How to stop gallery feed block from cropping thumnails?

[FZ]

As per title, can anybody tell me how to modify the template to stop the thumbnails from being cropped into landscape? I only want to show a single image drawn from a gallery of mixed orientation images on a sidebar. There's no need for this cropping. 

[opentype]

Do you have square thumbnails activated in the Gallery settings?

[FZ]

I did, but have turned it off and re-built the gallery, yet the cropping continues. Is this cached somewhere? 

[Randy Calvert]

I’m mobile so I can’t test this, but I seem to recall that those settings do not change existing images only new ones going forward. Have you tried uploading a few new images since the change?

[FZ]

Just now, Randy Calvert said:

I’m mobile so I can’t test this, but I seem to recall that those settings do not change existing images only new ones going forward. Have you tried uploading a few new images since the change?

No, this is a historical gallery I want to show. 

Surely it must be possible to show an uncropped thumbnail somehow? 

[opentype]

5 minutes ago, FZ said:

Surely it must be possible to show an uncropped thumbnail somehow? 

That depends. Are there uncropped thumbnails saved in the system or not. That would be the first thing to check. If yes, there might be a way to access them. If not, the widget it irrelevant. It can’t load, what doesn’t exist. 

[FZ]

When I turned off the square thumbnails setting (which weren't square but rectangular), I asked the system to re-build the gallery, which it said it was doing. There are some 3000 images in the gallery in total. I'm assuming that this "re-build" means it is re-building thumbnails? If not then what is it re-building? 

I haven't used the gallery in a long time. Starting to remember why. 

[Randy Calvert]

There is more than just thumbnails to consider… there are things like watermarking and the master image itself. 🙂 

[FZ]

So still no solution? Surely somebody must know how to fix this? Do I have to open a ticket? 

[opentype]

Template customization help isn’t part of the IPS support. 

But I had a look. The gallery image feed widget uses background images with the background-size property set to “cover”. That’s why the images are cropped. So, if uncropped thumbnails are saved, the widget would need to be customized to show the images with the background-size property set to “contain”. That would fix it. 

Edited October 31, 2022 by opentype

[FZ]

Thanks for looking into this. 

I don't work on this IPS site often and am now unsure of where I will find that template for the widget? 

[FZ]

Looked all over, I don't see the answer. :( 

[Marc]

Its in CSS you would likely want to change this if you wish to customise how things are shown on your site. As mentioned above, this would be beyon dthe scope of technical support for the prouct. If you are unsure on how to add CSS to make changes, you would need to employ a theme designer to make those changes on your behalf. 

You would not see unedited CSS by the way. Only custom CSS is shown. So you would generally inspect the item using inspect tools on the browser to see what you wish to target, and then add to custom.css whatever rules you need

[FZ]

Aha. 

Thank you both. I have now applied both your suggestions and resolved the issue. 

[Marc]

Glad to hear it 🙂 

[FZ]

Now that I have my block looking the way it is supposed to look, something else that is not normal seems to be at play. 

So the block is set to pull and display at random ONE photo from a category that contains over 700 images (not stored in any albums). I've been watching the behaviour of this block since I got it looking the way I want it and it seems to only pick from about 10 of the 700+ images stored in the category. 

I know that there is some caching going on somewhere, not sure how to stop the block from doing that, but surely it should pick randomly from the entire category? Is there a setting I am missing somewhere? 

Edited November 3, 2022 by FZ

[Randy Calvert]

Blocks do get cached, and I don’t believe there is a way to disable it. 

[Jim M]

36 minutes ago, FZ said:

Now that I have my block looking the way it is supposed to look, something else that is not normal seems to be at play. 

So the block is set to pull and display at random ONE photo from a category that contains over 700 images (not stored in any albums). I've been watching the behaviour of this block since I got it looking the way I want it and it seems to only pick from about 10 of the 700+ images stored in the category. 

I know that there is some caching going on somewhere, not sure how to stop the block from doing that, but surely it should pick randomly from the entire category? Is there a setting I am missing somewhere? 

Apart from what Randy mentioned, I would also recommend ensuring that you have selected each category. People sometimes do not select sub-categories and just the parent categories so want to ensure that each and every category you have is selected for this block.

[FZ]

Thanks. 

I've checked and double checked, it's a single (parent) category, no albums, no sub-categories. It really should be selecting from a big variety of images dating back at least 10 years, but it is limiting itself to a very small number of them. It shouldn't be this way. 

[Marc]

Is this the "Inspired" block? Just so I know which Im looking at, so we can get it looked at

[FZ]

Indeed it is. 

[Marc]

Please could you upgrade to the latest release and test first of all? Once you have done this, if you are seeing the same, we can get this escalated to be looked at

[FZ]

OK, I was holding off on that because I just spent a bunch of time doing the last updates and re-building my theme (which didn't like the updates). 

 

[Marc]

No problem. Let us know once you get chance and we can certainly take a look

[FZ]

I spent the whole of last weekend getting my site updated with software and the theme I use. Now you bring out another update and once again it's telling me that my theme is going to break and that another application I have is going to require an update or it too won't work. All of which means that I must probably spend another entire weekend working on this website that doesn't actually make me any money. 

This is ridiculous. 

You software developers ought to know that your clients are not your piggy banks. Your job is to produce things that work. That is what we pay for. I am not going to keep on paying for things that constantly break and require me to fork out money for other bits that are no longer compatible with whatever unnecessary changes you have made to the thing that once worked. 

I feel like I am being extorted.