Last year, Björn from Modularweb created the Piecemaker, a completely free, open source, 3D Flash image rotator gallery. Now, to kick off 2011, Björn’s giving away The Piecemaker 2: totally revamped, with brand new features. Read on for more!
What’s New?
Building on the original, the Piecemaker 2 now includes:
- Unlimited transition effects
- The ability to include SWF files and videos
- Improved navigation (using tooltips)
- Animated shadows
It’s also entirely XML-based, and the HTML/CSS parsing has been improved, allowing special characters to be used. Plus, images can now contain hyperlinks to other websites.
What About WordPress?
A lot of readers wanted to use the original Piecemaker gallery in their WordPress blogs — so many that Nettuts+ published a tutorial explaining how to do just that!
This time around, Kuba from MassivePixelCreation has made it simple. He’s worked with Björn to create a free WordPress extension you can use to embed the Piecemaker 2 right into your site.
Get it Now!
The Piecemaker 2 is open source, so feel free to download it, use it in any project you like, learn from it, modify it and improve it if you can. We’d love to see what you do with it. Also — and of course this is no binding condition — we’d love to showcase your work on the official Piecemaker website.
Further Resources
If you want to know more about The Piecemaker 2, get yourself over to ModularWeb for a FAQ section and a Showcase of examples. Also, stay up to date with further developments by following @modularweb, @mProCreation and @envatoactive on Twitter.
Note: If you’re getting an error message about an invalid header when trying to add this to WordPress, then here’s a tip from reader Billy:
I got the same error message at first – then I unzipped the original Piecemaker .zip archive, and browsed the folder contents. There is a “Read Me” file, as well as a few .jpg screen shots with helpful instructions on how to modify the slider and so forth. There is also another .zip file called “piecemaker2.zip.” If you upload THIS file through the WordPress Plugin “Upload” utility, and activate it as you normally would, everything works great!
Thanks, Billy!
Enjoyed this Post?
Subscribe to our RSS Feed, Follow us on Twitter or simply recommend us to friends and colleagues!
By Björn Crüger
Join our newsletter!
Create a Tutorial, Get Paid!
Have something to teach the world? Want to earn money doing it? Tutorials, screencasts, and articles published here on Activetuts+ are largely contributed by readers just like you! We'll pay you great money for good content. Find Out More
I also do need cyrillic support
i think its needed to add utf-8 support to the swf of the library?
it is possible please?
i seen here solution http://dreamthemedesign.com/support-forums/discussion/1150/slider-engene-doesnt-support-russian/p1
but unfortunately there is only access for registered members who bought themes, so the registration is not free – i can get the zip archive with cyrillic fix from there…
would be much grateful for help…
hi all1
how can i reshape the menu if i change them a circle to a square. there is only color description given like
MenuColor1=”0×999999″ MenuColor2=”0×333333″ MenuColor3=”0xFFFFFF”
Now, I’m using this piecemaker…. . It’s great!
The Piecemaker 2 …. Verry nice show!!!
I go to use it on my website.
But, how can I stop the show automatic on the last picture?
Hans
Ik wil laten stoppen de show bij de laatste afbeelding.
Iemand die me raad kan geven?
Hans
I want to stop the show at the last image.
Someone who can give me advice?
Hans
Amazing rotator, thank you for this great plugin!
Any fix for the problem?
I’m afraid I still haven’t heard back :/
Hi.
The app looks fantastic…
only problem I have, I cant upload it, and there are no installation notes anywhere.
I consider myself pretty good at Joomla, and cant understand why it doesn’t show up anywhere in my back-end…
I tried to upload the archive as it is (3.5 MB) – says there is no installation file.
I tried to upload it manually as a component – nothing shows up in backend.
I tried to upload it manually as a plugin – nothing shows up in backend.
I am using Joomla 1.5.25. – How do I install this thing? – In the Documentation PDF is no installation instructions.
Am I stupid or what ? – I just cant seem to get it installed (and YES, I am using the joomla version – NOT the WP)
any installation tutorial would be very helpful !
thanks,
-Halaster
Hi,
I’ve downloaded the zip file, then uploaded the piecemaker.zip via WordPress Plugin Upload, uploaded images via Piecemaker Assets, images not showing, just appears the name of the image.
Using FTP I have checked the folder piecemaker_images and they are there.
Created a new picemaker and go to add slides, but there’s not images.
Is there some new upgrade of the plugin or something?
Thanks for any help
Unpacking the package…
Installing the plugin…
The package could not be installed. No valid plugins were found.
Plugin install failed.
i got this error please check
I’ve got this problem too. Decision: you have at first to unzip the archive & after it to choice the zip-order piecemaker in suborder. This “zip-suborder” will be installed.
Enjoy!
Rezo
Hallo Björn,
danke für super-Slider, echt tolle Arbeit.
Leider habe ich das Problem mit Kodierung, auch wenn allen vorhandenen Dateien bereit Unicode UTF-8 verpasst wurde… NUr halt die fla-Dateien sind nicht vorhanden, sonst hätte man sie vielleicht auch ändern können?
Bin verzweifelt, bitte um Hilfe.
Besten Dank in Voraus.
Rezo
spectacular! but has some negative factors
no jquery
no loop (!)
no timeout for each transition (!)
width, height settings repeated on javascript and xml and also for video items
thanks!!!
loop solved. the video in the last item doesnt’ work and stop the rest
Hi! I have a problem editing the file.
How can I REMOVE the bellow buttons? The “circle” ones that had a load bar in each transition?
ANY HELP WILL BE MOST THANKED!
Under the Controls set the control alpha and control alpha over values to the minimum levels say 0.1 and there you go… !!!
Thanks!
So, Iwas messing around all kind of scripts and still cant delete that “evil” button bellow the images….
Here’s a screen so you can see what Im talking about:
http://i.imgur.com/Gcszh.jpg
Anyone know how can i remove that??
Piecemaker is good but with no support it is wasted. Only the absolute basic questions are addressed.
Pity.
Does any one know how to change the height of the slideshow. And also how do you make your words show, because I edited the paragraphs but my words are not showing
I am working on a site for a client and using the Piecemaker 2 slider/content rotator. On all browsers with the exception of IE it works fine. IE will not show the slider at all.
Any ideas?
Need help, I am using the piecemaker one for a site that I am doing. However, the piecemaker overlaps my submenus. Is there any way that I can change the Z-index of the piecemaker?
Hello, I have problems with my picemaker. For some reason, it always shift to the right. I have tried decreasing and increasing with, puting an iframe linking to the index html and much more. But it always shifts to the right. Does anyone know how to center the picemaker?
this is great…. but i got some problems,
1. I need to reduce with & height to image size imean in here their is lot of space around the main image. i need only the image in width and height is with shadow only.
2. how can i use it on html page.not in wordpress