Photonic Version 1.42

I have just released version 1.42 of Photonic. The major highlights of this version are under the hood, wherein there are lots of performance improvements.

  1. There has been a massive amount of refactoring. Several lines of JavaScript code have been taken off, lots of JavaScript and PHP code has been modularized.
  2. I have added an option to use a ColorBox skin defined in the theme folder. Earlier if such a folder existed, it would be picked up by default. And quite embarrassingly this made Photonic’s ColorBox skin selection not work with Suffusion!
  3. I have updated the SimpleModal, ColorBox and PrettyPhoto libraries to the latest versions. This will fix incompatibility issues with IE for the popup windows, in addition to letting the code work for JQuery 1.9.x.
  4. I have modified some native code in Photonic to ensure that it will work with JQuery 1.9.x, which some zealous plugin authors seem to include by force. Consequently, Photonic now requires you to be on at least WP 3.3.
  5. I have removed the explicit link that said “View in Flickr” from the plugin. To compensate I have provided options for each provider to let you link to the photo page from the lightbox. This puts the onus on you to ensure that the terms of service are maintained with respect to linking.
  6. This is another big one. I have started the support for non-bundled lightbox libraries. Currently FancyBox2 is supported. The reason I have started this is to let users use non-GPL libraries (which cannot be bundled with the plugin) with Photonic. FancyBox2 happens to be released under a non-GPL-compatible license, but you can link the JS and the CSS appropriately for it.
  7. I had earlier bundled modified scripts for FancyBox and ColorBox because I couldn’t get them to work with the JQuery Tooltip plugin. I now have a fix for this scenario, so the scripts are back to their original. I couldn’t do the same for PrettyPhoto though, so I am hoping that a version of PrettyPhoto in the near future will help.

Several factors necessitated the code refactoring, primary being that for every new provider I was setting up, I was having to repeat a lot of code. With this change the barrier to introduction of new providers should reduce (though I cannot think of any other provider to include other than Facebook). This also helped me cut out hundreds of lines of JS, easing the load on the browser.

Do let me know how you like this release.

4 Responses to “Photonic Version 1.42”

  1. Hello.

    First of all, I would like to thank you for this incredible plugin. It has been extremely easy for me to deploy pictures from my picasa album inside my site thanks to this very plugin. Easy customization and and user-friendly are the first words that come to mind when referring to your plugin.
    However, I would like to point out that the latest update of the plugin caused my sliders to freeze or stay at an eternal “loading state”. Keep in mind that I am referring to 2 different sliders that were affected by this update (vSlider and SlideShow)
    Is there a way to bypass this issue? Could it be because of the jQuery in the plugin that could cause that kind of behaviour?
    Also, I would like to say that I verified this, by updating only the Photonic plugin on a local copy of my site that I keep on my computer. I haven’t rollback to a previous version of the plugin to see if this can solve the problem, since I haven’t downloaded, yet, the previous version.
    Thanks again for this wonderful plugin and I hope that this problem will be solved soon.

    PS: The “frozen” sliders are on my site <a href="” title=”Kalogiroi.gr”>www.kalogiroi.gr. Sorry, but it is only in greek. Hopefully, we will add more languages in the near future.

    • Can you point me to a page that has the slider and Photonic? I am looking at your front page and seeing no issue there.

  2. Well, I fixed the issue, around the same day I posted the comment here, by downgrading photonic to version 1.36. What buffles me is that photonic only exists in one page (http://www.kalogiroi.gr/%CF%86%CF%89%CF%84%CE%BF%CE%B3%CF%81%CE%B1%CF%86%CE%AF%CE%B5%CF%82-%CE%B2%CE%AF%CE%BD%CF%84%CE%B5%CE%BF/)
    but it affects my front page on http://www.kalogiroi.gr/.

    I wouldn’t like to waste any more of your time, especially since I already know that it is limited. My issue is fixed, but if you are interested to know how to reproduce the problem, I can tell you the setup of my pages and the version of wordpress that I use.

    Thank you for your reply.

  3. Hello, I am unable to save my settings? When I click the button that says “Save/Reset” all it does it stay on the page. The button links to “#”???? Could please help me figure out how to save settings in photonic? Thanks! I have tried installing and reinstalling the plugin many times.