Documentation and Usage

Upon initial installation, the module creates a new node type called "Imagewall structure". This can be found at /admin/content/node-type/imagewall-structure and contains the following readme text in the description: "Each node of this type represents a Imagewall-structure. Everytime a Imagewall-structure gets saved the first time such a node will be created. Each revision of a Imagewall-structure will be represented by a revision of the node."

Since the documentation readme says "This module provides a style plugin for views. This plugin allows moving nodes.", my next step will be to create a view. I am currently using the imagefield and imagecache modules, and I am storing one photograph per node. I went into one of my existing views that display the single photo field and now see a new option under "Style" that is titled "ImageWall". I created a new page display that copied my existing node view and used this style plugin. I was then presented with a few options:

"Title of Containers"
"Group containers by this field (CSS)"
"The taxonomy vocabulary to use for relevant tags and version tags"
and a checkbox option "Lock the structure"

The default for the above options were set to "Node: Title" so I left them alone. After saving, I ran into an error "Imagewall: The taxonomy vocabulary is not valid. Must be numeric and > 0. Check your settings.", so it looks like I need a taxonomy before saving the view.

I then headed off to the Taxonomy page and created a new one called "IWTEST". I wasn't sure if the content types should apply to the new "Imagewall structure" nodes, but I figured it would so I checked the box to associate the taxonomy to that node type. I did not enable multiple select or required. I made a note of the taxonomy vocabulary number, which in my case was 8. (Found this in /admin/content/taxonomy by hovering over the edit vocabulary link and looking at the URL.)

Back to my view - in the style, settings I now entered the taxonomy into the options as 8. No more complaints, so I saved the view. Now when I navigate to the path to the page view I just created, I see something that looks a lot like the photo on the project page. On the left side I see an index of node title names and can drag them on to the canvas.

I'm a bit confused at this point. I am looking at the page output for a view, but I am assuming that the module needs to create a new 'album' by allowing a drag-drop into the canvas and then saving a new node. At the bottom I see a message "Change revision to" and a number, but not sure what that is all about. I also see "log message" and "submit" buttons but not sure what they do yet either. I also don't know where taxonomy comes into play.

I'm going to keep going but wanted to get started with the brain dump.

More thoughts. The new view page with the canvas went off of my screen since the theme assumes a fluid width. I am using a fixed width layout, so I switched to Garland for the rest of my testing. This now shows me three "columns" - the left column with the node titles from the view output, a middle column/canvas, and a right column/canvas. I can drag any of the node titles into either canvas, but I'm not sure what they are for or what I am accomplishing by the drag. I attached a picture showing this - canvas.png. The left side had all of the titles but I cut them off intentionally but you get the idea if you look at the screenshot on the project page.

I also enclosed a screenshot of the bottom portion of the view (bottom.png) showing a scrollbar that doesn't seem to do anything, a message about the left mouse button, and then the log message/submit buttons.

I dragged a few items on to the main canvas, typed the word "test" into the log message box at the bottom, and clicked submit. The Drupal blue ajax wheel came up. It spun for a good 20 seconds or so, and then it went away. I'm not sure what happened, but I now see a new box at the bottom showing a number. See attached "bottom2.png".

If I go into /admin/content/node, I now see that a new node has been created called "ImageWall Structure" (view_myviewname/photos,14). The type of content I am using is a CCK field called photos so that is presumably what that refers to, but I'm not sure what 14 means. There are no new taxonomy terms that have been created.

I read the code a bit, and it seems that this module saves the albums using a noderevision system. This may be the ID shown in bottom2.png that was inserted after I did the "submit" action. I also saw db_query used in the code, so I went over to mysql to check out the imagewall tables. There were two tables created - imagewall_nodes and imagewall_structure.

The imagewall_nodes structure now has one entry with a NID, view_id, and view_arg. The NID was 1357 and corresponds to the node ID of a new node that was created in my submit action. The arguments are photos,14 which again I'm not sure what that means.

The imagewall_structure table has lots of stuff going on. It looks like on a per-node basis (since I see NID 1357 again) it is storing an ID, the field name from CCK, the canvas number, x/y/z positions, and width/height of the image - probably from any resizing that was done on the canvas.

One thing I have found is that my current view also exports other CCK fields, such as a fivestar rating. I am going to go back and remove those so it just outputs the image.

I am also confused as to how I can go look at this saved album. I visited the node (/node/1357) and the node came up but no data was there.

So far, here are my thoughts.

-- The javascript and what not seems to work fine with jQuery UI 1.6. No problems or errors were reported by my Firefox/Windows browser.

-- The interface can be customized and themed fairly easily, which is a plus. There are theme templates included to change the look and feel of the canvas and other areas. This extends to the containers that hold the image on the canvas - there are defaults for styling that can be changed. Both the photos and the containers can be resized and it seems to save the positions to the database so it should come back up in the same placement.

-- I'm not sure where to go to look at albums that were created so I don't know how to look at them. The node itself doesn't display them.

-- I can't seem to have it display the photos themselves in the left draggable column. This is set via the view, Title of Containers. When I show a photo there it isn't draggable. When I use the title field, it is draggable.

-- It creates albums by saving to a proprietary database table to store the information. This is needed based on storing the resize information, however personally I'd prefer to use CCK Nodereference fields to reference the photos content on the system as that is more future-proof. That way if a photo or node changes, the reference would also change.