’. Browse to the com_expsose.zip file you downloaded above and click the ‘Upload File & Install’ button.
   
   If everything goes well, you will see the Exposé ‘Upload component - Success’ screen. Click ‘Continue’ to complete the installation.
   
   

Upgrading: This works for upgrading from RC2 to RC3. It has not been tested from RC1 to RC3.

· There is no official upgrade so ALWAYS BACKUP YOUR “components\com_expose” folder before you try any upgrade.

· If you made any changes to config.xml or strings.xml take a backup of those files to so you can see the old values and add it to the new ones.

· If you have changed the watermark picture/font take a backup of it too.

· If you made any changes in settings in Album Manager take a backup of settings.xml

Both the watermark.png and the settings.xml are located in \components\com_expose\expose\manager\amfphp\extra

1. Take a backup of your img and xml folders located in components\com_expose\expose\manager.

2. Uninstall exposé from the Joomla component installer

3. Install the new version using the component installer

4. Copy your old img and xml folder back to the server

5. Edit config.xml and strings.xml if you had edited them from the Exposé defaults prior to upgrading

6. Copy watermark.png back if you used it.

7. Copy settings.xml/watermark.png back to components\com_expose\expose\manager\amfphp\extra

8. Copy embedcopy.ttf to \components\com_expose\expose\manager\fonts

9. Clear Private Data (Firefox) or delete temp internet files (Internet Explorer) or perform a hard refresh (ctrl – f5) to clear the cache.

10. If everything fails. Restore your exposé with your backup.

3. Displaying Exposé – Exposé is added to the front-end of your Joomla! installation by simply adding a 'Component' type menu item and pointing it to the Exposé component. Login to the administrative back-end of your Joomla! installation. From the main toolbar, select the menu to which you wish to add your gallery link. Select ‘New’ from the Menu Manager page that is currently displayed. On the ‘New Menu Item’ page, select ‘Component’, and then choose ‘Exposé’ from the list of installed components.
   
   To view your gallery, browse to the front-end of your site and select the new menu item you created. The sample albums should be visible.
   
   
4. Customizing the Layout – Customizing Exposé for your particular Joomla! template is critical to creating an appealing and elegant implementation of Exposé. Before you begin, consider the following:
   
   

· How wide is your current template?

· How wide is the space in which Exposé will be displayed (i.e. your template width less any space occupied by menus, CSS padding or other modules).

· What size do you want your images to be displayed at?

Consider that you will have small fitting images (thumbnails), normal fitting images (images displayed within your Joomla! template) and large fitting images (images that pop-up in new browser windows when you zoom in on a normal fitting image).

For example, let’s assume that your template is 900 px wide with a 200 px wide module (such as a menu) on the left. This leave 700 px in which to display your photos. Thus, you will want your regular sized images to be no larger than 700 px, and 650 pixels is a good choice as the extra 50 px will be available for white space and such around the images.

Based on the above example, you will now need to manually modify 2 files using a good text editor (such as TextPad for Windows or Text Wrangler for OS X) and update your server with these files via FTP. All the files are found in the following location:

<joomla!_root>/components/com_expose/

· expose.html.php – Edit lines 95 and 96 (RC3 version of Exposé) such that the height and width macth the space available in the template. This file contains the iframe which specifies the main container for Exposé. This should be set to the maximum space available, in our example, 700 px. only need to edit expose.html.php now, lines 95 & 96

· /expose/config/config.xml – This is the main configuration file for Exposé. Here you can adjust almost every parameter of expose. The most common parameters that you will need to modify are the ‘Main Panel’ options. Read the following thread for a detailed description of the parameters.

http://www.gotgtek.com/forum/index.php?topic=305.0

Since every template is different, some trial and error is required to see what works best for you. A ‘small version’ of Exposé has been created (see the download url above) for use with typical Joomla! templates.

5. Linking Directly to Collections and Albums – You may link directly your collections, albums and images using standard Joomla! syntax. First, identify the necessary collection, album and/or image IDs from the backend album manager. Follow the examples to link to the appropriate content:
   
   Collection:
   http://somesite.com/index.php?option=com_expose&Itemid=26&topcoll=10
   
   Album:
   http://somesite.com/index.php?option=com_expose&Itemid=26&album=5
   
   Image:
   http://somesite.com/index.php?option=com_expose&Itemid=26&album=5&photo=1
   
   Auto start a slideshow:
   http://somesite.com/index.php?option=com_expose&Itemid=26&album=5&photo=1&playslideshow=yes

3. Managing Your Media Collection
   
   

Once expose is installed and customized, you can get to work creating your collections/albums and populating them with images and movies. This is performed entirely with the Album Manager. The rest of this section will describe the use of the Album Manager built into this component. However, applications for managing your collections/albums are available for Windows and Mac OS X (see section 3(h), below). Very large collections may be more efficiently managed using the stand-alone applications.

1. Anatomy of the Album Manager – The layout of the Album Manager is shown below. In general, Collections and Albums are managed on the left and Media is managed on the right. The sections below will refer to these sections.
   
   
   
   
2. Photo and Video Settings – Before you start using Exposé, you must make some decisions regarding the size and quality of the images and videos for your site. In addition, Exposé displays pictures in 3 sizes:

· Small fitting: thumbnails displayed in the image strip

· Normal Fitting: the image displayed when you click on a thumbnail in the image strip

· Large fitting: the pop-up image displayed when you click the magnifying glass icon on the Exposé toolbar.

Since the small and normal fitting boxes are displayed within the template, determining the most appropriate sizes will certainly affected by the template you are using (see 2(d) above for more details) as well as the available server space and bandwidth.

Photos: To adjust the photo settings, open the Exposé album manager from the component menu of the Administrative back-end (or use the album manager for Windows/OS X, see below). Click the SETTINGS button to display the Exposé settings dialog. In the example below, we have chosen settings to fit a space 700 px wide in our template.

If some of your original images will be smaller than the ‘Large fitting box’, you may choose whether these images will be expanded to the indicated size by selecting ‘Create large image’.

This screen also provides options for embedding copyright information (or other text) including the text size, color and opacity.

Finally, Exposé can add a watermark to your ‘normal fitting’ and ‘large fitting’ images. To enable this feature, select the option on this screen. Customize the watermark by editing the following file:

<joomla_root>/components/com_expose/expose/manager/amfphp/extra/watermark.png

As an example, I desired a copyright symbol in the center of my 800x600 image (which is the large fitting size in my expose settings). To achieve this, I created a transparent 800x600 png with my watermark in the middle, saved it as watermark.png and replaced it with the original file referenced above. The results can be viewed on this demo site:

http://demo.anything-digital.com/

As you can see, this worked perfectly when you use the magnifying glass buttton to view the large fitting image. You will also notice that on the normal image (600x400), the copyright symbol is the same size as in the large fitting image and it is in the upper-left corner. How does this happen? While my normal fitting image is being processed, the bottom and right borders are aligned with the 800x600 watermark.png. Since the medium-sized image is smaller, the watermark appears full-size but in the upper-left corner.

If I had used a 600x400 watermark file with the centered copyright symbol, the copyright would be in the center of the normal fitting image, but shifted down and right in the large fitting image. In short, choose which image most people will look at, and optimize your workflow accordingly. Putting the watermark in the bottom-right corner of watermark.png will give consistency between the normal and large fitting images, but may be less useful as a deterrent to copying.

Video Settings: Exposé supports flash video files that have a .FLV file extension. Existing videos must be appropriately sized (as Exposé does not resize video) and converted to FLV format prior to uploading. Flash videos can be created from AVI, MPEG, Quicktime and WMV files using the free FLV encoder from RIVA at the following url:

http://www.rivavx.com/index.php?encoder&L=3

Video settings are found on the ‘Video’ tab of the same settings screen for the photo settings (see below). Adjust the fields to modify the parameters of thumbnails generated from video files (see ‘Creating Thumbnails’, below).

3. Creating Collections and Albums –Exposé arranges photos/videos into albums. Collections consist of albums and/or other collections. Importantly, each nested collection increases the amount of horizontal space required to display the entire gallery. For most Joomla! templates, you will not have enough horizontal space to accommodate more than one nested collection. Section 2(d) has more information on configuring the layout of Exposé.
   
   Use the buttons in the Create Albums and Manage Albums areas of the Album Manager to organize your collections/albums.
   
   
4. Uploading Media – Before uploading any files, create at least one album and select it from the Abum List. Media can now be added to your album in three ways: using the ‘Upload photos’ button, the ‘Upload videos’ button or the ‘Add from bucket’ button.

· Upload photos: Choose image files from your computer and follow the instructions to upload. Files will be resized, copyrighted and watermarked depending on the settings.

· Upload videos: Choose flash video files from your computer and follow the instructions to upload. Files will NOT BE resized, copyrighted or watermarked. Files must also be flash videos with a .FLV file extension.

· Add from bucket: Files (photos and .FLV flash videos) must be manually transferred to the ‘bucket’ (i.e. via FTP). The bucket location is:

<joomla_root>/components/com_expose/expose/manager/bucket/

Once the files are transferred to this location, click the ‘Add from bucket’ button, select the appropriate files from the list and follow the instructions.

All three upload buttons are found in the Upload Buttons area of the Album Manager.

5. Editing Titles, Dates, Locations & Descriptions – To create/edit the description associated with collections/albums or photos/videos, browse to and select the appropriate item. Enter the item description in either the Album Description textarea or the Media Description textarea as appropriate. Once you have completed the description, place your mouse over the text and right-click (or ctrl-click on Mac OS X). Choose “Apply description changes” from the menu.

To change the Titles of your albums, select the album of interest and then click the ‘Rename’ button below the collections/album list. To change the Titles of your media, simply double-click the Title itself.

Adding dates and locations to your media can be a nice addition to your collection. Create/edit Dates and Locations by double-clicking the appropriate textareas for the desired media file. In many cases, the same Location, Date, Description and Title may apply to an entire album. Expose makes it easy to propagate this data from one file to all the files in the same album. Simply right-click the file which already has the desired Location, Date, Description and/or Title and select the appropriate “Apply to rest’ option.

6. Creating Thumbnails – Thumbnails for photos are automatically created so no further action is required once the images have been successfully uploaded. To preview the thumbnails, select the media item of interest, the thumbnail should appear in the Media Thumb Preview area.
   
   For videos, thumbnails are manually generated from a frame of the movie. Start by browsing to the video of interest and selecting the video file in the Media List. The Media Thumb Previews will be blank, but click this area to open the ’Video Preview’ window (see below).

Play the video until an appropriate frame is located and pause the video. Click the ‘Capture to thumbnail’ button to save the frame as the video thumbnail. Repeat this process as necessary to achieve the desired results.

To give your collection the most impressive appearance, you should also create collection and album thumbnails. These will be displayed when visitors to your site browse your albums. The only limitation is that collection/album thumbnails must already exist as photo or video thumbnails. To create a collection/album thumbnail, browse to the photo or video which has the thumbnail you desire. Select the photo/video and ensure the thumbnail is displayed in the Media Thumb Preview area. Next, click the ‘Create album thumb’ button and select the desired collection/album. To confirm that the thumbnail is being used for the collection/album, select the collection/album from the Album List. The thumbnail should appear in the Album Thumb Preview area. Repeat this process for any remaining albums or to replace existing collection/album thumbs.

7. Moving and Deleting Collections, Albums and files – Reorganizing or destroying existing albums and media is self-explanatory. Use the buttons in the Manage Albums and Manage Media areas to manage your collection.
   
   

Album Manager for Windows and Mac OS X – If your host does not support the strict server requirements for the album manager contained within this component, or if you have a very large media collection, you may still use the Exposé component to display your pictures. Simply install your component, create the appropriate menu item as described above and customize the component to suit your Joomla! template. However, all album management will be performed using the stand-alone Album Manager application (available for Windows or Mac OS X operating systems). The use of these applications is beyond the scope of this documentation, but the basic behavior is similar to that described above in Section 3.

The applications may be downloaded directly from slooz.com:

Windows: http://www.slooz.com/trinkets.php?proj=expmngwin

Mac OS X: http://www.slooz.com/trinkets.php?proj=expmngmac

A tutorial for the Windows version of Album Manager is available here:

http://www.slooz.com/article.php?article=intro_win

Note: These applications are limited to managing 3 movies but are otherwise completely functional. Users requiring unlimited movies will need to purchase a license (a license for the Windows and Mac OS X Album Managers is included with the commercial Exposé licensing fee as described in section 1(c) above).

URGENT: Using more than one manager is not currently supported so choose carefully what album manger method you will be using or risk losing all your media and albums when switching managers. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED…ALWAYS BACKUP BEFORE EXPERIMENTING.

It is possible to manually synchronize the component Album Managers and the stand-alone applications. More information on this process can be found on the Expose troubleshooting forum at the following url:

http://www.gotgtek.com/forum/index.php?topic=321.0