Difference between Image Annotate and Fotonotes

Added this to the project page: Compared to Fotonotes (another module for placing notes on images), this module uses the latest jQuery (shipped with Drupal 6) and the state of the art jQuery UI module, while Fotonotes is dependent on an old (last updated in 2006) custom JavaScript library.

Hi guys: I committed a new version and a dev snapshot is being done. Test it; you need to add a content type, activate comments for it and set up an imagefield with a special widget for the display (all in the README.txt file).

A few things I am going to clean/add in the next 48 hours before releasing the beta;

- security (mainly adding image_annotate checkings for user_access)
- cleaning and optimizing a few parts of the jquery
- making a better/more universal theme
- adding some jquery/UI features (like the ability to highlight a note by cliking a link displayed below the comment)

You can expect having something close to the first release this week.

The D6 version is in beta; stable version in the next few days.

The Image Annotate module needs nearly half a dozen module or more and if I dont want to install CCK and some others ( resource issues) it wont get installed. Fotonotes as far as I remember had no such hassles and worked in D 5.

The Image Annotate module requires ImageField and jQuery UI. The fact that these modules have dependencies (ImageField needs CCK, but I guess most of websites have it, jQuery UI requires jQuery Update) may sound tricky, but this is how most of things are built with Drupal; you use the pieces already present and add your features.

The idea with Image Annotate is to:

- build all features on top of jQuery.
- integrate with CCK/ImageField (which is where Drupal is heading).
- use APIs so that people can add features. For the moment only comment types of notes are allowed, but I am creating a hook that will allow people to use node references, taxonomy or whatever they can imagine.

Overall I am just trying to build this feature as close as possible to Drupal.

There can be excellent possibilities with CCK and jQuery. However they are not always needed.
Imagefield has some problem with certain compression of gifs which 'Image' does not have.
I actually tried to add Image Annotate/Fotonotes as a simple but attractive add-on for a blog/forum based community, which works almost out-of-the-box for Drupal 6.

When I tried experimentally to install Image Annotate I found due to dependency or dependencies of dependency there were unending list of modules - which made the site slower. Agreed that better hardware or dedicated cpu will remove any slowness but the simple fastness and working on any configuration was lost. Worse still it or some of the dependency needs not just 5x php but some advanced version of php5x. Once again have to agree that we are heading for newer php so this is not a complaint.

But I wish it was a simple thing like Fotonotes !