By Reginleif on

For Movabletype. Wordpress, and Textpattern, there are "plugins" that replace entry titles (or dates, or whatever you choose) with images dynamically, so you can have your headlines in whatever font you wish. Is there some way to have similar functionality in Drupal?

Comments

Reginleif’s picture

Reginleif commented

I have PHP code to do it, but am not sure how to work it into the template. Any guideance and/or hints would be appreciated.

carlmcdade’s picture

carlmcdade commented

I have not had a chance to try this on Drupal but it works great. There's a Dreamweaver extension somewhere around also.

http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/mx/dreamweaver/articles/sifr_demo.html
http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2005/02/sifr-2.0-release-cand...

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Hivemindz CMSopedia
__________________________
Carl McDade
Information Technology Consult
Team Macromedia

Reginleif’s picture

Reginleif commented

Thank you for the reply, Carl. Interesting site to say the least. I hear Javascript and am worried about the number of people that have javascript turned off... the PHP image replacement choice at least doesn't rely on specific browser settings. It does, however, look really neat and I'll give it a closer look and learn more about it.

I'm still interested in other replies, perhaps from people who've seen the PHP code at A List Apart, or who've used MovableType, Wordpress, or Textpattern and have had the plugins that do what I'm wanting to do with a Drupal site. The snippet of code I have requires you to load a php page with an argument fed to it in the URL in order to get the text in your chosen font.

Not quite sure how I'd use that in a web page to replace dates, or story titles or whatever... I'm rather new to PHP and am trying to learn.

Thanks again!

carlmcdade’s picture

carlmcdade commented

hh--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

boris mann’s picture

boris mann commented

Our site is using sIFR. It's currently included directly as part of the theme, which was created by Steven.

I don't know how hard it would be to turn into a module. I know we are going to be using it on another site very soon, so at the very least we'll see about adding a tutorial on linking it into your theme.

Reginleif’s picture

Reginleif commented

Thanks, Boris. Checked your site and it looks like it's working great. If we can't find a module, a tutorial would be nice. I'm willing, of course, to put the work in that I need to in order to make it work. :)

sami_k’s picture

sami_k commented

I wondered how you did that Boris, very cool!

--
Etopian (Support & Hosting)
http://drupal.etopian.net

garm’s picture

garm commented

here you go: step by step

http://www.genx.se/test/drupal/drupal_sifr.txt

OpenChimp’s picture

OpenChimp commented

Seems a little crazy to worry about the people who have JavaScript turned off. If the user doesn't have JavaScript on, then the user will simply get the HTML version of the text. No huge loss and it will be a very small percentage of people of whom most won't care about ascetics as much as most (that's why they turn JS off) sIFR has a ton of other advantages over using image replacement.

  • no load on the server for generating images
  • SEO compliance - Search engines can read the text and the context of it, such as whether it is in a heading tag, which it should be.
  • accessibility bonuses - the text can be read by readers
  • Faster subsequent page loads. Once the user has downloaded the swf file for rendering the fonts, they have all they need to generate all the headlines on the client side so subsequent pages have less to download.

It's great to see that Drupal users are adopting this exciting new text rendering method.

garm’s picture

garm commented

yep aint it, flash is a great tool when properly used and when properly used something most people want even notice.

Unfortunate enough most people only see all the annoying ad´s and some crappy flash sites and think thats all flash is, which of course is so far from the truth but im glad to see flash and sifr being used and noticed by more and more drupal users.

Flv is another medium/usage where flash excells and when the next fp hits the street i recon online streaming video will take a few steps forward.

And now that adobe purchased macromedia it´s going to be interesting to see how pdf and flashpaper evolves, hopefully adobe wont can flashpaper but instead make it even more powerful so companys can start to realy make user friendly documentation for both offline and online usage (pdf for print/offline and flashpaper for online viewing) from the same applications to benefit the end users, which is what any online presence is all about.

jasonwhat’s picture

jasonwhat commented

Along these lines, I've been trying to figure out how to use rollover images as replacements for regular links. I'd like to learn how to do this purely in CSS without getting into php. I know how to do background image changes with rollovers on links, but not sure how to do it with a "foreground" image.

carlmcdade’s picture

carlmcdade commented

hh--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

degerrit’s picture

degerrit commented

May be of interest, Andy Thornton seems to have it working with Drupal rather nicely: http://www.theevilpixel.com/

Reginleif’s picture

Reginleif commented

.... that's some nice looking site. I'm going to have to look at it more closely later this evening when I get home from work. I wonder how he did it?

garm’s picture

garm commented

bah... my post vanished...

a well here´s the part that tells the javascript to feed the html text into the swf file so you get the nice looking font of your choice instead, while still being html and nothing but html for search engines.

div class="node ">
     
    <h2><a href="/node/121">Why a Penguin ?</a></h2>

It´s in other words not hard at all to implement in a drupal powered website, since all the javascript does is feed whatevers inside the h2 tag in this case (you can define multiple fonts this way btw) why a penguin into the swf thats tied to the h2 tag.

And it´s also of course a much better solution then using images and the latest sifr version degrades real nice if javascript is turned off, defaulting to show the pure html text instead.

Sarah Thornton’s picture

Sarah Thornton commented

I dont mind packaging the code and emailing it to you if you want to have a play with it.

hpk’s picture

hpk commented

Hi Flux,

Nice site. Yeh man, I'd like to play with the code. Can you please mail it to me? Your help would be appriciated.

hpk a.k.a. vikram
[De-centralizing the central issues]
National Institute of Design, India

Sarah Thornton’s picture

Sarah Thornton commented

No worries - I'll cut out the stuff that isnt related and package a test page up. I'll make a copy on my site for anyone who wants to download it or needs help putting it in.

Sarah Thornton’s picture

Sarah Thornton commented

I cut out the relevant parts of the stylesheet and the script files and provided some fonts to mess with. You can download them here

There is a link to Mike Davidsons blog with notes on how to use it, and also where to download a newer version of the flash file I used to create the font files. If anyone has any problems working it out, leave me a message on the pixel and I will be glad to help out where I can.

Have fun :-)

garm’s picture

garm commented

frigging bloody forum :) wont allow me to post a step by step....

garm’s picture

garm commented

did a quicky from the back of my mind so it might have an error or two but i think it´s pretty complete and easy to follow.

http://www.genx.se/test/drupal/drupal_sifr.txt

thegreenman’s picture

thegreenman commented

what about if I am using marvin or chameleon based theme,
Not the template engine?
That file does not exist, and I'm not sure where this code would reside.

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