Making templates -- works pretty good but...

[DemonDuck]

...there are naming problems. Here's a rough example:

I'm using v2.096

1) Take a completed project named "Foo" and "Save As" a template. Name it "Template".
2) Start FFC and Open Project "Template"
3) Replace the cube faces using Tourificator in the usual way.
4) Save your new project using "Save As"
5) Publish the project -- used to be Flashificate. Flashificator reports that your project was published to the correct location. However, the files folder which should be named "NewProject_files" has the name of the original project that the Template project was made from. The HTML file is called index.html instead of NewProject.html and in index.html, all the references are to the old project name for example: <param name="movie" value="OldProject_files/pano.swf" />

Then when you try to Open the newly published pano for testing, the browser can't find the html file because it's looking for "NewProject.html" and index.html is the name of the published html file. Also, the xml file has to be edited.

All these inconsistencies can be easily edited for change. However, I recommend making a new Action menu item, "Save as Template" which would invoke the actions necessary to rename all the references in the HTML page; rename the index.html file to the name of the template; rename the files folder to the name of the template.

Then I would add a new start up option to use a template so that when FFC asks which project to open, there is a check box to tell FFC that a template is being used.

Then, when the user starts a new project and uses a template, FFC asks for the name of the new project as usual and then when the project is published with the project name, all the references in the HTML page are corrected to the new project name; the index.html file is renamed properly and the files folder is renamed to the project name.

In other words, try to completely automate the use of templates by handling all the little fussy editing details. It's important to automate this because every time you publish, you have to re-edit the the html page and the folder name reverts. And it will only be a source of confusion to have a whole bunch of similarly named files with similar references inside.

Otherwise, templates work great and really saves me time because I always do the same thing to publish a pano.

[Trausti Hraunfjord]

Confirmed. I have noted this down to be corrected ... the files folder should of course be named the way it should... there is a missing condition somewhere in the code that would make this a non-issue.
As far as I can tell, this only happens when the "Use project name for HTML file" tickbox is ticked at startup. Most users never use that option, and that has to be the reason for it never having been reported earlier. It used to work as it should, but many changes have taken place since the early days, and somewhere along the way things have gone off track.

Many thanks for bringing this up... I MAY have received a reference report about this once before... I'm not sure... but if that was the case, I didn't understand it. This time it was properly explained for recreating the issue.

Until further notice, I would recommend you to create your projects without ticking the "Use project name for HTML file" option. The main folder will always be correctly named, and the files folder will only be named "files" (for all projects).... if you publish all your projects into one main folder, with the sub folders properly named individually for each project, I can clearly see that it is a major problem. If not, then you would be safe with the simpler option of not ticking the before mentioned tick-box.

Trausti