Photo Gallery Forums

First as everyone else has said. V2 is a great leap forward for your product line. Job Well Done!

I have a few comments after testing the product.

1. Relative Paths is a BIG hangup for me. I know its a topic of conversation, and I hope it make it in the final release. My content is in several places and is user based so you can see the problem I have.

2. Passing values through the url. I miss this feature. It might be available, but not documented.

3. swf scripting and passing values. I tend to use this feature of V1 the most. In my php and asp script I pass certain database values to load the proper content. This can also be part of item 2 as well.

4. I would love to see some sort of hashing (encrypt/decrypt) for passing variable to the flash slide show. Sometime I don't want the users to see where the actual data resides on the server.
I know some people are going to ask what I mean on this one. This also comes in to play with items 2 and 3 above.

When a var is passed to the SWF any person can just view the source of the html code and see the vars used. I would like to encrypt this information with a hash key on the server side, and then have the swf file be able to decrypt the vars. The goal is to hide the content /image locations.

5. I have a hotlink blocker program installed on my server, and both V1 and V2 will not work with it. I sort of have a work around with V1, but the base install will not work. I seriously doubt that this will ever work 100% since the hotlink block is server side scripting. Just looking for your thoughts on this and if it has been brought up before.

6. I like the XML format you have implemented, but I can see some limitations for people like me that manipulate some of the features via url var passing and swf var passing (see items 2 and 3)

7. admin interface works well, but however it looks very unpolished and thrown together. I understand its beta; please take this with a grain of salt, its just an observation.

8. Right clicking should be an option that can be turned off completely.

9. Key usage <- -> should be an option that can be turned on and off also.

10. As mentioned in some of the other threads, vertical thumbnails would be great, or even something similar to SimpleViewer.

11. more to come as I dissect the code and try to convert it to a ASP based script...

**edit**
12. Would like to see some sort of custom scripting link ability for clicking on a photo. On the image's menu have a custom button/link with a custom script url where the image values can be passed to the script.

example link: http://www.yoursite.com/imagecomment.php?imagename=[IMAGEVUE PASSED VAR]

so while inside the gallery I could click on this link and it would direct me to the imagecomment.php page where I would run my own code of some sort.

granted I am not saying have a different custom link for every image but just the ability to have a global link.



Peace
JP

Thanks, lets see...

jpeterman wrote: 1. Relative Paths is a BIG hangup for me. I know its a topic of conversation, and I hope it make it in the final release. My content is in several places and is user based so you can see the problem I have.

And what do you expect? Some sort of gallery1 -> ../../../content1, gallery2 -> ../useruploaded/userNick/pictures, gallery3 -> ../../../oldfiles ?

Maybe using hard or soft links will help though.

jpeterman wrote: 2. Passing values through the url. I miss this feature. It might be available, but not documented.

It actually works just list of variables which could be passed is shorter now.

3. swf scripting and passing values. I tend to use this feature of V1 the most. In my php and asp script I pass certain database values to load the proper content. This can also be part of item 2 as well.

Hmm you could also hack server scripts and change the data they return, that would be best way, we plan to provide some hooks for programmers later.

4. I would love to see some sort of hashing (encrypt/decrypt) for passing variable to the flash slide show. Sometime I don't want the users to see where the actual data resides on the server.
I know some people are going to ask what I mean on this one. This also comes in to play with items 2 and 3 above.

That is possible, unfortunately this will put a strain on server, you dont want them load pictures by direct urls do you? That will requre a wrapper for image loading, it will be reading disk everytime. Can be done but need fast server.

5. I have a hotlink blocker program installed on my server, and both V1 and V2 will not work with it. I sort of have a work around with V1, but the base install will not work. I seriously doubt that this will ever work 100% since the hotlink block is server side scripting. Just looking for your thoughts on this and if it has been brought up before.

What? Hotlink blocker blocks server-side scripting too? And how are we supposed to fix it?

6. I like the XML format you have implemented, but I can see some limitations for people like me that manipulate some of the features via url var passing and swf var passing (see items 2 and 3)

Like what?

7. admin interface works well, but however it looks very unpolished and thrown together. I understand its beta; please take this with a grain of salt, its just an observation.

We're working on it

8. Right clicking should be an option that can be turned off completely.
9. Key usage <- -> should be an option that can be turned on and off also.

This could be done easily, but why? Because I can?

10. As mentioned in some of the other threads, vertical thumbnails would be great, or even something similar to SimpleViewer.

Not sure about that, but first we aim at releasing 2.0 then we'll see where to go next

12. Would like to see some sort of custom scripting link ability for clicking on a photo. On the image's menu have a custom button/link with a custom script url where the image values can be passed to the script.

Right now you can add your own attributes to images and folders, maybe there will be some hooks in swf too to handle them

Thanks for your feedback. Allow me to comment a few things that my not have been addressed:

jpeterman wrote:2. Passing values through the url. I miss this feature. It might be available, but not documented.

You can already pass parameters. For example:
www.photo.gallery/soda/?theme=gardener
www.photo.gallery/soda/?language=french

These available parameters are set in config. Navigate through your admin to config, and see the top item url_params. There is already an array of items available there, and you can add any item generally from the theme config. We will be adding further documentation for this after final release.

jpeterman wrote:3. swf scripting and passing values. I tend to use this feature of V1 the most. In my php and asp script I pass certain database values to load the proper content. This can also be part of item 2 as well.

The same applies here as stated above. You can apply any parameters to the SWF by FLASHVARS(The same as made available on url_params config). Of course, this involves yourself creating custom page integrations, which is certainly something we don't have the opportunity to create guidelines on yet.

jpeterman wrote:6. I like the XML format you have implemented, but I can see some limitations for people like me that manipulate some of the features via url var passing and swf var passing (see items 2 and 3)

Again, this is similar request to #1 and #2 - XML is only the general OUTPUT format for the SWF gallery. You can still use any normal var parameters in URL of embeded in document(flashvars)

jpeterman wrote:7. admin interface works well, but however it looks very unpolished and thrown together. I understand its beta; please take this with a grain of salt, its just an observation.

The main focus here is that it works, and it is 10X more powerful than the V1 admin, so you can't compare them. We will have time to improve the admin design/UI after initial release.

jpeterman wrote:8. Right clicking should be an option that can be turned off completely.

You can turn off right-clicking by removing the available right-click items in the theme config. You can't simply disable it though, because flash has its native context-menu that can't be removed. Other options are javascript, but personally I hate those javascript right-click blockers popping up alert boxes.

jpeterman wrote:9. Key usage <- -> should be an option that can be turned on and off also.

You are right. We will add a toggle setting for this.

jpeterman wrote:12. Would like to see some sort of custom scripting link ability for clicking on a photo. On the image's menu have a custom button/link with a custom script url where the image values can be passed to the script.

"Scripting" link I don't know, but we can certainly add custom attributes through the admin that are triggered as buttons. You can already create a custom link that displays for example directly beneath the image. For example a small link at bottom right of each image that says "Image comments" and that goes to your independent comments page.