jQuery cycle plugin customizing

Question

I'm using the jQuery Cycle plugin to start a slidshow of images when hovering over the initial image. This works fine. What I want after that is to have the slideshow stop when hovered off, and have a manual slideshow (next/prev buttons) start. This currently works, but the slideshow starts from the beginning each time it's initialized. I want it to begin at the current image that's loaded.

I was playing around with getting the image's index from the DOM (as it's the only one with display:block) and using the option 'startingSlide' to resume it, but my index keeps returning as -1.

jQuery('#home-menu li').hover(function()
{
   setImages(jQuery(this).attr('title'), jQuery(this).find('.subtitle').text());

   jQuery('#main .blog #projects .gallery .slideshow').cycle(
   {
      fx: 'scrollHorz',
      easing: 'easeOutBounce',
      speed: 2000,
      delay: 0
   });
}, function()
{
   // Before loading the images for the clickable slideshow, find the current image in the DOM array to use as the starting position
   slideshowStart = jQuery('.gallery .slideshow img:visible').index(this);
   console.log('Index: ' + slideshowStart);
   setImages(jQuery(this).attr('title'), jQuery(this).find('.subtitle').text());

   jQuery('#main .blog #projects .gallery .slideshow').cycle('stop').cycle(
   {
      fx: 'scrollHorz',
      easing: 'easeOutBounce',
      startingSlide: slideshowStart,
      speed: 2000,
      timeout: 0,
      next: "#main .blog #projects .gallery span.span2",
      prev: "#main .blog #projects .gallery span.span1"
   });
});  

setImages() just loads images into the DOM based on what li is being hovered over. Nothing special there.

I want the image to be resumed when hovered over and hovered off. I've left out the resume part for hover on for the moment while I was trying to get it working - In case you were wondering.

Answer 1

The problem is in the hover out callback:

slideshowStart = jQuery('.gallery .slideshow img:visible').index(this);

1) First, the jQuery statement selects all elements that match the selector. The cycle plugin ensures that only one image inside its container is displayed, so this satement selects a maximum of one img element.

2) Second, the index function searches the elements selected in step 1 (the single img element) to see if it can find one that matches the subject (the argument provided to the index function). In your case, the subject is this, which in the context of the hover callback is jQuery(#home-menu li).

li elements never match img elements, so this call to index() will always return -1 (for 'no object found').

To fix this, modify the statement like so:

slideshowStart = $('.slideshow img').index($('img:visible'));

1) First, this selects all the img elements in your <div class='slideshow'> element.

2) Second, it returns the index of the first visible img element in that list.

Answer 2

If you simply want it to pause and play, use the options:

jQuery('#home-menu li').hover(function() {
  $("#yourSlideshow").cycle("resume");
}, function {
  $("#yourSlideshow").cycle("pause");
});