What it is
The EasyImageCaption plugin displays caption text for images within Joomla! articles.
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
The EasyImageCaption plugin searches for text specified in an image's ALT or TITLE tag (depending on your plugin settings) to use it as the image's caption. If some text is found, the image will be surrounded by a DIV element, and the caption text will be displayed inside a P element within the DIV, below the image. The DIVs width, margin, and alignment (float) settings are taken from the image.
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 just like 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.