Image sizes in New Products List

[nigelt]

I'm "experimenting" with Actinic V8, with a view to moving from zen cart.
Whenever I get close to saying YES, something goes wrong and I hang fire a bit longer.
Not sure why i'v just said that actually, as its got nothing at all to do with the problem I have !.

I've set up some products with associated images. The Images vary in size from 183 X 30 to 500 X 77.
For each image i've created a thumbnail image by resizing the original in photoshop so the largest "side" is 150px (eg original size 300 X 200, reduce side 300 to 150, this reduces the image size to 150 X 100), I then alter the canvas size to 150 X 150.

I use these smaller images in the sub sections.
When the images are displayed in the New Products section its fine, all small images, except for the occasional rogue image which will appear to have been enlarged by actinic from its original 150X150.


I'm obviously doing something wrong... either in the creation of my thumbnails or in my assumption about actinic....

Any thoughts?
Sorry for the length of this one !
Nige

[nigelt]

Hum... Replying to my own posts.. Is that like talking to yourself i wonder !
Anyway....
I think i've found the reason...
I read in a post, that Actinic actually shrinks the size of images itself when used in the New Products List on the main page.
I think there is a cut off point where it wont bother reducing the image size.
So the original size will be used.
One image (size 500 x 500) shrinks down beautifully, the other (66 X 220) doesnt shrink at all, so looks out of place.
Anyone know what the cut off point size is ?.
Thanks
Nige

[NormanRouxel]

What Actinic does for the New Products is to use the standard product image with it being resized in the browser. E.g.

<img style="border: 0;" src="<actinic:variable name="ProductImageFileName" />" width="75" alt="<actinic:variable name="ProductName" encoding="strip"/>" />

If all your products have Thumbnails you could use them instead by changing to

<img style="border: 0;" src="<actinic:variable name="ProductThumbNailImageFileName" />" width="<actinic:variable name="ProductThumbNailImageWidth" />" height="<actinic:variable name="ProductThumbNailImageHeight" />" alt="<actinic:variable name="ProductName" encoding="strip"/>" />

You could also wrap a condition around this so that it is only generated if ProductThumbNailImageFileName is not null. This would take care of missing images.

[nigelt]

Thanks very much Norman. Thats superb.
Nige

[NormanRouxel]

Actinic also has the entire PHP (V4.3) language available to add dynamic code generation to the pages. I wrote an article to the Advanced Guide that shows how to automatically create thumbnail icons from a single product image.

[nigelt]

I'll go and have a read... as soon as i've finished this glass of wine...well... I've had a hard day serving bl**dy customers.
Thanks Norman... cheers !