What it is
The EasyImageCaption Joomla! 1.5 plugin generates captions from images' TITLE or ALT tags in articles and displays them below (or above) the images.
It has been developed as an alternative to Joomla!'s built-in javascript caption solution as well as to the JCE editor's caption plugin.
How it works
Before displaying a website the EasyImageCaption plugin searches the article text for images. It then takes the content of an image's ALT or TITLE tag (depending on your plugin settings) to use it as the image's caption. You may restrict the "captionizing" to certain articles or certain images through the plugin's parameters.
The image element will be surrounded by a container element, and the caption is put inside that container as well, below or above the image. The container's width, margin, and alignment (float) settings are taken from the image, so that the image will keep its original position. The captions can be styled through the template's CSS file(s) or through the built-in basic style settings.
The behaviour is very similar to Joomla!'s built-in caption solution, but it does not use any javascript.
Why it has been developed
When looking for an adequate way to add captions to my images I found two solutions:
- Joomla!'s captions are done with javascript. Besides the fact that I try to avoid javascript whenever possible, I also do not like the usual 'image' button below the WYSIWYG editor since it is very limited in functions. But you have to use it for adding the caption to the image. I prefer the JCE editor's (extended) image manager instead. That leads to the second solution...
- The JCE editor comes with a caption plugin (available for JCE subscribers only). It adds DIV and P elements to images, similar to EasyImageCaption, but puts them directly to the editor's content, so the caption is visible and editable within the JCE. That looked promising since it allowed HTML formatting of the caption as well, but it has become apparent that a less experienced user can easily mess up the code within the editor when using the plugin. Also having the caption text written within the article's text can cause problems in modules or RSS feeds.
So I decided to write my own plugin.
I developed the EasyImageCaption plugin for my own websites and it worked for me so far. However there may be conflicts with certain Joomla! extensions that I have not installed. If you experience such problems, please tell me. I will then try to modify the plugin.