Hi Deborah,
I'm glad you like the test exercise and thank you too for the compliments.
Here's a little more on how tMagic makes decisions on thumbs.....
1. tMagic decides on aspect ratio of thumbs by either examining them all for a common aspect ratio, e.g. all set at 2:3 as stored, or by parameter selection. The former is an auto mode selection of the same parameter. SophieBox is preprogrammed to operate with 9:16 (HD), 2:3, 5:7, 3:4, 4:5, 1:1, 5:4, 4:3, 7:5, 3:2, 16:9 (HD). Each is programmed as a specific tMagic number, e.g. your 2:3 is tMagic 67 (2 divided by 3 is .67 times 100 is 67).
2. Once an aspect ratio is chosen, tMagic uses a look-up table to determine the size of the thumb to dynamically create based upon the aspect ratio and the number of thumbs to display. This allows the size of the thumb array to maximize available display space and can produce thumbs up to the maximum 96 x 96, e.g. the example of three thumbs at 4:5 aspect ratio created a single row of up to 4 thumbs at 77W x 96H.
3. Because it's a single row and there aren't sufficient thumbs to fill the four available slots, SophieBox by parameter option as set centered the three; otherwise the row would show left shifted as most thumb systems do.
4. The main view picures (yours) are all cropped at 2:3 aspect ratio. However, SophieBox can display thumbs at other than their original aspect ratio by cropping either the width or height of the thumb to fit the thumb at the selected aspect ratio. SophieBox thus cropped the top and bottom of each thumb to fit the 2:3 thumbs in the 4:5 aspect ratio space (no stretching). This feature can also completely free you of having to crop main images to a specific aspect ratio, just because you need to operate a main view window and it's thumbs at specific dimesnions/aspect ratios. Think placing a wide-angle picture of the beltline of an outfit (ornate buckle) with otherwise portrait standing model shots in your current method, and how you'd by necessity need to do a weird 2:3 shot of the beltline instead of the more natural 3:2 wide. This feature completely escapes that trap by allowing any dimesioned photos for main to operate with a perfect set of no-white-space common aspect ratio thumbs.
5. In situations where the standard Auctiva thumb won't fill the thumb space, i.e Auctiva's thumbs are limited to 80 x 80, SophieBox automatically switches to use the main "original" image to resize.
And now you have a little better understanding of the magic.
Trust me...I do understand how time consuming cropping of photos and the limitations of use can slow productivity and create poor choices.
Oh....and the tMagic number is set as a parameter in the code when SophieBox is stored as a template in the Auctiva system. HOWEVER, that parameter and many others can be overriden from the description box. In fact that example of yours has template stored at 67 and the tMagic 80 override number for 4:5 was passed from description section code. You can also override things like the color of the background mat for a picture. This frees you from the need to constantly update or store multiple templates for simple options needed to list.
So, in answer to the question of number of thumbs per row, it depends on what you instruct tMagic to do and how many thumbs you have for a listing. For your specific 2:3 primary use, tMagic can give you 5, 6, or 7 thumb cells in a single row with a scale of 1-5 at 64x96, 6 at 60x90, and 7 at 50x75. With 4 or less, you can use the centering feature (like the example).
And that's the SophieBox rendition of "herding cats".... Hum a few bars of Cat Scratch Fever hehe ROFL
Danno
