X3Photo Gallery Forums

Red Alert! Mega Update!

Dear People of Earth, apologies for the delay since last update. Basically I had to dig a stick deep into the hornets nest in this last update, and it took some time to get through a load of intertwined tasks and issues. I will not go too much into detail about the update here, but basically it is related to X3 core page modules, layout methods- and utilities and how they are all connected. I now believe page/gallery/folders functionality is production-ready (although far from final). I will have to explain in detail later about X3 page anatomy ...

You may wish to take a look through the revamped Concepts demo section, which was slightly inaccurate before. Gallery layout methods are now separated into Vertical, Grid, Justify, Columns (new) and Slideshow, which all can also be applied to Albums (folders).

See the full list of updates here:
mjau-mjau.com/updates/#09jun14

All page image modules (gallery, folders) have methods for layout as listed above, as well as utilities:
items:title,label,date,amount,description,preview,content (select items and sorting for the page elements)
tooltip:title,date,amount,description (apply a tooltip for mousehover)
caption:title,date,amount,description (add info to a caption that overlays images)
split:,8,4,invert (split the layout into columns context/[gallery or folders])
crop:x,y (set crop for images)
limit:x (limit a gallery or folders to x amount if items)
title-clamp:1 (clamp title to max 1 line)
description-clamp:3 (clamp description to max 3 lines)
hr (Add a horizontal rule between items)
text-center (center text in any module, as mostly used for the demo)
... much more

Admin
We now have a new provisory functional admin in place. It is entirely functional in terms of managing files- and folders, but adding page text content and settings is a bit "manual labor" for now ...

Skins
I am now moving straight towards creating a first SKIN (theme), as this is a minimal requirement before we can launch even a premature beta. Hopefully I have an update shortly!

I will reply to some of your recent questions in a separate reply ...

phall wrote:The one question I am most interested in: Text. any comments on how this will be implemented in X3?

This question is not straight-forward to answer, but let me try.

First of all, new X3 is built on modern html (html5 in fact) and we are no longer limited to buggy flash textfields. This provides a good deal of freedom and flexibility. You can basically add any html you want into the page context, although the focus of X3 by design is that this should be relatively basic text data, and X3 will elegantly weave it into the design.

In addition, X3 can provide some neat styling utilities, as X3 is built on the Foundation framework. However, if you start adding your "own" html, especially pasted from old-school apps like MS Word, you are basically playing with fire because no magic in the world can weave that into the design and make it look nice.

Furthermore, X3 supports markdown, which is the choice of the pro's. Basically it allows you to write "rich text" without having to use html tags. You can check this link for a basic understanding of how it works:
http://yukulelix.com/BLUEPRINTS/editor/index.html

phall wrote:... while writing the text, almost like being on the site online and instead of reading the text, clicking on it and being able to write, add edit, etc.

It is not feasible to build text editors that edit in an identical environment as the end-design. Even Wordpress with millions of users- and developers still need to use a "generic" clean editing environment. Basically, the editor is for formatting text, not for "designing". Having said that, we plan to launch an"in-page" editor in phase 2, where you can edit text elements directly from the frontend. However, this will mainly be for editing the text, not for applying complicated html.

phall wrote:Multiple templates with padded, non padded texts, fonts tied to differnt kinds of layouts, ready to go would be fantastic so images and text are tied together from the start in smart ways which of course can be modified and made more personalzied. Know this is much to ask but I'm excited by what you've done and it could be amazing to have it all come together, Text and text layout all folded in with image together.

X3 will not use separate templates for text, but it will include a lot of predefined styles (skin) and utilities for layout. For example, the skin will come with nice predefined styles for <h1><h2><p class=lead><blockquote> etc. In addition, you can apply utilities on the page like "text-center", and "narrow" which narrows the text block to make it more readable. Also, you can the flexible Foundation Grid, which is weaved into X3.

Furthermore, X3 does not have separate templates for text, gallery, albums etc. The benefit of this, is that you can easily weave text- and gallery together in a single page. An example of this is the frontpage of mjau-mjau.com, where we have a page with a gallery (slideshow) at the top, basic page text (context) further down, followed by folders which in this case is basically blog elements.

phall wrote:I am most excited by Text in that it will provide search engines much more to work with and go after than in Flash, so text will drive up traffic.

100% correct! A lot of emphasis has been placed on semantics and seo performance in X3.

phall wrote:I guess what I was trying to get at Karl is writing Text without the need for HTML markup, with most common fonts like Helvetica supported, the ability to Copy and Paste from apps like Apple Pages / Text Edit with the formatting preserved, (italics, bolds, etc) in the Titles of Galleries as well

All formatted text is essentially HTML, so you cant avoid that. I do NOT recommend pasting heavily formatted text directly into a page, not in Imagevue X3 and not in any other website CMS ... The result is NEVER satisfactory. The style (font, size, color etc) is already cradled in the Imagevue skin style, and overwriting with embedded styles is not recommended in any way whatsoever ...

In an editor for a beautiful website, you should never need to manually set fonts, colors and sizes on a per-page basis. The editor should allow writing basic text with simple formatting, which will flow nicely in the skin style.

phall wrote:and if you don't want a sub header or Title, you don't have to have any text there.

An X3 page context is built from 3x elements: title, description and content. By default, you should always populate page title and description for semantic and SEO purposes. However, you can choose to not display them in the layout, and the content element can remain empty. You may want to only display the gallery on a page!

winph wrote:btw grid view still now working properly with safari. only 1st column is clickable. but in the new album it is working properly.

This should be fixed with the new Columns javascript module.

phall wrote:Also, possible to make a gallery that has both video and images?

I haven't put much focus into video yet, but there is no reason you can't have video alongside images. Personally, I would separate them though ... When I am on a web page looking through images, I don't like it when suddenly one of the items is a video. They should be clearly separated.

X3 will support local-hosted video, but as mentioned earlier, we will focus on implementing video embedded from 3rd party services like Youtube and Vimeo. The short story is that they simply stream videos at multiple bitrates much better than your self-hosted server. Another problem with self-hosted videos is that your server simply cant create thumbnails from them, so we have to invent a tedious method so you can create video thumbnails manually. You can mix 3rd party video and images on the same page, but you can not intertwine them in the same sorting stack.

Bulletproof IT wrote:I have made several requests in the past to both link to video content on several different platforms

I am not quite sure what you mean "link to video content on several different platforms" ... If you are using self-hosted video, you will also need to be responsible for offering video formats that are supported on all platforms (normally mp4 suffices, but you would need to have a low bitrate that mobiles can run also) ... 3rd party services will automatically handle this for you.

Bulletproof IT wrote:download the video and have it available locally (e.g. provide local URL to import and process file (pull out thumbnail for video) and so on).

For self-hosted, yes no problem, although it will push your server resources.

Bulletproof IT wrote:Having a gallery built from different sources of video (enter URL's for Vimeo, Youtube, Dailymotion, etc), and it is automatically turned into a mixed video gallery.

This should be possible ...

Bulletproof IT wrote:"Added “time-ago” formatting for dates." - I trust this can be disabled?

There will be a global setting for date-format yes, although its not available yet. Personally I much prefer the modern "ago" format ... In very few cases as a visitor would I feel the need to pinpoint the exact date for a gallery- or image, and the "ago" format makes it more readable ...

Bulletproof IT wrote:Q. Are you going to tell the server to GZIP content before sending to browser, or will you use a JS / CSS Minifier ?

Both!

Bulletproof IT wrote:Bugs Feedback.

Some of the bugs mentioned are already fixed, although some may still exist. Thanks for reporting nevertheless!

Bulletproof IT wrote:BLACK & WHITE Album - Does this use a filter to make all photos black and white? What configuration does it show? Image filters/modifiers?

This is simply some of the demo images in black&white. There is a CSS filter to apply B&W to images, but it only works in some browsers (webkit), and this is not an practical option we wish to include. We may also eventually offer some tools in the admin for editing images, but this will never be recommended by default because of two issues: [1] Your server has limited resizing capabilities [2] JPG compression is accumulated for each edit.

various of you wrote:upgrade cost etc

This is pointless to discuss any more, and there are different opinions. There will be a fee for Imagevue X3, existing users will be offered a 50% discount, and for those who have any problem with this, feel free to contact us.

dxodik wrote:- collecting and visualization of photos from an Instagram on certain hashtag

You mean load Instagram images directly into Imagevue pages? This is not available currently, but if Instagram has an API for such behavior, it certainly would be cool and something we would want to look into!

dxodik wrote:- reading the Russian symbols from EXIF

We should be able to get this to work now that we are on html5 platform ...

elpd wrote:Since today's update all the mentioned issues are solved!
Now waiting for the first release...

Thank you sir!

eskimo121 wrote:sounds good. Don't forget to put in an option for Multi-language (like in the imagevue X2, it automatically chooses language based on the browsers language <fr> </fr> etc tags.

You mean for titles and content, you add multiple languages with for example <fr>titre ici</fr><en>title here</en>? Yep a good idea, although this will not be available on initial beta launch ...

eskimo121 wrote:Also, i hope some skins/themes you make have Gallery as the main focus on homepage (like imagevue X2 interface with big beautiful images greeting the homepage) rather than just making it look like another of those CMS's full of text with gallery stuck somewhere in between.

Thanks for observing something I am very aware of. As mentioned earlier, the mjau-mjau.com "playground" website is fashioned with lots of "space" and all pages basically have substantial text content. We do wish to focus on offering a few "tighter" more direct layout options, although they will not be part of "skins". Skins will strictly be for changing colors schemes and fonts, hence the name "skin" as they do not change the structure in any way. These "layout" options may not be ready for initial beta launch which I am pushing for, but they are definitely high priority after skins.

For instance, see these two links seem more "direct", without the main header. You can perhaps imagine the layout with an expandable/tight menu/logo on the left, similar in some ways to Imagevue X2:
http://mjau-mjau.com/concepts/more/just-images/
http://mjau-mjau.com/concepts/more/clean-grid/

eskimo121 wrote:If possible please try to implement a box (somewhere in the admin panel) to paste Advertisement code which displays Ad's in predefined areas like the top or sides, and readjusts to normal looks when there is no ad code pasted.

Struggling to keep everything simple and clean (including admin settings), this is not something I thrilled about adding, but I am sure it can be done at some point.

eskimo121 wrote:Also consider a design which can handle 1000+ images in the album (without scroll lag, extreme load times etc) by dividing it into pages/using ajax etc -- Because in flash Imagevue X2 there is a big problem with images scrolling too fast when mouse is moved (when album has many images).

I guess this is something we may need to deal with eventually, although personally I am not a fan of "pages", neither are mobile devices, and neither are search engines. Imagevue X3 uses "lazy-load" techniques, and images are only loaded once they appear on scroll within the browser viewport, so it will only load images on-demand. Furthermore, X3 is a bit different from X2, as it will "process" and create the page first time it is being viewed, and then cache the output on server. With 1000+ images, the page will probably be very slow to load first time it is visited, but once the output is created and cached, it will load lightning-fast regardless if it is 1 image or 1000. Don't you think having 1000+ images in a folder is slightly dysfunctional? I would perhaps recommend using flickr or picasa for this storing this amount of images like an archive ... and hopefully we will soon be able to display image from flickr and picasa directly in Imagevue.

eskimo121 wrote:ps: options like Share, Download when mouse is placed on image like in X2 would be great.

Yep. I am slightly wary about what to add though ... You are aware that each "like" button loads a bundle of javascripts into your website from each service? When I get around to it, I would like to integrate a balanced simplified approach to sharing without too many distracting bells and whistles. Most well-performing and well-designed websites these days have started removing stuff that 99% of clients dont use, and "less is more". Of course, it will get have it added at some point![/quote]