New Photogallery [Feedback wanted]

[neilj]

Hello all.

As most of you will know, as part of the file hosting facility at FastMail you can upload some photos and get it to generate a photo gallery to show off to friends, family and random people in the street. For those of you unaware, you can read the FAQ. Only trouble is, it's not very pretty and really could work a lot better, so over the last two weeks I've been redesigning it from scratch. It's more or less finished but there may still be a few bugs lurking in there. Please have a look and post any feedback on this thread.

http://photogallery.neilj.fastmail.fm/revision5/

NB The Albums section will only appear if you have subfolders with photo galleries set up in them. At the moment these links do nothing as I've only set up one photo gallery to demo.

Cheers,

Neil

[David]

I like your new photo album design Neil, and am looking forward to checking out my own photo page on the beta server

[mvpittman]

Oooh, pretty.

So, is this just new CSS that we can insert into our own folder? Is it an option that will be selectable from the beta server?

Can I do it now with some pictures I have in a public folder?

[Dan L]

I like it, and didn't even know it was a feature

[Abydos]

Now THAT is a good looking gallery!
Cannot wait to see it up & running!

You know if the code used to create the 'Grid' view could also be adapted to just show a vertical column of pictures, the gallery could also be used for hosting photo blogs.

Users add a new photo to the folder, add comments & it appears at the top of the column of photos.

Grid - Filmstrip - Single - Blog ...would be pretty neat options.

[zhak]

Very nice. Could you easily ad a slider or other control to change the auto-play speed? The pictures fly by currently...maybe it's just my new super-computer that's at fault (finally upgraded after 5 years)

[neilj]

Originally Posted by zhak

Very nice. Could you easily ad a slider or other control to change the auto-play speed? The pictures fly by currently...maybe it's just my new super-computer that's at fault (finally upgraded after 5 years)

I don't really want to add a slider, but I'm prepared to adjust the time delay; it's currently set to 3 seconds.

Oh, and just to point out a couple of the features that aren't very obvious but make it feel slick:

- Once in display mode, the gallery will preload the next image in whilst you're looking at the current one so you don't have to wait.
- The size of the image loaded depends on your screen size, again to optimise loading times.
- Resizing the window will cause the image to resize so it always takes up the optimum space.
- The back button works even though really everything is being displayed on the same page.
- Keyboard shortcuts on the view screen:
- Up arrow/Left arrow/k = go to the previous photo.
- Down arrow/Right arrow/j = go to the next photo.
- Space pauses/plays

NB Arrow keys are not supported in all browsers.

[neilj]

Originally Posted by mvpittman

Oooh, pretty.

So, is this just new CSS that we can insert into our own folder? Is it an option that will be selectable from the beta server?

Can I do it now with some pictures I have in a public folder?

No, this is not just new CSS. As I said, the whole thing's been rewritten from scratch: HTML, CSS and a hell of a lot of very cool JavaScript

I can't say for certain as Rob has to do the server work and he hasn't told me how long he thinks it's going to take, but I think it should be available fairly soon as the server work is minimal, just a change to the template. It will certainly be done before the whole site redesign is finished!

Neil

[hadaso]

Originally Posted by neilj

I don't really want to add a slider, but I'm prepared to adjust the time delay; it's currently set to 3 seconds.

The ability to adjust slideshow pace is something I use quite often when my sister sends me a link to yet another Picasa photo gallery of last weekend's trip with the boys. Sometimes I want it to go quicker to just see what's there and sometimes slower to really have a look at the pictures.

So you don't want to add a slider. Perhaps you can make it "learn" what the viewer wants: if the user clicks the forward button then it might be too slow for her so you can increase the pace by just a little bit. If the viewer pauses often or uses the back arrow you might want to reduce the pace a bit.

[Berenburger]

Wow! This is a surprise. I use the photo gallery a lot and I'm really looking forward to it. Personally I like a black background in the slide show as in Picasa Webalbums.

Originally Posted by neilj

I don't really want to add a slider, but I'm prepared to adjust the time delay; it's currently set to 3 seconds.

Yes. It is to fast. Minimal 4 seconds, may'be 5.

[Sherry]

Wow, great job. I didn't know how I did it but all of a sudden things started moving in single or film. After trying to figure out how to stop it I realized it was the arrows you see when the mouse was at a certain point then you click on the arrow. Forgot how I got it stopped but it was fun doing it.

Don't know if you want bugs reported? If you do then when clicking on a picture it only loads the top part and leaves you at the bottom of the screen seeing mostly black. When scrolling up I see that only the top part of the picture loaded.

Anyway, nice job. Looks good.

Sherry

[David]

Originally Posted by Sherry

Don't know if you want bugs reported? If you do then when clicking on a picture it only loads the top part and leaves you at the bottom of the screen seeing mostly black. When scrolling up I see that only the top part of the picture loaded.

That does not appear to be happening for me; I am using Firefox on Linux. If I click on a picture, I see the complete picture, with the arrows in the center of the screen. This is regardless of the size I set for the picture, using the 'toggle' at the top.

[Sherry]

Ok, guess I better say what I'm using which is WinXP IE6. It doesn't happen if I click on "Single" at the top. I get a normal picture then. It's only if I click right on a picture while in the Grid.

Could be my pc. I power down at night so I'll check it out when the pc is fresh tomorrow.

Sherry

[znunxnyv]

Very very nice! I used to think the photo gallery is not something worth mentioning when recommending FM to others but now I do!

A question: do we get an option to use (or link) our own style sheet with the photo gallery as well? I imagine it'll be impossible — if not, resource consuming — to try to meet everyone's preferences.

Also, what about clicking the min/max points in the thumbnail size slider to quickly jump to the smallest/largest thumbnail size?

[Torsten]

This gallery is very appealing!

One remark: The buttons to resize the images are not self explaining. I started to play around as I was not sure about their function: The mountain could also indicate brightness, color depth and other technical things.


Kind regards

Torsten