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Wow, Backlight is terrific. I had been using the CE4 Web Publishing Bundle and CE4 Stage, and upgraded yesterday to Backlight. To me it was well worth the cost. Backlight is vastly easier than CE4 to install, but for me the real payoff is the remarkable improvement in convenience and speed. The difference in user experience is night and day. Thank you!
I do have one question. CE4 Gallery offered Highslide Slideshow as an option for Large Image Presentation. Currently Backlight offers Photoswipe and Single Image Presentation. Are there plans to add Highslide Slideshow as an additional option in Backlight?
I prefer Highslide for two reasons. The main one is that at least on my websites, Highslide displays the same image much larger than does Photoswipe, even when I toggle Photoswipe’s Fullscreen control. (I hope I’m not overlooking one of the controls in Backlight that would make Photoswipe display a larger image.) A second reason is that Highslide has no “Share” link, and I like it that way. I’d prefer that my website be free of links to social media.
Again, thanks for all the work you put into developing Backlight. After using it, I can see why TTG needed to get out from under the constraints imposed by Lightroom’s Web module.
Walter Edelberg
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Sorry, I retract my question. Just realized that Highslide doesn't resize the image as the browser window size changes. Photoswipe does. That is an overriding consideration, so I can see why Highslide wasn't included in Backlight.
Walter
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Hi Walter,
At present, I do not plan to implement Highslide in Backlight. This is a decision likely to be controversial, and one that I may reverse at some point, but there are compelling reasons not to do so. I'll try to explain in short.
First thing I'll say is that I adore Highslide. It's wonderful, and I've been using it for a very long time.
The current version of Highslide is 4.1.13, released in October 2011. Insofar as I am aware, Torstein is no longer working on it and has no plans to do so. As wonderful has Highslide is, it's also a dinosaur that predates the modern era of mobile web browsing. By which I mean that it is entirely ill-suited to touch screens and mobile devices.
In CE4, we got around this by redirecting mobile users to a separate page, using Highslide only on desktops, and an alternative for touch screens. Backlight does not generate separate pages for mobile. It's an antiquated technique, and one that flies in the face of responsive design.
Meanwhile, the new Photoswipe is pretty fantastic on desktop and mobile alike, which makes everything else essentially pointless.
The most compelling reason that I might have to bring Highslide back for Backlight is the Client Response Gallery's comparative presentation mode, whereby visitors may enlarge multiple images for side-by-side comparison. This is a feature that Highslide enabled me to implement, and one that no other library supports (at least insofar as I am aware). If I did bring it back, though, then Backlight would need to generate separate pages for mobile, we'd have to start sniffing user agents and forcing redirects ... =/
So for now, I'm keen to have Photoswipe be the thing, and we'll see how much fuss gets made about it.
I could probably build an option to disable sharing from Photoswipe for those against it.
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Thanks, Matt, for taking the time to explain all of that. I can see now that Highslide doesn't make a lot of sense in the era of touch screens and mobile devices. I didn't realize that when I posted the question. I can see that Photoswipe is the far more elegant solution to that whole sete of issues. I can certainly live with its link to social media.
Walter
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