Populate Maxigallery slideshow from results of ditto feed?

I’ve created a gallery site that includes a parent gallery container, child subgalleries containers, and beneath these, child image pages. All of the galleries are populated using Ditto. I want to create a homepage slideshow populated by images that possess a flag keyword tag provided when each image page is created. My approach to this is to create a child page to the homepage that contains a ditto feed that pulls these images into a chunk tpl called "homeSS" (the img tag in the chunk uses phpThumb to size the images). Here’s my question -- can I use this to populate the slideshow? Here’s the call I’ve created:

[tt][!MaxiGallery? &display=`embedded` &embedtype=`smoothgallery` &smoothgallery_height=`500` &smoothgallery_width=`700` &smoothgallery_preloader=`true` &picturetpl=`homeSS` &smoothgallery_timed=`true` &smoothgallery_delay=`3000` &smoothgallery_fadeDuration =`500` &order_by=`random` &smoothgallery_embedLinks=`true` &smoothgallery_showArrows=`false` &smoothgallery_showCarousel=`false` &smoothgallery_showInfopane=`false` !][/tt]

Also, if this approach is feasible, do I need to include smoothgallery_embedLinks in the call if the document ID is pulled into homeSS?

Thanks for your assistance!

Why do you need MaxiGallery to do this? Simply use an appropriate tpl for Ditto, and have the slideshow javascript you want. The javascript works on a specified structure, the Ditto tpl would produce that structure.

Isn’t it the same thing? In this scenario I’m proposing to use MaxiGallery to call a javascript slideshow. I don’t have to mess around with downloading/extracting/configuring anything else, and I’m using an add-on that’s well integrated into MODx.

That said, after posting this I did look into doing exactly what you suggest. One of the things I don’t like about the js slideshows -- at least jquery cycle, which is the primary one I’ve considered -- is that they stack the slideshow images into the page’s HTML. I have a scenario where literally hundreds of images could be called into the slideshow, so that’s not feasible.

Having spent a bunch of time yesterday on the forum looking into what others have implemented, it sounds as though you’ve had some experience with these. Any script and/or product you’d recommend?

It doesn’t matter, if you’re using one of the built-in javascript slideshows that MaxiGallery provides, it’s doing the same thing. You can load the smoothgallery yourself just as easily as you can download, install and configure MaxiGallery for no other reason than to use the smoothgallery display. The purpose of MaxiGallery (or any other gallery, for that matter) is for management of the images in question. The provided display methods are just an extra benefit. So if you’re not using its image management features, then there’s not much point in using MaxiGallery at all. Actually, I’m not sure if MaxiGallery will even load the javascript if it doesn’t find images where it expects them to be.

There are plenty of gallery scripts that load their images from arrays, or even from xml files. Ditto can generate either of these. There are even a lot of Flash galleries that read xml files. http://www.visual-blast.com/flash/free-flash-gallery-solutions-for-your-images/

Each of my blog pages has content and its own maxigallery.
I have a ditto call on a my "main news page" that has the past 5 blog pages made.

I am getting only the "manage pictures" button, no actual gallery images, on the page with the ditto call.

I have the maxigallery call on a seperate page where I have the images uploaded to as:

[[MaxiGallery?
&max_pic_size=`585x543`
&quality_pic=`100`
&max_big_size=`585x543`
&max_thumb_size=`315x315`
&quality_thumb=`100`
&gal_query_id=`[*id*]`
&display=`pictureview`
]]

and then again within the ditto template as:

[[MaxiGallery? &gal_query_id=`[*id*]` ]]
[+summary+]

I have tried all kinds of cached and uncached combinations.

what am I doing wrong here?

You shouldn’t use &gal_query_id=`[*id*]` in your actual gallery document.