Something common to many of these templates is assignment of things, such as images, to the entry via entry properties. By having the image placed in an extended property field, rather than the entry body, the template can precisely position the image in a consistent manner, like using a thumbnail in certain page views, and a larger version in another page view.
But I want to expand my interpretation of this... let's start by saying that these images are more than just a photograph.. let's call them "assets". So, at this moment in time, every entry has these possible assets: a small image (thumbnail) and a large image. But what if entries could have other assets, such as a slideshow, video, maybe an audio clip, pdf, etc.... Lets take that further. What if an entry could have multiple versions of the same TYPE of asset (3 audio clips and 2 video). And to make things really interesting, let's presume this entry's assets could be local (contained in our media library), or remote, such as a video hosted at YouTube or Vimeo.
With just 2 photos, extended properties makes perfect sense... add 2 custom entry property fields, and I'm done... any ONE of the other types is not too bad either, but it seems crazy to have a dozen different extended property fields that might never get used... plus, where do you stop? Do I need 1 audio field, or 10?
The best analogy I can think about is sending an email. When I send an email (I use MS Outlook), I can attach anything to it I want.. photos, worksheets, documents, audio, etc... and the quantity I attach to this email is unlimited.
I'm wondering, can we have some kind of "entry asset library" whereby an entry can have various things assigned to it, and then give users some way to interact with those assets (view photos, play audio, etc)??? Could it be dynamic, so that some entries could have nothing in their asset library, but other entries could have a dozen things of different types?????
Or am I just crazy again??!!
