townman

Feedback: Cannot select (to copy / replace) the text of a link in the image list.

Hi Sergey,

Thank you for the prompt reply – width=0 delivering a responsive layout is sweet thank you.

As I look around for alternatives, one of the really big advantages of this plugin for this purpose over others is the ease of adding images to the carousel. Selecting multiple images from the media library into the carousel is so very intuitive and does not duplicate things. Most of the other plugins I have looked at require each logo / image to be defined as a distinct entity within its own tooling.

This plugin setup page presents all images in a table allowing easy entry of linking URLs. Usability is excellent, it is just a shame about the image distortion. It is a pity that the plugin does not allow the specification of the carousel height and then allow the graphics to self resize within the container.

However … I have hacked the style sheet CSS in my local CSS file…

#sponsors_carousel-0 img {
width:auto !important;
height:100% !important;
}

Width ensures that the width is scaled by the same scaling applied to the height.
Height ensures that the image only fills the height of the container – the image height being set the same as the container results in the bottom of the image being cropped.

This hack turns this into a 5* plugin – simple to use (particularly selecting the images) and it looks smart.

See the result here – https://cheshire.camra.org.uk/beerfest/scratch-board/ – along side some other plugins I have tested.

There is some variance in scroll speed associated with the width of the image and as the move left they twitch a little as the height is reduced slightly.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 9 months ago by townman.

Hi Sunny,
Thank you for the prompt response confirming the observed behaviour. In principle I see nothing wrong with the behaviour … so long as it is understood by users that this is how it works. Hopefully this post might be found useful by others finding this behaviour as odd. The import reporting success but the events remaining invisible.

On the point of local edits to events, I will make a point of reviewing that. One of the things I have been doing is after events have been imported is to change their category when their status changes. [Unfortunately outlook .ics files do not contain the category information.] IIRC the category remains as changed afterwards, even though the import process content contains the same event’s other updates.

Hi Ben,

Thanks for your interest, here is the .ics – https://outlook.live.com/owa//calendar/c985f81b-ffe2-4deb-91f6-1ecb2874fdb8/5f632cd4-8f5d-4bb6-8d34-b013393c5567/cid-C30BA13D1AA101F2/calendar.ics

It is the same calendar feed as that in relation to the LOCATION address / map issues I’m still hoping for progress on.

BUMP!!

Hi Ben,

Is there any update to this please?

Note to anyone who has created additional corn tasks…

On the last update I noticed that the events were not updating as fast as I expected. On investigation, I found that the additional corn job I had created had been removed.

It would appear that updating the plug-in removes ALL associated corn jobs, requiring them to be reinstated.

Hi Ben,

It looks like that there has been an attempt to fix this in 2.5.11 – it is not mentioned in the change log and it is not a successful fix.

Before if there was just a venue name in ‘location’ it went against the venue name and appeared after an @ in the event title. If there was a full venue name and address, the address was filled in and a map was generated.

Now if there is a name and an address, the whole of it is stored in the venue name and no address / map is generated; the whole of the venue name / address is displayed after the @ in the event title.

Given the choice, I’d rather have this not “fixed” please!! Same .ics feed.

How many update cycles did you allow here?

I have seen it take 2+ update cycles for a deleted item to be removed.

I have seen other oddities too which initially led me to believe that the update interval was two hours. manually kicking the update a couple of times might verify if that is what you are seeing.

I mitigated this by setting up a cron job to run at 5 minute intervals. See a recent post on changing the update interval.

I created a new schedule – every 5 mins and then created a new cron job against this schedule.

Seems to work a treat!

IS “PENDING” a category you created in the plug-in and assigned to events on import? If yes, then the following might be relevant – if not just ignore me.

Despite the import documentation stating that import is a delete and re-add process, in my experience, importing a feed with ASSIGN TO CATEGORY set and then removing the assignment still leaves the events in the assigned category after a subsequent import. They acquire update details but retain the initially assigned category(ies). The only way to remove them is to delete the events and reimport WITHOUT assign to category set.

I have asked for clarification on this.

Personally I have managed around this issue by importing the events with assign to my default category (available) and then manually changing the status in the plug-in to something else when the state of each event changes. (Only a small fraction of my potential events will change state).

In my particular case, my .ics source (oulook.com) does not supply the category status at all, so it works well for me.

Hi Ben,

Thanks for your interest, here is the .ics – https://outlook.live.com/owa//calendar/c985f81b-ffe2-4deb-91f6-1ecb2874fdb8/5f632cd4-8f5d-4bb6-8d34-b013393c5567/cid-C30BA13D1AA101F2/calendar.ics

The items referenced above can be found on rows 99 – 146 (at the time of posting this response). I will try to avoid making changes to the calendar whilst you are investigating.

Hi Ben,

Not sure what you mean by “modified the feed”. IF you mean the import settings, yes I have – I removed the “assign to category” values.

Note initially I thought this was a FILTER BY CATEGORY of events in the import stream – not a “ASSIGN CATEGORY TO IMPORTED EVENT”.

Given that some bits of the documentation state that the IMPORT is a purge and replace I had expected that after removing the category assignment, the events would be imported WITHOUT being assigned to categories. This does not happen, events remain assigned as per the initial import.

For clarity, how it appears to work does not match bits of the documentation. Understanding how it is working, can be made to ‘support’ my business need in the absence of the outlook.ics delivering category data.

Interestingly, Google’s ics delivers a URL for the category – viz:

BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART:20150508T140000Z
DTEND:20150509T160000Z
DTSTAMP:20160821T142032Z
UID:[email protected]
CREATED:20150314T150225Z
DESCRIPTION:Sat 9th 12:00 to 15:30 free session\n\nPerfect for sampling a w
 ide range of ales\, free entry\, free parking\, family friendly\, food.
LAST-MODIFIED:20150314T150226Z
LOCATION:Rugby Club\, Priory Lane\, Macceslfield
SEQUENCE:0
STATUS:CONFIRMED
SUMMARY:Macclesfield beer festival
TRANSP:OPAQUE
CATEGORIES:https://schemas.google.com/g/2005#event
END:VEVENT

How that is handled / mapped might be worth an investigation by someone using Google calendar as their source.

The plug-in looks great – https://www.guillemot-trust.org.uk/sailing-experiences/ – responsive presentation on smaller viewports is cool beyond expectations! What’s even more impressive is that I can manage events via my iPhone calendar and within an hour or two they are on the website.

Automatic map generation is beyond cool and far exceeds reasonable expectations compared to other plug-ins … there is though a gremlin – but more about that later.

I have seen deletes take two refresh cycles … which means you need to poke the refresh manually or wait up to 2 hours.

Hi Ben,

Your response has proved very helpful – thank you. I think it has helped me conclude that I am not going to get my expectations (hopes) fulfilled here!

In response to your specific comments.

1. Thanks – I look forward to reading the updated documentation. Please feel free to ‘ping’ me with it before publication if you want user feed back. See comments in #3 below as well.

2. I think your statement underpins my expectation which is (in the circumstances described) NOT happening. If the events are imported with ‘assign to category(ies)’ set, they acquire the selected category(ies). If one then removes the category(ies) from the import settings and re-imports, the EXISTING events retain their previous assigned category although they now have the revised details.

It is not entirely clear to me that during my testing, that data is imported when indicated, it reports that N records were imported and I suspect that none were. I have been ‘messing’ with adding, deleting and changing events in the OUTLOOK.com calendar whilst changing the import settings.

I can assert for certain that existing categories assigned in a previous import (or set manually) are not changed on subsequent imports.

I suspect that two import events are sometimes required to get deleted events removed and modified events changed (though their previously applied category remains unchanged).

I can see merits in the way it works – ‘you’ just need to decide if the way it is working is the way you want it to work and publish a clear statement on functionality. From my perspective (see #3 below) I can see merit in being able to import events, assign a category, remove the import assignment and then manage the category within the plug-in … import updates then NOT altering that category. Indeed I can make that model fit my business need.

3. Here is the link again – https://outlook.live.com/owa//calendar/c985f81b-ffe2-4deb-91f6-1ecb2874fdb8/5f632cd4-8f5d-4bb6-8d34-b013393c5567/cid-C30BA13D1AA101F2/calendar.ics

THANK YOU for the suggestion of inspecting the .ics with notepad – I was not aware that it is a text feed. On inspecting the file contents, I have reached the following conclusions…

a) The Outlool.com .ics files do not expose the event’s category, so I am not (unless they change that) going to get the potential rich integration with this (or any other) plug-in I had hoped for.

b) The .ics ‘export’ is quietly selective over what it delivers – I was first concerned that the number of events imported is somewhat less than are in the source calendar. Analysis suggest that the ‘time window’ is limited to the start of the current month to import day + 184 days. In other words, events ‘further out’ than 6 months are not going to be seen in an Outlook.ics export. A matter to be addressed elsewhere, but one which might give rise to support queries here.

4. I am a PC user. Is ? the ‘window’ key? I cannot deselect the filter ‘populated’ by the last import category assignment.

Anyhow Ben, the experimentation subsequent to your help has helped me to conclude that I am not going to get the solution I really desire from any plug-in. That being the case, this plug-in gives me the best I can hope for, given that key information is not in the source data. Some clarification and tidy up of the import documentation and tooling would be a real bonus … remember I nearly walked away from this plug-in.

Thank you for your patient help!