Photo Gallery Forums

In the admin I have thumbnail columns set to 3.

However when bringing up http://www.merelyafleshwound.com I often get 6 columns. In fact I get 6 columns over 50% of the time. I get 3 columns the other 50% of the time.

HTC Incredible... Android... 480 x 800

On this particular android device the 3 columns looks much better.... but why the inconsistent behavior?

This is simply because we wanted to add more thumbnails on large screen, and primarily this is for iPad. Thumbnails look crap on iPad with 3 columns (or the same amount of columns as iPhone or any smaller smartphone), but it looks great with 6 columns. Therefore, we duplicate #columns on large screens, and this might also vary depending on the orientation you have on your phone, so this could also kick in on a high-res Android if you are in landscape mode ... but it should look fairly good.

Makes sense... however... the 6 columns is way too small this particular device... which is similar in size to the iPhone. Not sure why the behavior is not consistent.

alexhenes wrote:Makes sense... however... the 6 columns is way too small this particular device... which is similar in size to the iPhone. Not sure why the behavior is not consistent.

Thing is, have you ever tried to sure a web page on an iPhone and compare it with the Android device on this particular device? You will find that everything is much smaller on the android device, although it might show more of the page. This is because iPhone(iOS) uses something called "pixel-doubling" on their high-resolution retina devices. Instead of having super-high resolution so that items get very small, it doubles the size instead so that text remains readable, although much smoother.

I know this, because if you are on Android and you get 6 columns of thumbnails, then it must have many pixels in the width (regardless of what orientation you are holding at). If Imagevue shows 6 columns, then all the websites you surf must show quite small on this device also. This is why Apple do pixel-doubling.

There is no perfect solution. Some devices might display too many columns, but this is because they are high-resolution anyway, and Imagevue will not vary much anyway in regards to how sites display on that mobile.

We could add a progressive columns scheme instead of simply doubling it, but it does not help the issue that the most popular devices (ipad3, iphone4+) use pixel-doubling while Android does not. And it does not help the issue that some devices like Android have very high pixel-density although a relatively small screen, while they may have some bigger screens with low-pixel density. Imagevue cannot detect "screen size", only screen resolution.

on the same android device... why do I sometimes get 3 and other times get 6?

alexhenes wrote:on the same android device... why do I sometimes get 3 and other times get 6?

Thought I answered this? The only reason you might get different results, is depending on the orientation when opening the gallery. The orientation decides the width, and the width varies depending on orientation, and therefore you may get 6 or 3 columns. If you turn the device AFTER opening the gallery with 6 columns, it will not reload the page with 3 columns (and vice versa).

This is the logic, and if it randomly opens 6 or 3 columns on your device in the same orientation, then there is something wrong with your device.

thanks Karl...

at what point should the site re-load? on the next visit or the clearing of the cache?

also... I locked my phone's display so it never goes into landscape mode... most of the time I get the 3 thumbnails across... however every now and then I still get the 6. So... I still don't understand the inconsistent behavior. if the device was never in landscape mode why would it randomly switch between 3 and 6 thumbs across.

alexhenes wrote:at what point should the site re-load? on the next visit or the clearing of the cache?

I believe the gallery re-checked resolution and orientation after closing the browser/window, and re-opening it. I need to confirm this with Nixk.

alexhenes wrote:also... I locked my phone's display so it never goes into landscape mode... most of the time I get the 3 thumbnails across... however every now and then I still get the 6. So... I still don't understand the inconsistent behavior. if the device was never in landscape mode why would it randomly switch between 3 and 6 thumbs across.

Well, this I cant answer but the logic is pretty simple ... Imagevue checks resolution width depending on orientation. If your device is randomly getting 3 or 6 thumbnails at same orientation, well then it certainly is not reporting a consistent width or height in the same orientation. Its not random. This has been 100% consistent on all the devices we have checked on, and it is a pretty basic code.

Yep, imagevue checks the resolution once, on load. And multiplies columns by two. Again I don't see why the device could report different widths every time, but maybe this is depending on orientation in your case:
I am wondering - did you modify it in any way? Some custom firmware of something?

No custom firmware... the device is not rooted.

If your device reports different values in same orientation with $(window).width(), then there is not much we can do ... It must be reporting wrong then? I would think there are other factors involved: Cookies. You have already opened in one orientation, but then flipped orientation under same session.

hmmm... I can't seem to re-create this now... feels like I am going crazy... so maybe I am. I will let you know if I figure out what I did to make this happen.

happened again... can't seem to find the pattern.