Photonic Version 1.66 – Now Playing Videos, And No 500px.com

Posted on July 8, 2018
Categories Plugin Releases

Version 1.66 of Photonic is now out. This release has the following items:

  1. Video Support
    This is the big ticket item in this version. Like everything Photonic, video support is very comprehensive. I have added support for videos within Flickr, Picasa, SmugMug, Zenfolio and Instagram, as well as self-hosted MP4 files, and videos from YouTube or Vimeo. I made every effort to ensure that the lightboxes that can support videos handle all facets, and this was a tough process. Take a look at the Videos page for generic instructions, as well as individual photo service pages on this site for examples.

    While addition of the feature might seem trivial, the implementation was a back-breaker. The challenge was in terms of how lightboxes display videos. Very few were able to open HTML5 videos (like the ones on Picasa or SmugMug) directly from a URL, and most of them required manipulation of the dimensions of the lightbox on the fly because they couldn’t determine how big the video was. Some lightboxes had trouble switching between videos and images in the same lightbox etc.

  2. No More 500px.com
    I didn’t have to do anything here. 500px.com shut down its API access in the middle of June. While the code for it is still present in the plugin, none of the API keys work anymore. As a result the 500px.com module doesn’t work any more.
  3. A New Lightbox: Fancybox3
    This release features the addition of Fancybox3 as another lightbox supported by Photonic. This brings up the total number of supported lightboxes for Photonic to 11 – way higher than any other plugin! In fact, the most popular lightbox plugin in WP, Responsive Lightbox makes you pay for scripts such as Fancybox3, Lightcase, LightGallery and Strip (and even for slideshows, justified grids etc.), while Photonic gives it all to you for free!
  4. Other Additions
    • I have modified the helpers under Photonic → Helpers to display the album thumbnails for SmugMug and Picasa.
    • I have added a structure option to the Zenfolio shortcode so that photosets in groups and group hierarchies can be shown either nested or as a flat hierarchy. See the Zenfolio pages for more
  5. Bug Fixes
    • The shortcode insertion script was not printing the alternative shortcode if applicable. This should now be fine.
    • If an alternative shortcode was being used to display a native WP gallery, passing the ids parameter was not working. This has been fixed.
    • If a thumbnail limit was specified for the archive-view, that limit was not working on the home page. I have taken care of this bug.
    • The Random Justified Grid was setting the alt attribute of images to “undefined”. This should not be happening any more.
  6. In other housekeeping items I have updated the LightGallery scripts to the latest version, and I have corrected instructions for Picasa redirect URLs.

Hope you enjoy this release. Happy “vlogging”!