Problem with embedded flash slideshow using feeds

wellman · April 22, 2009

I'm having an IE-specific problem with feed-based embedded flash slideshows not working. It's not the embedding that's causing the problem per se; it's the URL itself.

I'm able to paste the following URL into Firefox (constructed per the wiki), and it works just fine. However, when the same URL is pasted into IE7, I get a blank black screen.

http://www.smugmug.com/ria/ShizamSlides-2007090601.swf?feedURL=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.smugmug.com%2Fhack%2Ffeed.mg%3FType%3DnicknameRecent%2526Data%3Dmafairumc%2526format%3Datom03

Pretty much the same thing happens when I try to use this URL in an embedded slideshow. Fine in FF / no slideshow in IE.

The problem is limited to feed-based slideshows. If my slideshow is albumID-based, it works fine in both browsers. Any help? :ear

rainforest1155 · April 25, 2009

Hi Greg,

Are you logged in in Firefox? Try if it still works logged out in Firefox.
Also, does it maybe work if you login in IE?

How about using RSS200 feeds instead of the ATOM03 feed. Does that make a difference?

Instead of nicknameRecent , try nicknameRecentPhotos . That's the feed type that's displayed at the bottom of your page if you click the 'available feeds' button.

Let us know,
Sebastian

wellman · April 25, 2009

rainforest1155 wrote:

Hi Greg,

Are you logged in in Firefox? Try if it still works logged out in Firefox.
Also, does it maybe work if you login in IE?

How about using RSS200 feeds instead of the ATOM03 feed. Does that make a difference?

Instead of nicknameRecent , try nicknameRecentPhotos . That's the feed type that's displayed at the bottom of your page if you click the 'available feeds' button.

Let us know,
Sebastian

Good call on the logged-in/logged-out difference. (All the following comments apply to Firefox. I left IE out of this test.)

When logged in, all the variations you suggested worked - nicknameRecent, nicknameRecentPhotos, atom03, rss200 - everything.

When logged out, no variation worked at all.

Does this help at all?

jfriend · April 26, 2009

wellman wrote:

Good call on the logged-in/logged-out difference. (All the following comments apply to Firefox. I left IE out of this test.)

When logged in, all the variations you suggested worked - nicknameRecent, nicknameRecentPhotos, atom03, rss200 - everything.

When logged out, no variation worked at all.

Does this help at all?

Do you realize that when you are logged out, a feed will only return photos in a non-password protected, public gallery. It will not return any photos in an unlisted gallery. I don't know if that has anything to do with your situation, but is one way that a feed returns different results when logged in/out.

wellman · April 26, 2009

jfriend wrote:

Do you realize that when you are logged out, a feed will only return photos in a non-password protected, public gallery. It will not return any photos in an unlisted gallery. I don't know if that has anything to do with your situation, but is one way that a feed returns different results when logged in/out.

Yes, I'm aware. The difference in my case is that, when calling the "nicknameRecent" feed, I'm able to see EVERYTHING when logged in and NOTHING when logged out.

I do have some unlisted galleries on the site (mafairumc.smugmug.com), but most by far are public. Would having even one unlisted gallery on the SmugMug account be breaking the feed?

wellman · April 28, 2009

Anything I can to do help remedy this, like testing something out? I'm wanting to use the nicknameRecentPhotos feed to show rolling "Recent Photos" slideshows on two different sites I manage - MafairUMC.org and MartinPNG.com. Thanks.

wellman · April 28, 2009

OK, folks - I believe I can shed some more light on the issue. Again, FF/IE is not the issue; the comments below apply to both. They also assume logged-out status for viewing the feed.

The problem for me has been that my most recently-uploaded photos were placed in an unlisted gallery. Thus, the feed choked. If I make the gallery in question public, then the feed starts working. Change it back to unlisted, and the feed chokes again.

Would it be possible to alter the logic of the nicknameRecent/nicknameRecentPhotos feed to simply skip over photos in unlisted or password-protected galleries? This would probably fit the intent of the feed better than the current "feed breaks when recent photos are unlisted or protected" implementation.

My specific use case... I have website graphics and other media in unlisted galleries, which I use for the main non-photo portion of this site. I don't want the feed (which is used on the site's homepage) to break every time I add new unlisted media.

Thanks!

wellman · May 8, 2009

Bump.

wellman wrote:

Would it be possible to alter the logic of the nicknameRecent/nicknameRecentPhotos feed to simply skip over photos in unlisted or password-protected galleries?

wellman · May 15, 2009

Bump.

wellman · June 4, 2009

Bump. Should I email this to help@ or make a new thread on the Bug Reporting or Feature Request boards? Thanks...

jfriend · June 4, 2009

wellman wrote:

Bump. Should I email this to help@ or make a new thread on the Bug Reporting or Feature Request boards? Thanks...

Sounds like a bug to me. I'd suggest reporting it in the bug reporting forum.

PatV · June 20, 2009

Limit size in embedded slideshow by using feeds to increase downloading speed?
Another question to using feeds for embedded slideshow. My main objective was here to increase speed at which the slideshow would be fully up and running. If you choose the display thumbs option for instance the slideshow starts you see all the available thumbnails. But when you click on them, you still have to wait for the full rez picture to be downloaded (well it seems to be downloading the full rez, because I find it takes sometimes a lot of time before you see the picture displayed).

I am presently using AlbumID and AlbumKey to fetch the pictures from the gallery, but since the slideshow as a given size, there is no need to dowload a bigger size than what will be displayed. I thought about instead using using a feed on the same gallery and set the picture size in the feed to Large which would be must faster to download. I did the test and I do not see the improvement. For what I can see, since we have to remove the "format" parameter, even setting the size to "Large" in the feed will still return all available size in the gallery.

So is there any way I could limit the size being used by the slideshow to make things go faster ?

Here's an example of galleries where I'ven embeded a slideshow: http://www.patrickvanderheyden.com/gallery/8274976_rxP8D

Using this feed: http://api.smugmug.com/hack/feed.mg?Type=gallery&Data=8217632_pLc48&format=atom03&Size=Large send back only the size large, but in the feedURL, I must remove the format, which gives the following feed http://api.smugmug.com/hack/feed.mg?Type=gallery&Data=8217632_pLc48&Size=Large where all size are returned
(Converted into [html]http%3A%2F%2Fapi.smugmug.com%2Fhack%2Ffeed.mg%3FType%3Dgallery%2526Data%3D8217632%5FpLc48%2526Size%3DLarge [/html] to be able to use it in the feedURL paramater )
Thanks !

Patrick

[edit] I could sure create another gallery which only has resized pictures, that's what I did on the main page so things would load faster, but then it starts to make a lot of duplications....

Problem with embedded flash slideshow using feeds

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