The Joomla! Extensions Directory ™

I was looking for an extension that would let me display thumbnails of videos in a list view that would then play the video on an article page or in a modal popup, but which also allowed me to put the thumbnail with my own text, rather than the Youtube summary (so it can be more easily translated using JoomFish).

I was starting to despair before finding this plugin, but it does exactly that. You can save each video as a separate article, together with your accompanying text, so there's no messing about with playlists or xml files, you're just using the Joomla core, so can control the number of items appearing in your list, and the paging.

It uses the full URL to the Youtube video rather than the more standard {youtube}video reference{/youtube}, so you do have to be a little careful if you're using JCE, which will convert full URLs to links if you don't enter them in code view or with the JCE visual editor turned off. If you leave them as links, then the thumbnails will appear twice with a little leftover HTML showing. But, as it's a one-click operation to unlink again in JCE, that's not too big a deal for me.

The plugin gives control over the size of the thumbnails on the page and the video in the modal popup, which script to use for the popup, and whether or not to load that javascript library (thoughtful, and useful for avoiding jQuery problems with multiple versions), the overlay colour and opacity, and Youtube controls, so there's a fair bit of flexibility. It's not possible to override global settings on a video-by-video basis (as you can with AllVideos), but again that's not an issue for me as I like consistency, anyway.

The developer responded very quickly to a bug that I reported, and I had a fix the following day, which augurs well for support.

A great little plugin at a very reasonable price!

Very flexible for repeating events, good base templates that can be customised through overrides in the component itself and HTML overrides, and excellent support.

If you want to use it straight out of the box, it's pretty straightforward, working much as you'd expect a calendar component to work. If you want to get under the hood, there are plenty of hooks to hang your code onto for professional users too.

I've used this on a number of sites, and particularly like the fact that you can edit the output from the various components to put your own classes and ids on elements - makes CSS much easier, and you don't have to go searching through HTML override files to change things.

Some of the layouts are a bit table heavy - the main monthly calendar view couldn't be done any other way, mind - but the weekly, daily, today, and category views use tables quite heavily too. The iconic layout (a paid for add-on) uses them far less, if you are concerned about web standards and accessibility.

There's pretty good integration with JoomFish, with a free extension to provide translations of events themselves, and it's fairly easy to find how to tweak things to be able to translate categories too.

The third-party support is good. I've used DT Register to bolt on to jEvents to provide a simple ticket buying facility for a charity that puts on theatre productions.

I know I mentioned it at the top, but the support is awesome. Geraint seems to prowl the Forums pretty much constantly. I've yet to post a query that's not be answered within a few hours. Usually to find out it's a RTFM error on my part...

The additional (paid-for) additional plugins and templates are also well worth the subscription fee.

I combined this with a simple image carousel extension to create a Flash-less Splash page for one of my clients - works very well! I'd add the Lightbox (or other modal popup) request so that the transition to and from the splash page can be controlled more.

One more thing to add to the wish-list is to separate out the presentation and follow an MVC model, so that I've got a bit more control via HTML overrides. At the moment, if I want to make a change to the output HTML file, I have to edit code within the mod_splashr.php file itself which, next time I apply an update I'll have to remember to do again.

And I'm sure it's a typo, but the container div id is currently named 'slashpage' - unless those are kind of web sites you work on, obviously ;)

Overall though, a very nice extension to use.

Been experimenting with using this as the base for a Splash Page I know, I know, I don't like them either, but my clients are insisting on it), combined with a modal popup. Very simple to use, good customisation in the back-end for those who don't want to get their hands dirty with direct manipulation of their site's HTML and CSS.

On the plus side, this is the only component I've found which gives you the option to play through a folder of images once and then stop (which seems a strange omission from the other extensions in this category) - pretty much an essential requirement if you're using this for a splash screen.

There's also no documentation, although there are explanatory tooltips in the back-end, and the labels for each option are pretty clear.

It is set up for HTML overrides, but it's not easy to use this facility as all of the content is stored externally. For those who prefer to use the HTML override to control the content, and external CSS files to ensure consistent presentation, this isn't the easiest way to set things up.

There's one omission in the transitions, which is a cross-fade from one image to the next. The fade transition provided fades back to the background colour before fading the next image up - that can be an annoying depending on the images you're using.

Used this on two sites now, and it's easy to customise from the Joomla back-end, but also pretty straightforward to work out how to create HTML overrides, and tweak the CSS for finer control, which I need to do as a developer.

I'd previously hand-coded sides using MCE so was very used to the flexibility in deciding what tools my users got to use, so was a bit frustrated by the default installed tool.

This gives me all the flexibility I was looking for. Given that the whole point of a CMS like Joomla is to make it easy to update the content (hopefully without breaking or ruining the design!), this should be the first extension you install on any site created, IMHO.

That's one minute to install and the remaining 29 checking out the online tutorial and checking backwards and forwards. I'm based in Wales which means anything for the public sector, and any major voluntary organisations have to be bilingual English/Welsh, so this is going to be a huge help.

Only problem is that the Welsh language translation is only a Beta and there's a few bits missing, so I'm going to have to do my bit for the community and help translate what's remaining.

Diolch!

I've just spent the past month or so evaluating the download components available here, and jDownloads is the one I'm going to be using. For me, the ability to upload a mass of files via FTP and then work my way through them adding in detail is a must - it means half my work can be left overnight. Much easier than uploading files one at a time.

The front end/back end is well thought through. It's very customisable, and yet very straightforward to use. I've not hit any snags, or any issues that I couldn't work out myself, so I've not used the support site yet.

I'd repeat the request for RSS support, or some auto-generation of a newsletter so I can let my users know what's new, but apart from that this hits just about every nail squarely on the head.

This is really useful, but it means that my pages no longer validate as HTML 4 or XHTML 1.