V2 review
Posted: 04 Jul 2009, 04:02
Finished!
After 5! Years of using imagevueX V1 I have upgraded (after a really long BETA phase) to V2 (currently 2.1). Please take a look:
http://www.westausgang.de
First of all - I am really happy with the new version - although I think there ´s still room for improvement - but first the positive things:
1.) imagevue Admin:
Finally an admin console that makes tasks like e.g. title change, hiding folders, description maintenance, user creation, etc. very easy. Although the split between Settings, Themes and stylesheet wasn ´t easy to understand in the beginning I now got really used to this structure and customizing imagevueX can be controlled well.
2.) Main menu:
The new main menu appears much smoother that the old one and finally combines the image folders, text- and linkpages, which were somehow seperate in the V1 version.
3.) Thumbnailscoller:
The performance of the thumbnailscroller is amaizing and finally it directly shows the thumbnail itself without rolling over it like in V1.
4.) Audio player:
I really like the new audio player an its menu - a great improvement compared to the V1.
Nevertheless there are is still room for improvement:
1.) Slideshow and thumbnail view in one gallery:
What is really a pitty it that within the same gallery (e.g. www.westausgang.de) I can either define to open the thumbnail view when clicking on an entry in the main menu OR to open it in the slideshow view. It is not possible (or at least I could not figure out how to) to define per folder if it should open in slideshow modus or thumbnail view...
If there is a way to make this possible I would really welcome it.
2.) WYSIWYG text editor
The WYSIWYG editor in the admin area is not working as expected (Mac, Leopard, Safari) - e.g. I add pictures and beside the pictures I would like to place text - in the WYSIWYG editor it looks fine - once I publish, the result looks different. So what I do is I still continue to manipulate directly in html mode...
What would be really helpful is an option to add a table in order to structure text and pictures...
3.) RSS
That feature is really missing - in order to update users about new photos, they should be able to subscibe via rss...
Hope that will be added in one of the upcoming releases.
4.) Geodata
I really like the feature in flickr to locate my photos on a map - yet my camera does not do it automatically, but I expect in the next 2 years a wide range of cameras will have it built in - therefore it would be great if imagevueX would somehow support geodata and display the photos on a worldmap in a googlemap mashup.
5.) HTML temlates
For my taste there are too little HTML themes to choose from - especially for mobile devices I would like to have more choices for different designs - as well for the time being I miss a detailed documentation for this part as well - whereas I ´m sure it ´s currently worked on.
6.) Documentation
For X2 there ´s for the time being no detailed description of all features and how to customize them - the V1 documentation was absolutely excellent - I hope for V2 there will be something similiar.
7.) Guestbook:
As I read it ´s already planned to include some kind of guestbook - keep it simple - it ´s a nice feature, but does not need to be high sophisticated.
8.) Comments:
Leavin comments directly related to a photo though would be nice.
That ´s all for now - I am continuing to improve my gallery and will keep you updated.
Last but not least a big thank you to Karl and pain for their amazing work and dedication to imagevueX - what you created is unique in the market and I could not imagine a better platform to display my photos to any audiance - keep up your excellent work!
After 5! Years of using imagevueX V1 I have upgraded (after a really long BETA phase) to V2 (currently 2.1). Please take a look:
http://www.westausgang.de
First of all - I am really happy with the new version - although I think there ´s still room for improvement - but first the positive things:
1.) imagevue Admin:
Finally an admin console that makes tasks like e.g. title change, hiding folders, description maintenance, user creation, etc. very easy. Although the split between Settings, Themes and stylesheet wasn ´t easy to understand in the beginning I now got really used to this structure and customizing imagevueX can be controlled well.
2.) Main menu:
The new main menu appears much smoother that the old one and finally combines the image folders, text- and linkpages, which were somehow seperate in the V1 version.
3.) Thumbnailscoller:
The performance of the thumbnailscroller is amaizing and finally it directly shows the thumbnail itself without rolling over it like in V1.
4.) Audio player:
I really like the new audio player an its menu - a great improvement compared to the V1.
Nevertheless there are is still room for improvement:
1.) Slideshow and thumbnail view in one gallery:
What is really a pitty it that within the same gallery (e.g. www.westausgang.de) I can either define to open the thumbnail view when clicking on an entry in the main menu OR to open it in the slideshow view. It is not possible (or at least I could not figure out how to) to define per folder if it should open in slideshow modus or thumbnail view...
If there is a way to make this possible I would really welcome it.
2.) WYSIWYG text editor
The WYSIWYG editor in the admin area is not working as expected (Mac, Leopard, Safari) - e.g. I add pictures and beside the pictures I would like to place text - in the WYSIWYG editor it looks fine - once I publish, the result looks different. So what I do is I still continue to manipulate directly in html mode...
What would be really helpful is an option to add a table in order to structure text and pictures...
3.) RSS
That feature is really missing - in order to update users about new photos, they should be able to subscibe via rss...
Hope that will be added in one of the upcoming releases.
4.) Geodata
I really like the feature in flickr to locate my photos on a map - yet my camera does not do it automatically, but I expect in the next 2 years a wide range of cameras will have it built in - therefore it would be great if imagevueX would somehow support geodata and display the photos on a worldmap in a googlemap mashup.
5.) HTML temlates
For my taste there are too little HTML themes to choose from - especially for mobile devices I would like to have more choices for different designs - as well for the time being I miss a detailed documentation for this part as well - whereas I ´m sure it ´s currently worked on.
6.) Documentation
For X2 there ´s for the time being no detailed description of all features and how to customize them - the V1 documentation was absolutely excellent - I hope for V2 there will be something similiar.
7.) Guestbook:
As I read it ´s already planned to include some kind of guestbook - keep it simple - it ´s a nice feature, but does not need to be high sophisticated.
8.) Comments:
Leavin comments directly related to a photo though would be nice.
That ´s all for now - I am continuing to improve my gallery and will keep you updated.
Last but not least a big thank you to Karl and pain for their amazing work and dedication to imagevueX - what you created is unique in the market and I could not imagine a better platform to display my photos to any audiance - keep up your excellent work!
Comments . Yes, perhaps, although its a little outside of Imagevues scope. Community driven sites with user comments and ratings simply works better from html community-style galleries. Its hard to balance and manage the aesthetics with all functionality.