We've been heads down on an exciting phase 1 project that's launching in the coming weeks. Hence, the lack of blogging recently. It's a great project, that we can't wait to share. It'll be the subject of an upcoming series on strategy and context marketing programs.

This project also has a lot of functional elements that we just think are cool. This show & tell post that features our extension of the advanced image module that can be found in the Sitecore Marketplace.

This module enables content authors to set a focal point on an image and then image cropping is done with the focal point in the center. This is a great tool for our latest project, as the client has thousands of high quality images that are used in publishing. We've used this module in three important components; the hero image component (above), a cropped image component and a call to action component.

The cropped image component is designed to fill the width of the placeholder its dropped into (e.g., 2, 3, 4 column placeholder). The author can set the ratio of the image container and the focal point on the image.

The hero image component has a fixed orientation and a full width display. This component automatically cuts both a full screen image and an optimized mobile image based on the selected focal point.

The call to action component has a fixed (square) orientation and a selectable tint that overlays the image. The author selects a background image, a focal point, the tint (to ensure that text is readable over a lighter image) and title & button text.

This is a great marketplace module that we haven't seen used much. It's now part of our component library and something we think will get a lot of use. Try it out in your next project. And, thanks to Saad Kahn for sharing.