Ok good folks of planet earth, here comes a
mass-reply to questions and comments posted recently. I am backtracking from the discussion about mega menu, which now is integrated already of course. If you are looking for a specific reply, just browse the tag/question quoted above each answer.
mega menu
winph wrote:how about multi column menu in horizontal menu?
This is basically available in the new mega menu "list" option, which is quite smart.
mega menu
alexhenes wrote:Thanks for asking about this! I have a fairly deep menu structure on
http://www.merelyafleshwound.com. In the Kayaking section there are 4 levels.... with the 3rd level containing a number of For example.... Kayaking.Colorado Arkanasas River.Clear Creek. The Clear Creek folder contains images. In addition... the Cycling section is 3 levels deep.
I remember reviewing your gallery menu several weeks ago while the new mega menu was being conceived. Prior to creation, I did a lot of studies on deep menu structures and mega menus, and made some thoughts about your menu structure in specific: Basically I would propose that your menu is created from the website owners perspective, in a way that does not offer much benefit to the visitor. The structure is too scattered, and the depth is not consistent ... Any visitor who is viewing your gallery, would not be able to find what they are looking for if they are looking for something specific, and if they are just "browsing", the complex structure does not offer them any benefit than a rather chaotic overview and too many clicks to get where they want.
My suggestion
If you check the new
mega menu demo "concepts" menu section, this could perhaps be an option for you. You would still need to re-structure your galleries to a consistent depth level though. However, if I was you, I would even consider breaking down the structure completely and having all galleries in a single or just a few categories ... This would leave you with loooong menus you ask? I would perhaps hide these "lists" from the menu in the first place, and instead display them directly on one- or a few gallery pages, nice and browse-able for the user ... Consider a page like this
http://mjau-mjau.com/concepts/albums/list/, which could easily handle a large amount of galleries on the same level, in chronological order, easy to read for the visitor ... OR maybe a grid?
http://mjau-mjau.com/concepts/albums/pretty-grid/ ... OR a larger split layout?
http://mjau-mjau.com/concepts/albums/split/
As you may have understood, it is not required to add all X3 pages/galleries in X3 into the menu, because you can easily list albums directly in any (or several) albums overview page(s).
slidemenu offcanvas menu
Nondo wrote:Maybe it's just on my end but one thing I noticed with Alex's multi leveled kayak gallery is just how "jittery" the menu navigation can be. Is that something that can be adjusted with these new galleries? For example, when opening up the deeper menus it seems as though mouse movements are hyper sensitive, so my cursor/selections are scrolling up and down rapidly.
If you check the new
slidemenu navigation layout, you can see this is no longer an issue, as we implement modern scroll/swipe techniques. Try to open the "concepts" folder, and then open the "albums" folder within to see how the menu reacts when it is overflowing. This especially comes handy from touch screen mobile devices (try for yourself!).
release date
winph wrote:When will we be able to try it ourself?
Public beta or we could purchase early beta?
esteban94 wrote:Any idea of a release date ? (I need to upgrade the design of my website ans the only way is to leard Adobe Muse and work...)
Zorenson wrote:So, when will we be able to get our hands on this?
Bulletproof IT wrote:What is the ETA for a beta or public "usable" version of ImageVue v3?
morgenius wrote:I would like to know the actual release date.
andreamarucci wrote:I think the only question from us will be just "when"
See this post from earlier today:
viewtopic.php?p=35026#p35026
search
eskimo121 wrote:I forgot to mention about the Search button.
I have some cool ideas for integrating search, especially with the site-preload option where the search may even be able to utilize data that is already loaded into browser. In either case, search will be somewhat limited in X3 when it comes to folder depth and details. Don't count on using it for 100s of gallery folders, with intricate details, as that would require a database to work effectively. On the bright side, the search should be nice to use, and blazing fast.
performance
Zorenson wrote:It looks a lot better than X2, and the performance in X2 isn't that good
Performance in X3 is top-priority, and X3 is already quite fast! As emphasized in the
new website post, X3 already utilizes a range of modern techniques: ajax loading, script/style minification, Gzip compression, server caching, localstorage caching and recently
full website preloading. More can be done, but it doesn't get much more performant than this, relative to the fact that image galleries are somewhat heavy by nature because a lot of media needs to get loaded and displayed.
hotspot
cshetler wrote:Any plans (please!) on incorporating the image "hotspot" functionality currently in the X2 gallery?
Its far from the top of the list, but it definitely can be done.
Several recent questions from Bulletproof IT:
I can't see there are any broken images on this page. It could have been a glitch in the internet at some point, or on the server? I am using basic shared hosting for the website, and I wouldn't want it any other way since this is to be used similarly for most clients.
Bulletproof IT wrote:Does this X5 update have a tool to "Find broken media" in the gallery??
This should not be necessary. If an image does not exist, it will not list in the page.
Bulletproof IT wrote:NEXT / PREV BUTTONS
That looks like a rendering glitch in the specific windows browser you are using. If you are using IE, I would be interested to know in the inspector if in fact the html code for the navi duplicates also (which would prove or disprove it was a rendering glitch). I can check this later myself also ...
Having said that, the next/prev article buttons are experimental and optional, and are not considered critical to navigation, especially now with the new accessible mega menu and fixed topbar option. There are several issues with these buttons, especially on smaller screens, and depending on the width of the content below.
Bulletproof IT wrote:Rather than "fixed-on-scroll-up", perhaps we could also have "fixed-on-scroll-updown"??
This is already possible. See examples:
fixed topbar-float
fixed topbar-center
I would perhaps recommend using the more modern approach
topbar-fixed-up, because it offers easy access to the menu, while keeping it out of the way when scrolling content. This technique is employed in modern applications like Facebook (try the app on an iphone or ipad), as well as modern functional websites like
medium.com (click to see example).
Bulletproof IT wrote:AJAX/CACHE BUG / POTENTIAL PROBLEM
I have also experienced the memory issue once in Chrome, but I am not quite sure why it happens ... There is nothing I know that can be done in JS to "flush" memory in browser or anything else that may have been loaded. As for general memory usage, these days for desktops, a few 100MB is not considered a vast amount, especially considering the "virtual memory", where the OS will use the harddrive for segments of memory. Keep in mind when displaying a large retina image in Imagevue, for example 2000x1800 px, this will take perhaps 5MB memory ... 50 images in a page may take ~300MB ... add the scripts and object data, and a modern image gallery will need to consume a modern amount of memory.
I will ask around a bit about the "memory leak" ... Thanks for pointing this out.
Bulletproof IT wrote:#1. Will there be commenting and the ability to preview image comments?
We already employ disqus comments, as outlined here
gallery comments. Do you mean comments for separate images, in the popup window? This should be possible at some point, in which case it would be some kinda "comments" button, which when clicked would create an overlay listing comments and allowing to add new ones. Sounds reasonable?
Bulletproof IT wrote:#2. When on the preview page, will you also have "Social" share buttons?
I believe what you are calling "preview page", I currently identify as "popup" ... Yes, social sharing is definitely an important element we will be adding in the near-future to images (and pages). I would like to spend some time doing it nicely, without bloating the interface, and without loading tons of separate scripts from each 3rd party service.
Bulletproof IT wrote:#3. When you hover on an thumbnail, will it display the number of comments too?
I believe that would be possible, but this would need to be added to feature-requests, and will likely only be added after we have sharing and comments on a per-image basis.
Bulletproof IT wrote:#4. When clicking on the Next / Previous buttons in preview mode OR full screen mode, I find if you "slightly" move your mouse off the [>] button, you lose the preview or full screen preview.
Could you please make it like X2 where if you click the 60% RHS of the screen, it advances, and if you click on the 40% LHS of the screen, it goes back??
It just seems a little fiddly, having to try and find which image you were up to, and resume the slide show, etc.
You mean if you click just a nano-meter outside the button, the slideshow closes? True. Sounds like a good suggestion to me ... I will add it to my list.
Bulletproof IT wrote:#5. Will X5 have the ability to auto create Thumbnails, Preview image and Full Size (not original, but resized Full image)? (e.g. Per gallery image resize in X2)
This is already one of X3's huge assets: Imagevue X3 will create, and store (on server), an array of image sizes, depending on the page and device that requested the image. Here are a few examples of images that are created and cached on server, based on requests from various devices and various layouts:
http://mjau-mjau.com/render/w100-h0-c1: ... elight.jpg
http://mjau-mjau.com/render/w200-h0-c1: ... elight.jpg
http://mjau-mjau.com/render/w320-h0-c1: ... elight.jpg
http://mjau-mjau.com/render/w480-h0-c1: ... elight.jpg
http://mjau-mjau.com/render/w640-h0-c3: ... elight.jpg
http://mjau-mjau.com/render/w800-h0-c3: ... elight.jpg
http://mjau-mjau.com/content/gallery/1. ... elight.jpg (original)
All this is handled automagically, as X3 will find the image sizes which most appropriately suite the layout, size and pixel-density of the device being used. If a requested size is not yet created and cached, it will be created- and cached on first request. Therefore (and for other reasons), a gallery may be slightly slow after adding new galleries, as the server will often be in a period of resizing and caching images.
However, in regards to your question about auto-creating a full size image (from original), there is still one crucial restriction: Most shared servers are still limited in terms of memory, and resizing from original (say 4000px) to "full size" (say 2000px) will create timeout or server error. I believe you can resize FROM quite large images, but the CREATION / WRITE size is limited ... I have tracked it down to around max 1400px size, but it depends on colors and aspect of the image also. Because of this, we still need to maintain guidelines for image sizes, and per now I would recommend pre-creating "full size images" at say 1600 or 2000 px long side (as done in mjau-mjau demo) prior to upload. This is basically the full-size image, when viewed from a large desktop or large retina device.
By default, Imagevue uses the "original size" when this size is requested (on large/retina devices), but will create resized images starting from 1280 px and downwards. 1280px, because it is a safe size to resize to, but resizing to larger sizes is likely to cause errors.
Bulletproof IT wrote:#6. Your website was displaying an Internal Server Error 505 at URL
Could be you were checking the website while I was updating. X3 is relatively power hungry after initial setup and/or updating, because it likes to cache images, templates, and ajax outputs so that eventually everything is super smooth. Having said that, I am not too happy about my hosting to be honest ... Support and control panel is quite good, but its quite under-powered and doesn't handle stress very well ... That's good for testing purposes though.
Bulletproof IT wrote:#6b.Can't connect to MySQL server on 'internal-db.s58451.gridserver.com' (113) [2003]
This is at least entirely separate from Imagevue, which does not use MySQL at all ... Its just my host which struggles at times, this time with the database connection used in the forum. As mentioned, not too impressed by my hosting.
Bulletproof IT wrote:#7a. When dragging my mouse back, in Slideshow/Big Awesome/ ...
Can't reproduce this from Mac at least. I will need to diagnose these things all in time ...
Bulletproof IT wrote:#7c. On /slideshow/inline/, when I click click click click really quickly, it advances, advances, advances, goes backwards, goes backwards, advances, advances....
Again, can't reproduce from Mac at least. There is definitely chance of glitches with these UI modules when put under a lot of pressure, especially with browsers all doing things a bit differently. Personally, I would only use the "drag" from a touchscreen device.
Bulletproof IT wrote:#8. Exactly how does one exit out of the Full Screen slider? I cannot see any X to take the user back to some sort of standard page where they can see the menu. I guess Browser Back is the only option?
You don't see the fullscreen-toggle button top right when you move the mouse?
Bulletproof IT wrote:#9. Browser history and being able to go back images with back button of browser and forward too?
Really? It works flawlessly here. Try going here (which is in fact html5 deep-linking, accessing an image directly):
http://mjau-mjau.com/concepts/grid/grid-3/?pop:Bananas
Then try to navigate a bit forwards with the next button. Then try to navigate back and forth with the browser back/forward buttons, and it should navigate nicely between images in the popup. It will also navigate out of popup window, as all states are preserved.
There is a glitch with this behavior is you are using
chrome in fullscreen. Why? Because chrome for some reason chooses to exit fullscreen when manipulating the URL field with html5. Therefore, history navigation in popup states is disabled when Chrome is in fullscreen mode.
Bulletproof IT wrote:#10. /carousel/styled/ Another image not found, and for the first time, a thumbnnail could not be found.
Must be a similar glitch in the internet. When I check from here, they all load:
http://mjau-mjau.com/concepts/carousel/styled/
Bulletproof IT wrote:#11. /carousel/autoheight/ Can this carousel be made so when it gets to the end, it doesn't then slide all the way back to he start?
There are some limitations, especially with the autoheight option, which creates an ugly gap when trying to create a loop (which is in fact an option).
Bulletproof IT wrote:#13. Ok this might be a complicated question... But when you have an item on the coursel or slideshow, is thre a way to "activate" an element, so that you can be taken to that specific page? e.g. if you want to give someone a URL to a video on a carousel, rather than the whole carousel, you could do it in X2 due to Flash's deep linking.
This should be possible similar to how the slideshow deep-linking works, for example:
http://mjau-mjau.com/concepts/slideshow ... The-temple (navigates to the "temple" image initially).
I remember there were some complications for the carousel, so I did not enable it by default to the demo pages at least, but it should be available.
Bulletproof IT wrote:#14. Within album /albums/black-and-white/, you don't actually mention the setting to have all images set to B+W or Sepia. Are there filter overlays that can do this where they don't modify the image and /or simply manipulate the output? Sepia, Toy Cam, Vintage, B&W, etc, just applied to a gallery rather than permanent changes to the images.
We haven't explicitly added any image filters at this point, but its a good idea and it would be easy to implement. Keep in mind, these effects would rely CSS filters, which are not supported in internet explorer, and have only partial support in Firefox ... You would have to live with it as a "progressive enhancement".
http://caniuse.com/#feat=css-filters (browser compatibility)
http://codepen.io/rss/pen/ftnDd (good demo of all the filters available)
http://css-tricks.com/almanac/properties/f/filter/ (in depth)
The images you see in the /black-and-white/ are in fact pre-rendered black and white.
Bulletproof IT wrote:#15. /albums/camera/ has a missing thumbnail, but the preview image (slideshow) is however visible... FYI.
#16. /albums/perspective/ many of the preview images are missing here. FYI.
#17. /albums/style/ has lots of missing images too. FYI.
All images still don't load for you? They all work here:
http://mjau-mjau.com/albums/camera/
http://mjau-mjau.com/albums/perspective/
http://mjau-mjau.com/albums/style/
As mentioned earlier, this is a glitch in the internet. It could be related to the server sure, but it is not the doing of Imagevue X3 with broken images.
Bulletproof IT wrote:FUTURE SUGGESTION:
#18. An idea for you. To allow owners to preview what things look like on the front end, you could have a similar X2 Admin Menu that appears on the front-end when logged in as admin in the backend.
I have already had this in mind for a while, and I believe it would be a great addition once we get the opportunity to integrate it. I would like to add admin capabilities directly to the frontend, with a panel of buttons that allows editing the current page being viewed. It would perhaps not have global capabilities, but you could edit the current page, upload images, and change the layout.
Bulletproof IT wrote:p.s. You could even allow the admin to set the "default" layout, by which all new albums are created from (rather than only the Imagevue default). I say this simply from seeing the multitude of options already available!
I believe this may be somewhat necessary. Many users will likely use 1-3 gallery layouts throughout the entire website, and with good reason ... It is not logical that a visitor would benefit from viewing galleries in mixed layouts (as demonstrated in the mjau-mjau website), instead of having a relatively consistent experience. Therefore we may need a "global default" option for layouts, that can be overridden on a per-page basis.
.