Beetlebrow multimedia gallery
The multimedia gallery accepts and plays or displays most media types, including MP4 and WMV video, MP3, WAV, AU etc sound files, and images of pretty much any size.
News stories can also be added allowing you to create your own multimedia news room, like the BBC.
The image galleries come in two sorts.
- With the first, the images are displayed as thumbnails (you control the size) and clicking on the thumbnail opens the image on a "lightbox", so the rest of the site is greyed out and the image floats above it. You can then close the image or browse the rest of the gallery without closing the lightbox floating image holder.
- Alternatively the first image of the gallery will load up at a large display size, with the other images arranged as thumbnails below. If you don't click on a thumbnail to view a second image, then after a short delay, the gallery automatically starts a slideshow, cycling through all the available images, to show them all in the larger size. You can also set image galleries up so they display a random image from the gallery, rather than a slideshow of all the images.
Video and audio galleries, and the multimedia gallery (which displays all media types in one central hub page) are laid out so that the latest addition is given prominence with a large clickable thumbnail. The next two most recent additions are given slightly smaller displays below that, while other items are listed on the left hand side with no thumbnails. There is also a link to a page which displays all the items of that media type on one page.
Audio and video files are embedded into and play on the page with the link, so there's no waiting for a new page to load.