Ribbon Maker

A ribbon creation/corner decorator plugin that will allow you to generate your own ribbons for each of the 4 corners or you can upload your own graphics.

Features

• All of the features of the static corner ribbons
• Set the Message
• Set the Link
• Set the Title (hover message)
• Set the toolbar offset
• Set no toolbar offset
• Set horizontal offset for each corner
• Set the background and foreground color
• Control the visibility of the of ribbon via (de)activation
• Use custom images.
• Z positioning
• Our graphics can fade out via a timer control!

Now with added JSColor color picker!
Our plugin now loads with JQuery No-Conflict mode!

Additional Information

= Requirements =
PHP 5.x
GD image library

Issues

Godaddy 4GH has a strange cacheing problem, no matter what you set for cacheing over-ride, they cache things for upto a minute and typically longer so if you notice that your images don’t immediately display then wait at least 2 minutes and refresh and they’ll be there. However, if you know of a solution to this mess please let me know and I’ll add you to contributors line. Turns that after you mash “regenerate images” if the graphics still have not updated, if you do a ctrl+f5 (forced refresh of your browser) then new graphics appear. That makes it sound like a browser issue. But it isn’t. If anyone has some ideas. Please let me know so I can fix this or stop worry about fixing it in case it is a browser issue.

Site5 webhosting has a really old version of PHP and I believe the GD library. So if you aren’t getting generated banners and you are somehow based off of Site5.com that is most likely the problem. However, I am told that they are switching to the latest version of PHP in the next few weeks, so we will soon see.

Implementing the planned CSS rendering engine will alleviate both issues.

TODO

= REWRITE!!! =
Completely rewrite the plugin as it is hugely unmaintainable now. This must be done before anything else on the TODO list can be accomplished. I am currently looking for people to help with getting this done and for future development of the plugin. Benefits are new friends, additional promotion of your site and a warm fuzzy feeling!
* I am thinking of going with classes as well as segmenting the file into multiple parts.

Cookies

By using cookies I’ll be able to add a banner/graphic skipping mechanism. Example of this would be that you would tell the banner to not show for 5 pageviews, or skip for 5 then show up. By using cookies, we can control this on the user and when the cookie count matches, we will display the graphic in question.

Store for Future

Add database routines to store everything you create or upload for future retrieval at any time. Also, needed for scheduling.

CSS Functionality

Switch to a completely CSS driven routine. Which will solve resolution issues and transparency issues. Because the GD library sucks. For some reason GD is forcing me to use the “black” color for the transparency. It is not agreeing with the code at PHP.net. Going CSS will solve this issue. I just have to wrap my mind around CSS now. 😀

Transparency

Fix transparency issue. I checked with browsershots.org and it seems the images are drawing great. So if I can solve the issue where GD insists on black being the only transparent color for the background, things will be better. This will be a non-issue when the css rendering engine is implemented.

Scheduling

Allow the decorations to be scheduled to appear on any given time and day. This is great for the holidays, special events and more!