I want to create a bespoke slideshow

[tomcrane]

This issue is closely related to #36 in that it's intended for a very specific viewing environment. An example of this is Micromosaics (and similar slideshows at V&A). There are some differences in the story below, that show the different kind of content. For focus, this issue is based on the V&A slideshow, but the modelling approach has been changed slightly to explore a particular feature of the editor.

I don’t know much about IIIF other than hearing people mention it at work. I work on web content production for a museum.

I have been given the URL of a Manifest to work on, a Google Doc full of copy and instructions for the some particular areas of interest.¹ I know that slideshow = manifest, because I've been given a manifest to start with and I'm going to the manifest editor to make the slideshow. I've seen some other examples of the slideshow format and I know that:

• It presents a sequence of images, with text panels accompanying them
• The text panels appear in different places on each slide - there is a set of layout options rather than a single fixed one
• Each image also has a credit/attribution note
• Some slides start with the image already zoomed in to a particular point (but I can still pan and zoom)
• Some transitions between slides aren't actually changes of image, they just re-focus the image on a different part.{^2]

I open the manifest editor at the URL given to me:
https://example.org/manifest-editor?configuration=slideshow²

The Manifest Editor opens with just one option available - in a list of templates for creating a new Manifest, there is only one. But I don't click that, I already have the Manifest to work on. So I paste that into the obvious box, and it opens.

The different images in the Manifest appear in a strip down the side, like PowerPoint. The Editor calls these things Canvases rather than slides, but whatever.

Now I go through the Google doc I’ve been given. I need to give each Canvas the label and summary from the doc - and I can see that the editable Canvas/slide has these properties available to be filled in. All of the slides in the document have title and text, and a note that indicates which slide layout to use. The doc says these go in the behavior field, and I can see that I can edit that for each slide, too. In fact there's a drop down with only the choices mentioned in the document, so that's easy.³

Each entry in the doc also has an attribution/credit notice for the image, which the document informs me needs to go into the requiredStatement field.

But wait... there are 19 headings in the doc, but there are only 12 images in the thing I'm editing in the editor - the Manifest I was given. Some of the headings in the doc are for the same image, but different text and area of interest. I notice that when I'm editing the Canvas, as well as label, summary, behavior and requiredStatement, there's also an Annotations tab. The doc tells me to create an annotation for slides where the starting point is not just the whole image, so I can indicate the region.
So for the slides that don't start zoomed out on the whole image, I go into that tab. The UI is very sparse, just a prompt to draw a box.⁴

I draw boxes for slides that start with the image not at full zoomed out. But how do I add the labels and text (and sometimes boxes) for the slides that are the same image? The doc's not clear on that.

I realise I can just duplicate a slide, and change the text. The requiredStatement stays the same as it's the same image. For some I need to add a region box, and for one of them I needed to delete that box because the second slide is the "full screen" one.

I can keep on checking this via the Preview, which opens up what looks like a fake web page with the slideshow on it.⁵

I do this a few times as I add new headings from the document. I realise I have put the box for one of them in the wrong place so I go back and reposition the box for that one.

After I’m done for today I hit the Save button.

My Google Doc says “save the Manifest in the IIIF Collection Slideshows”. There are two main options in this Save UI - Permalink and IIIF Collections so I assume the latter. I go in there and can see other folders related to my department’s work. I can quickly find the folder I need, and I save it in there.⁶

After saving, the Save UI shows me a link to my Manifest, and a link to my Manifest in the Preview environment. I’m not sure which of these is needed so I just send them both to the content editor who asked me to do the work.

The next day I get an email with a few update requests. I go back to the editor. A thumbnail/icon for the thing I was working on is sitting right there in the middle of the screen under the heading “Recent” - so I just click on it and jump back in. I make the requested changes, Save again, and send the link back.

Footnotes

1. This is the “already hosted” use case. Manifest editor does not need to accept new image content. If the user is given a list of image service URLs, they can import as in I want to assemble a new Manifest for a book or manuscript #37 variation 1. A (perhaps more likely) alternative here is that the user has been given a IIIF Manifest that contains just the raw images, in sequence, in which case the import step can be missed out and they just open the supplied Manifest and start editing it. There's a wrinkle later where to get the job done they need to duplicate a Canvas. ↩

2. This is a general purpose instance of the manifest editor. It has a configuration section named “slideshow”. This configuration:

   • adds the slideshow “viewer” as the default Preview environment - probably in a pseudo web page to simulate its use on the live site. Mirador and UV are still available in the list.
   • Has a single template so that File->New can only create one kind of Manifest
   • The Manifest has institution-specific boilerplate already provided, e.g., provider property, logo.
   ↩

3. The slideshow config overrides (not adds to, in this case) the available behavior values on a Canvas. ↩

4. The config for "slideshow" says that one type of anno is permissible on a canvas - just a highlighting anno so only a box. It's not mandatory on a Canvas, just available. Is this a capture model? ↩

5. The default preview, from config, is a hosted web page that embeds the slideshow "viewer", taking the preview manifest URL on the query string. ↩

6. The configuration established two possible targets for Save - and only these two. The one chosen is one that can POST the manifest to a IIIF Collection for persistence. ↩