Design question, creating a video/flash site. Proper use of ModX

Greetings everyone!

I have been looking at ModX for a few evenings (I’m getting very exited about it ) and I have been thinking about if I can use it with a new video content site I’m creating. I have read over the documentation and I’d like to get feedback if the design that I have in my head is in the right direction or if it is possible. It would be great to get recommendations if things can be done in a better/simpler way. My background is mainly in Asp.net C# programming and with MSSQL and ORACLE databases. I’ve done some javascript/css hacks as well but I’m new to PHP.

Requirements:
The site has only a few categories but each category will have a scrolling flash movie with thumbnails you can click on. The thumbnails inside the flashfile will be dynamically loaded via a url list from a database. I’m thinking it will be simple to include this list in the OBJECT/EMBED tag for the flash movie to read from. The content management person will have the ability to add/remove thumbnails that will point to new QT video files by editing this url list. When the thumbnails are clicked inside the flash file a new QT movie is loaded without page refresh (with ajax functionality) so that the flash file is not reset on page load. A new flashfile will be loaded for each category. I want to use the ModX manager UI for the content creator so I would store these relative url lists in a new document for each category (fx. a comma separated value list in the document description). Then I would create a snipped that would take in a document id as a parameter and it would embed this url list in the object/embed tag. The same would apply for the object/embed tag for the QT movie being loaded on click. Each QT movie has a different size so I’ll have to scale them up or down to make them fit into the same display area, So I’m thinking that the content manager (CM from now on) would create a new document for each QT movie where he would enter the dimensions of the movie. Maybe TV’s would be a better bet here?

Technical questions:

• Do you know if PHP read information from a QT file, fx. getting the dimensions of the movie? That way the CM wouldn’t have to enter this info each time he adds a movie.


• I know that some years ago Flash was not very good with Javascript, do you know if I can call a javascript function from within Flash that can trigger the execution of a snippet that would render a new QT file on the page without whole page reload?
  

I’m looking forward to feedback .
- Bjarki

P.s. here is what the site will look like http://www.koggull.com/ny/, the scrolling flash file will appear below when ads, films or design is clicked. Do you think I can skin the dropdownmenu with this menu look?
PP.ss I had problems getting the thing to center both horizontally and vertically, It did not work until I changed the header from to Can’t this be done with css as opposed to tables?

Well a little Google work can make wonders. Here is the answers to at least two of my questions

# Do you know if PHP read information from a QT file, fx. getting the dimensions of the movie? That way the CM wouldn’t have to enter this info each time he adds a movie.

Answer: http://getid3.sourceforge.net/ and http://ffmpeg-php.sourceforge.net/

# I know that some years ago Flash was not very good with Javascript, do you know if I can call a javascript function from within Flash that can trigger the execution of a snippet that would render a new QT file on the page without whole page reload?

Answer: http://weblogs.macromedia.com/flashjavascript/

That means that the CM should only need one ModX page for each category with urls to thumbs and the QT movies. I could even grab the thumbs straight from the .Mov files..

"Proper" use of MODx? The only "proper" use is however you want to use it!

Hello sottwell,

Given the requirements, would you use ModX in the manner I’m describing? Given that you have experience with modx and I don’t. Of course I’d like to build the site in a proper way so that it is easily manageable. When is it appropriate to us Tv’s vs snippets? Do you have any comments on my centering problem in XHTML? Do you know where I can find an answer to that problem?

I use TVs if the value is to be dynamic, depending on the page. If the value is to be consistent across all pages, I use a snippet or a chunk.

I don’t like flash, and do not consider myself competent to comment on it.

Thanks for the reply Susan.

My centering difficulties are not Flash related at all, it’s more of a css/html question.

That’s a tricky question; it all depends on what’s getting centered, what container is it in, and which "mode" are you trying to persuade IE to work in. Better to go to the CSS gurus for this sort of thing.

Here’s one interesting method:

http://www.bluerobot.com/web/css/center2.html

And here’s another with refernce to IE 5:

http://www.simplebits.com/notebook/2004/09/08/centering.html

More:

http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=CenteringBlockElement