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ed_f
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marking images as featured for slideshow

11 Jan 2021, 06:05

if I understand it correctly, images for an intro slideshow have to be uploaded extra. in koken it was possible to just mark existing images as "featured" for such slideshow. I just want to propose to implement such functionality into the next update. thank you!
Last edited by ed_f on 12 Jan 2021, 05:36, edited 1 time in total.
 
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mjau-mjau
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Re: marking images as featured for slideshow

12 Jan 2021, 02:43

Not really. The slideshow is just another gallery "layout" in X3, and will use the images that you upload into the page. If you set it to "intro" or not does not make any difference. Why not just upload the images into the folder that you want to display in the slideshow intro? If need be, you can also click HIDE to hide any images that you don't want to display in the slideshow. You can also set a "limit" to limit the amount of images to load from the gallery into the slideshow (gallery > advanced > limit). It's also worth mentioning that you can "pull" gallery images from a different folder than the current.
 
ed_f
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Re: marking images as featured for slideshow

12 Jan 2021, 09:03

what I really meant is that images have to be uploaded double (copy+paste has the same result), which wasn't neccesary in koken with the mentioned feature.

with most (like mine) hoster-contracts volume DOES make a difference, open end IS more expensive. that is one reason why a double-/triple-language version of photo-gallery without just copying everything would be so nice!
 
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mjau-mjau
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Re: marking images as featured for slideshow

12 Jan 2021, 09:19

ed_f wrote:what I really meant is that images have to be uploaded double (copy+paste has the same result), which wasn't neccesary in koken with the mentioned feature.
Why double? You upload once into the folder where you assign gallery>slideshow+intro, and that's it.
ed_f wrote:with most (like mine) hoster-contracts volume DOES make a difference, open end IS more expensive.
Sure, although I am struggling to see how this affects standard hosting services which normally offer 100 GB with the cheapest option. 100 GB can easily cover 1-200,000 images.
ed_f wrote:that is one reason why a double-/triple-language version of photo-gallery without just copying everything would be so nice!
Indeed! It's just not a feature in X3, and normally space is not an issue for most websites.
 
ed_f
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Re: marking images as featured for slideshow

12 Jan 2021, 10:04

to use an image in an index-slideshow AND in a gallery elsewhere on my site it needs to be uploaded double - if I understand it right. or do I still miss something?
 
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mjau-mjau
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Re: marking images as featured for slideshow

12 Jan 2021, 10:26

ed_f wrote:to use an image in an index-slideshow AND in a gallery elsewhere on my site it needs to be uploaded double - if I understand it right. or do I still miss something?
You can share the same gallery source images for an index-slideshow and a gallery elsewhere. You can't select SOME images into your index-slideshow from one gallery then some from another and then some from a third. The simplicity of it (and X3 galleries in general), is that it pulls all it's images from a folder, where it would be logical and easy to group them for your slideshow. Sure it sounds nice if you can select different images from different folders to go into a single slideshow-gallery, but also sounds a bit tedious. Point taken, but in X3, a gallery (whatever layout) is simply created from the images in a folder, thus it is entirely dynamic also when you upload/delete items.
 
metallissimus
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Re: marking images as featured for slideshow

13 Jan 2021, 05:06

mjau-mjau wrote: Sure it sounds nice if you can select different images from different folders to go into a single slideshow-gallery, but also sounds a bit tedious.
No more tedious than creating that same selection outside of X3 and then uploading it. I'd argue the latter is more work ;) (Edit: I realize you can also do the selection in X3 by copying the images to a new folder. But that's still quite a lot of clicking.)
mjau-mjau wrote:Point taken, but in X3, a gallery (whatever layout) is simply created from the images in a folder, thus it is entirely dynamic also when you upload/delete items.
I had an idea about that. You know I have only basic knowledge about the technical site, but maybe it's worth a thought: Would it be possible to assign images from folder A to folder B by only putting a reference (symlink?) into folder B?
Last edited by metallissimus on 13 Jan 2021, 06:02, edited 1 time in total.
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ed_f
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Re: marking images as featured for slideshow

13 Jan 2021, 05:39

I guess the latter would be what the "mark as featured" feature in koken was. and what I meant.
 
metallissimus
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Re: marking images as featured for slideshow

13 Jan 2021, 06:01

ed_f wrote: I guess the latter would be what the "mark as featured" feature in koken was. and what I meant.
From a user's perspective, yeah. Technically this would be very different because koken was based on a database.
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ed_f
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Re: marking images as featured for slideshow

13 Jan 2021, 06:05

könntest du in wenigen worten einem laien mitteilen, was der unterschied ist zum hiesigen? jedenfalls war es schließlich der zusammenbruch der koken-database, die eine neuanfertigung nötig machte, schade, aber hier ist's nun besser. danke!
 
metallissimus
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Re: marking images as featured for slideshow

13 Jan 2021, 06:32

ed_f wrote: könntest du in wenigen worten einem laien mitteilen, was der unterschied ist zum hiesigen? jedenfalls war es schließlich der zusammenbruch der koken-database, die eine neuanfertigung nötig machte, schade, aber hier ist's nun besser. danke!
koken: Es gibt einen Ordner mit allen Bildern und in der Datenbank steht, welches Bild in welches Album gehört. Deshalb kann man auch einfach sagen, dass ein Bild in mehrere Alben gehören soll.
X3: Jeder Ordner stellt ein Album dar. Deshalb gehört jedes Bild auch nur dem Album an, in dessen Ordner es liegt.
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ed_f
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Re: marking images as featured for slideshow

13 Jan 2021, 06:34

merci!
 
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mjau-mjau
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Re: marking images as featured for slideshow

14 Jan 2021, 01:50

Some good suggestions here obviously, but as pointed out, there are some logical limitations to X3 because it's folder-bases. As soon as you start "referring" multiple images from multiple folders to use for a specific gallery/slideshow, you are risking things breaking as soon as you change a folder name or image name, or change a path. Unlike Koken, X3 keeps your real folder names and images, while Koken would create #hash-based numbers for your images, and store them entirely unrelated to your actual gallery/menu structure. You would not be allowed to edit any of these files outside of Koken, as you would break database references, while in X3 you can move files/folders freely around, even by FTP.

Once I start work on next major X3 (possibly named X4), there may be options to improve cross-references I'm sure. Might also include database for some behavior if it's beneficial. However, the foundation logic needs to be either folder-based or database ... It can't be both.  :clap:

All suggestions are appreciated, even if not currently technically feasible.
metallissimus wrote:I had an idea about that. You know I have only basic knowledge about the technical site, but maybe it's worth a thought: Would it be possible to assign images from folder A to folder B by only putting a reference (symlink?) into folder B?
Indeed, and that would probably work already now. However, it doesn't seem practical for the same reasons as noted above: Once you move/rename any files or paths that the symlinks point to, the symlinks will fail, and X3 can't manage such abstraction. You would have to create the symlinks manually, and surely that would require browsing/searching multiple folders to get the paths, essentially just to save storage space. Symlinks wouldn't benefit browser-cache, since the url's will be different, just pointing to the same file on server. Excellent thinking however :clap: Perhaps a concept that can be used in the future with some planning ...
 
metallissimus
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Re: marking images as featured for slideshow

14 Jan 2021, 05:57

mjau-mjau wrote: Once you move/rename any files or paths that the symlinks point to, the symlinks will fail, and X3 can't manage such abstraction.
Maybe X4 will be able to do that? I can only guess that it might be possible to implement some kind of watching mechanism that detects changes and can rewrite the symlinks correspondingly.
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mjau-mjau
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Re: marking images as featured for slideshow

14 Jan 2021, 23:22

Another big difference between X3 and Koken, is X3's superior CACHE mechanism. Once a page in X3 is created for the first time, it loads extremely fast, something I am sure you have noticed and appreciate. The cache mechanism depends on the CHANGES to the folder ... If the folder changes (settings or new images), the page will get re-created. This works fine for the page's own folder, as it can just check folder-date and/or changes to settings/page. However, if the page depends on unknown data/images spread across multiple (or possibly 100's) of folders, the process could become incredibly slow and impossible to implement. This cache mechanism is also therefore affected if you want to load and validate data/images from other folders.
metallissimus wrote:Maybe X4 will be able to do that? I can only guess that it might be possible to implement some kind of watching mechanism that detects changes and can rewrite the symlinks correspondingly.
In terms of X4 (or next-gen X3), I could write a lot. There is definitely room for huge improvements in how X3 stores images and data on a per-folder basis. For example, the following is feasible (although not without some complications):
  • Show latest images (from multiple dirs), as X3 could do this by scanning various folders data files.
  • Load images into a gallery from multiple dirs, also by scanning various folders data.
However, the above is purely "dynamic" features that don't rely on fixed paths. If you refer multiple images by file path into pageA from pageB/C/D, you can't expect pageA to track or "watch" for changes to the references. That would be either A ) On click "save" in pageA, check all image references, and if they don't exist, just remove them ... But even here, if you change paths or images in pageB/C/D, you can't expect pageA to automatically update itself. B ) On click "save" in pageB/C/D, loop ALL other pages, check if they have special references to images in itself, and then refresh pageA. In conclusion, none of these options are feasible.

The only thing I can thing of, would be some kinda "tags" mechanism, which could allow you to load images by tags, into any page/gallery, including a slideshow-intro. Tags, without a database, surely is not an easy concept either, but it might be achievable somehow.

Another option could be to "mark image for slideshow" from any gallery, and that would create a list of images (from multiple dirs) to use for the slideshow. However, this logic means there would only be ONE set of "marked images" that could be used in any gallery (or slideshow-intro), and we would have to create a "select" interface just for this "set".

All this just to avoid copying a few select images directly into your slideshow-intro folder, which after all isn't too complicated. Not saying there aren't good options here, but just concluding the facts. Food for thought!