Drupal image Rotator / Slider modules

Other modules that could be included:

• Views Accordion – a Views style plugin using the Accordion jQuery plugin

Other modules won’t be included:

• Couloir Slideshow – this seems more like a Lightbox gallery type solution… without the Lightbox.
• Frontpage Slideshow – this requires a paid 3rd party library.

Module documentation/demo comparison

Module
5.x
6.x
7.x
Documentation
Demo Site

Dynamic display block



ddblock.myalbums.biz
Handbook page
README.txt
http://ddblock.myalbums.biz

Views Nivo Slider


dev
Documentation
http://nivo.dev7studios.com/

Views Slideshow


alpha-1
Handbook page (5.x only)
README.txt
http://drupalhub.org/videos

Views Slideshow: Dynamic display block



README.txt (V1.x)
README.txt (V2.x)
Tutorial (V1.x)
Tutorial (V2.x)
http://ddblock.myalbums.biz

Views Slideshow: ImageFlow



README.txt
http://finnrudolph.de/ImageFlow

Slideshow Creator



Documentation
http://wingedhearts.org/grounded/carpetpython

Featured Content Slider



README.txt
www.iGadgets.be/ (Example site)

Media Nivo Slider



Documentation
http://nivo.dev7studios.com/

Carousel style modules

Slider



README.txt
http://jqueryfordesigners.com/demo/coda-slider.html

Views Carousel
dev
dev

Handbook page
README.txt
http://sorgalla.com/jcarousel/

Ajax Slideshow



dofinity’s page
README.txt
news.com

Fancy Slide



README.txt
None

Module feature comparison

This feature comparison is based on a spreadsheet done by stephthegeek.
For the purposes of discussion and comparison of these modules, the word tab refers to "the bit that you click on to switch to the next piece of content". In many of the rotator modules this is refered to as a thumbnail.

Module
Tabs
Tab content
Main content
Nav links
Behaviour options
Styles included

Dynamic display block

Pagers with Numbers, prev/next, links, images, custom and scrollable pager
Image folder, node, nodequeue, blocks, views

Speed, timeout, all jcycle effects, custom, etc.
15 free ddblock themes, commercial themes available.

Views Slideshow

Title and teaser of the node
Output of a View

Speed, fade effect, sort order
None

Views Slideshow: Dynamic display block

Pagers with Numbers, prev/next, links, images, custom and scrollable pager
Output of a View (Mapped fields)

Speed, timeout, all jcycle effects, custom, etc.
6 free slideshow themes, commercial themes available.

Views Slideshow: ImageFlow

Image and Link
Output of a View (Images only)

Slider, Aspect Ratio, Cursor, Start Position
None

Slideshow Creator

Next/Prev
Images that you manually select

Speed, timeout, all jcycle effects, etc.
Style with html surrounding the slideshow and with css.

Featured Content Slider

Numbers
Nodes of a chosen type

Animation speed, animation direction
None

Carousel style modules

Slider

Node titles
Nodes from a multi-value CCK noderef field

None
None

Views Carousel

Output of a View

Speed, orientation, easing effect
Two skins provided

Node Carousel

Based on nodequeue or custom content
Optional
Speed, orientation
None

Ajax Slideshow

Titles, Numbers, Images, Any field brought by views, Prev/Next, Custom
Any set of nodes or views object (controlled by a view)

transition type, transition speed, slide duration, w/wo navigation, w/wo border, viewport height, content source, w/wo teaser, advanced options.
node template based

Fancy Slide

Thumbnails to move to a given slide
Images from a node or a nodequeue
Optional
Slide duration, transition, transition duration, transition direction, manual/automatic advancement
Defaults provided

Detailed analysis

Dynamic display block

Benefits over other modules:

• Multiple input possibilities: Images from a folder, node, Nodequeue, Blocks (e.g recent comments), Views
• 15 example themes available with number pager, prev/next pager, link pager, image pager and image/link and scrollable pager
• Commercial slideshow themes available
• Examples available of different settings
• Well documented
• In advanced slideshows you make fields available to the ddblock themes via preprocess functions (flexible)

Disadvantages or areas in need of improvement:

• Ajax loading of content
• In advanced slideshows you have to make fields available to the ddblock themes via preprocess functions

Of note:

• Uses the jQuery Cycle plugin

In summary:
Flexible module with multiple input options. Multiple pager options. Most needed settings of jQuery Cycle plugin configurable in configuration page, otherwise you can use custom jQuery Cycle plugin settings field to set other settings. Can work together with jQuery Easing plugin. For tabbed content easy to combine with Quicktabs module.

Views Rotator

Benefits over other modules:

• Simple to install (doesn’t require downloading a plugin as it’s included in the module)
• Very clean and smooth UX
• This useful feature is achieved in very few lines of code – the module files are few and short.

Disadvantages or areas in need of improvement:

• The options are very limited.
• It includes the jQuery Cycle plugin at the start of its own js file, but given that there currently is no real solution for jQuery Plugin management in Drupal as yet, it’s probably no worse than any other way of doing it.

Of note:

• This is a Views style plugin
• Uses the jQuery Cycle plugin

In summary:
This is quite a minimalist approach to the rotating Views idea. There are no transition effect options and – most significantly – no tabs. Otherwise, it is a very clean solution.

Views Cycle

Benefits over other modules:

• Optional tabs that can be configured to hold the output of any field from your View.
• Offers all the transition effects that come with the full jQuery Cycle plugin as options
• If using tabs, you can choose whether the transition happens on hover or click of the tabs.
• Straight-forward configuration

Disadvantages or areas in need of improvement:

• Need to download the jQuery Cycle plugin separately, which some may find awkward.
• No prev/next links
• The skin that’s provided with the module is quite buggy. Also, regardless of skin option, the output behaves strangely with regard to the ordered/unordered list of the main content – the first item gets its bullet or number displayed and the others don’t.

Of note:

• This is a Views style plugin
• Uses the jQuery Cycle plugin

In summary:
Views Cycle is a pretty powerful variation on the rotatable Views theme. The configurable tabs are a huge plus. Unfortunately they don’t as yet work with combined fields – see this issue.

Views Slideshow

Benefits over the other modules:

• Extensible API
• Has an option for tabs
• Seems like it is highly configurable for different use cases.

Disadvantages or areas in need of improvement:

• Configuration options are quite confusing
• Lacking the generous selection of transition effects that Views Cycle provides, this module only provides fade or nothing, though that’s probably enough for most people’s needs. (However, as future plugins to Views Slideshow are made available, this should be alleviated.)
• Tab content is not configurable

Of note:

• This is a Views style plugin
• Uses its own js for the rotation
• Has an API that allows other plugins to extend the functionality

In summary:
This module seems a little rough around the edges and could do with some clearer directions on the configuration screen. "Slideshow Mode: Thumbnail hover" means that you can have tabs that trigger the rotation, they do this on hover, and they contain the title and teaser of the node. When tried with a View that was outputting just title and an imagefield, the thumbnails contained the title and the imagefield and the rotating content consisted of title and teaser, which is not the expected behaviour. There’s also a "Mouse hover" option which has one single radio button, "hover", but it seems there would be other options if the "Hover Intent" module were installed and enabled. Overall, highly configurable but not a very intuitive interface.

Views slideshow: Dynamic display block

Benefits over other modules:

• Mapping of field to slideshow themes. (v2.x)
• 6 example themes available with number pager, prev/next pager, link pager, image pager and image/link pager and scrollable pager or a combination of these (v1.x – v2.x)
• Commercial slideshow themes available (v2.x)
• Example module available with different pager settings (v2.x)
• Well documented (v1.x – v2.x)
• Possibility to make fields available to the slideshow themes via preprocess functions (flexible) (v1.x – v2.x)
• For more information see project page.

Disadvantages or areas in need of improvement:

• Ajax loading of content

Of note:

• Uses the jQuery Cycle plugin

In summary:
Flexible module with several available slideshow layouts. Multiple pager options. Most needed settings of jQuery Cycle plugin configurable in configuration page, otherwise you can use custom jQuery Cycle plugin settings field to set other settings. Can work together with jQuery Easing plugin. For tabbed content easy to combine with Quicktabs module.

Views Slideshow: ImageFlow

Benefits over other modules:

• Implements a CoverFlow-like slideshow
• Uses the API offered by Views Slideshow and Drupal.behaviors, so it’s lightweight

Disadvantages or areas in need of improvement:

• Requires a third-party JavaScript plugin, which has a small fee for commercial uses
• The "reflection" option normally offered by the plugin is not currently available

Slideshow Creator

Of note:

• Uses jQuery Plugin module to add the Cycle plugin.
• Allows slideshows to be placed anywhere within text content by use of an input filter.
• Allows slideshows to consist of arbitrary images or entire directories of images.

In summary:
This module involves creating a new input format so that you can place code like this into your node body:

[slideshow: 2, img=|http://drupal.org/sites/all/themes/bluebeach/logos/drupal.org.png|drupal.org|Drupal|The ultimate CMS. Download it now!|Drupal|, img=|http://www.mysql.com/common/logos/mysql_100x52-64.gif|http://www.mysql.com|MySQL|Free and reliable SQL server and client.|_self|, dir=|files/|yes||Generic Photos|Aren't they great?||]

Featured Content Slider

Of note:

• Creates up to 3 blocks of sliding nodes
• Uses its own js code which is not jQuery

In summary:
This pulls nodes of a given type into a slider block. You can create up to 3 blocks using different node types for each. The JavaScript code suggests there is ajax loading functionality. Also, the js code is needlessly bulky as it does not leverage jQuery at all, never mind jQuery plugins. Otherwise, a fairly smooth UX.

Slider

Of note:

• Uses its own js in conjunction with jQuery.scroll.js to achieve a carousel effect.

In summary:
There’s a fair bit of set-up involved here to create a slideshow and it’s based on CCK multi-value nodereference fields. Not very flexible.

Easy Slider

Of note:

• Uses the Easy Slider jQuery plugin, which ships with the module.

In summary:
Very similar to Slider, except that it works with Views.

Views Carousel

Benefits over the other modules:

• Easy set-up
• Provides good basic styles

Disadvantages or areas in need of improvement:

• Easing effect option is a textfield with directions sending user to a jQuery docs page for options; one has to scroll down and search to eventually find this: ‘There are two built-in values, "linear" and "swing".’ – one would expect more options when being sent all the way to another site to find out what they are.

Of note:

• This is a Views style plugin
• Uses the jCarousel jQuery plugin

In summary:
A good, clean UI with straight-forward configuration options, an exemplary implementation of the jCarousel jQuery plugin for Drupal sites.

Node Carousel

Benefits over the other modules:

• Apparently has an AJAX option (untested)

Disadvantages or areas in need of improvement:

• The module is not well maintained and the documentation is out of date.
• No functional 6.x version available – looks like development simply stopped on this before it was ready
• No Views integration

Of note:

• Works with Nodequeue
• Uses the jCarousel jQuery plugin

In summary:
There is either a git tagging problem or a lack of adequate documentation: – the jcarousel plugin does not come with this module although it exists in git, and there are no instructions as to where to get it or where to put it. With the plugin in the module directory, Nodecarousel did not do anything. Also there were numerous php notices.

Ajax Slideshow

Benefits over other modules:

• Ajax-based slideshow which means scalability. The slideshow content can grow bigger without negatively impacting the page load-time.
• Slides can contain any content item (node) rather than images only
• Content and sequence ease of control due to the utilization of the views module for managing the slide set.
• Plug & Play – standard installation and the slideshow is up.

Disadvantages or areas in need of improvement:

• Need to implement additional out-of-the-box tabs styles.

Of note:

• Uses Views and JQuery plugins

In summary:
Straightforward, easy to install and manage module that allows sequential presentation of any set of content items. Performance is not dependent on the number of content items selected.

Fancy Slide

Features:

• Input from either a single node or from a nodequeue.
• Large number of settings.
• Integrates with imagecache to resize images automatically.
• Control bar with automatic thumbnails and image descriptions.
• ‘Pluggable’ transitions to provide the possibility to add further transitions using jQuery.
• Theme functions exposed to theme developers to build straight into themes.

Areas in need of improvement:

• No views integration.

In summary:

An early but stable slideshow module that aims to provide a nicer, fancier interface to the end user than other offerings, while maintaining an array of customisation options. More work is needed to bring views integration to the module.

Bottom line

You often remarks like this in project descriptions and issue queues:
– "EasySlider is being developed into a views plugin"
– "I’m thinking of rejiggering it as a views extension" (Nodecarousel)
– "I am planing its integration with Views" (Featured Content Slider)

There has already been so much duplicated effort here, it’s time for that to stop and for some consolidation to happen. Within the somewhat broad use case of eye-catching, rotating content, there are two distinct use cases, meaning justification for at MOST two modules here:

1. Passive user: throw featured content at them while they’re on your front page
2. Active user: allow users to navigate / scroll through content to find what they’re looking for (e.g. thumbnail images in a gallery)

Two modules that exemplify these two use cases are well {Views Cycle OR Views Rotator} and Views Carousel respectively. There’s no reason why features from Views Rotator / Views Cycle / Views Slideshow couldn’t be incorporated into one module and likewise with all the carousel/slider-type modules for the latter use case.

There is also a strong need for a standard way of including jQuery plugins, as per this thread. Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could just choose "jQuery plugin" as your Views style and then in the settings for that style you would choose which plugin to use, e.g. Cycle, Accordion or Carousel. Of course there are different config options for each of those but… maybe getting closer to that ideal isn’t too wacky an idea.