zoomify on product listing

[bristweb]

as i've been working with zoomify recently, i can say that it is an awesome little script.

however, i don't see why it was built to force the visitor to click "view larger version" in order to use it. it would be much more convenient to the visitor if zoomify was built right on to the listing page. if the image is too small, just zoom right in without having to wait for another page to load.

in fact, its ALMOST possible to do this without any contribution from 3dc. right now, when you add an image to the listing page, it is marked up in this fashion:

<img border=0 src=\"[image1]\" width=\"75\" height=\"75\" name=\"pimage1\">

notice that the [image1] source does not have any path information "assets/images/..."

if the path were REMOVED from this tag, then we would have MORE flexibility. we could include the image on the page very easily:

<img border=0 src=\"assets/images/[image1]\" width=\"75\" height=\"75\" name=\"pimage1\">

or zoomify:

<OBJECT CLASSID=\"clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000\" CODEBASE=\"http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0\" WIDTH=\"480\" HEIGHT=\"470\" ID=\"theMovie\">
                <PARAM NAME=\"FlashVars\" VALUE=\"zoomifyImagePath=assets/zoomify/[image1]\">
                <PARAM NAME=\"MENU\" VALUE=\"FALSE\">
				<PARAM NAME=\"SRC\" VALUE=\"assets/templates/common/zoomify/zoomifyViewer.swf\">
                <EMBED FlashVars=\"zoomifyImagePath=assets/zoomify/[image1]\" SRC=\"assets/templates/invite/zoomify/zoomifyViewer.swf\" MENU=\"false\" PLUGINSPAGE=\"http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash\"  WIDTH=\"480\" HEIGHT=\"470\" NAME=\"theMovie\"></EMBED>
              </OBJECT>

however, this would still be limited, because it would REQUIRE a zoomify image as well as a product image...which is a burden to manage.

so, i am back at my original request: zoomify built right on to the product listing page by 3dc.

oh yea, another mention while i'm on zoomify. one particularly nice benefit of zoomify is that the visitor does not get access to the source image. this way we can be a little bit more secure against others stealing our images! Certainly I don't suggest doing a javascript right click disable or other annoying feature...but with a slight change, it would be a much bigger hurdle for visitors to find or compile high quality source images. heres how:

* by default, the zoomify image is simply the same image name within the zoomify image folder. this is OK...but it would be nice if there was another abstract requirement, like the product ID. so instead of prodimage1.jpg, you would put 52_prodimage1.jpg into the zoomify folder (or something along those lines). this way a visitor would have to find the product id AND the image name AND somehow guess that it should be prodid_imagename.jpg.

* by default, the zoomify source is EXACTLY the image name, only the ".jpg" is changed to "_jpg" so anyone who takes a quick look at the zoomify source will quickly deduce that they can change the underscore to a period and have the source image. WAY TOO EASY. this can be fixed. instead of creating a folder which copies the image name, why not create a folder based on the MD5 or SHA or similar? This way the image 52_prodimage1.jpg would have a zoomify folder of: assets/zoomify/a01108c3f8a1cb5bc13ea9510af229f8. no one would be able to deduce the image name from the md5.

* if those two changes were made, i would think the only way someone could compile the source image would be to learn how zoomify works, compile a list of file names, and then download the high res blocks one by one, and then put them together like a puzzle to get a final image...and if they're willing to do all that, they've earned it!

and finally, i've noticed that zoomify is VERY slow. i think it is rebuilding the entire folder each time i click on the zoomify button. the script should first determine if the folder is created, and only generate it if it doesn't exist.

[MissHTML]

I agree, what does 3dc think? I am really interested in using zoomify but agree with the above. Reply?

[bristweb]

i have realized something else recently regarding the zoomify option

We have a product catalog that will soon be over 1000 products. each product may have several images...meaning we have thousands of images to manage.

with the current zoomify implementation, all these images and folders would be stuffed in one long list. i already anticipate this will become incredibly painful to manage

my proposal:

have a user defined suffix which creates a zoomify version. ex: image1.jpg and image1_zoom.jpg - and all zoomify folders stored in the current zoomify folder. this way we can easily organize images on the server with folders, and simply add a suffix to the file to get a zoomify version. then if we want to clean house, we just delete all the zoomify folders and they will be recreated when a visitor visits those pages.

the reason for the user defined suffix, instead of a standardized suffix is, again, so people are less likely to rip off the images