User talk:James Barrett 2

How do we install the slideshow mod? Can you offer some pointers? Caveats?--Dennis Daniels 19:42, 25 May 2006 (WST)

The slideshow module was a pragmatic development in response to requests from teachers who wanted to display sets of digital photographs in our VLE but (quite reasonably IMO) were unable or unwilling to learn “image processing for the web”. In fact it now works with gif’s and png’s as well as jpg’s. It isn’t intended to offer sophisticated image management or manipulation, just simplicity and ease of use. The module generates thumbnails and will resize images that exceed size limits, which are configurable site-wide by admin in the usual way ( admin > modules > slideshow settings ). Optional captions are stored with the thumbnails in XML format. There was a thread tracking development here: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=36206

The module needs GD to be enabled, probably GD2 in fact, and so far I have had it working on 1.5.2, 1,5,3 and 1.6beta using both database and server platforms with various different releases of PHP, and I believe others have managed to get it working elsewhere. Installing it is about as straightforward as it could be, the files all go in $dirroot/mod/slideshow and it creates a table for itself in the database.

I have recently been updating it for 1.6, although the current archive (http://virtual.cornwall.ac.uk/downloads/slideshow.zip ) works with 1.5.3. If you are developing 1.6 I suggest you use the latest version: http://virtual.cornwall.ac.uk/downloads/slideshowb.zip which no longer seems to work on 1.5.3 – I haven’t tested it on 1.5.4. If you do try it out please let me know how it goes, it is my first attempt at a Moodle module and any feedback or criticism would be welcome.