Gallery 4

[Mike]

OK, I think it is now safe to say Gallery 4.0.0 Beta 6 is now open for business. If any of you have visited the Gallery in the last 2 or 3 days, you've doubtless noticed it is considerably different from our previous version. So much so, in fact, that I am not going to bother trying to explain all the new features and functions to you. The Chief Coder at Invision Power Systems is a pal of mine and he has prepared some videos that do a great job of reviewing the changes. Without further ado - (Note the four arrow icon, left of the word Vimeo, in the player. Click on that to view full screen and then hit Esc to return to normal.)

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[Mike]

[media]

As you can see, we now have a much more powerful gallery than before. The Gallery page is much better than before, with the individual album pages and images pages being cleaned up, considerably. Sneak peeks of the new Gallery started appearing mid-September 2010, so you can get an idea of how much recoding has gone into this project. The upgrade was a massive project, to say the very least.

Please be aware we are running a Beta-test version of the software. It is Beta 6 and most of the bugs have been fixed, but the possibility of finding new bugs always exists. If you discover something not working correctly, please contact me so I can get it tested and a bug report submitted, if necessary. We're stepping up to help test the Gallery in a live environment, in the hope we will see a Gold release at an earlier date.

There are a couple of functions that are not operational as of yet. In the earlier version of Gallery, you could attach a copyright statement to your images. If you did not, the script would automatically add a site copyright to them. This function is not yet operational, so be sure to add copyright statements to all uploaded images. The watermarking function is not operational either, so your copyright statement is all the protection you will have. If this is not acceptable to you, I ask you do not upload any images to the Gallery until we get further down the line and get these two functions back in place.

Regular forum members now have 30 megabytes of album storage space, which can be used across up to 6 albums of 10 images each.

Members who have donated to the site, our forum sponsors and forum staff members all have 60 megs of storage, which can be used across up to 12 albums of 20 images each.

Enjoy!

 

[Gerry]

Mike
Thats really nice. Thanks for the effort.
On my laptop when I bring a pic up in the galley, I need to scroll down to get it all on the screen. If I then click previous/next the pic appears at the bottom and I have to scroll down again. It seems the headers and ads are taking up the top half of the screen. Just a mention NOT a criticism
Gerry

 

[Gerry]

English guy on the instructional video Huh?

Just uploaded a couple of images. Easy as you like. Also thanks for the extra space, beats all the messin around with Photobucket.
G

 

[Mike]

Thats really nice. Thanks for the effort.
On my laptop when I bring a pic up in the galley, I need to scroll down to get it all on the screen. If I then click previous/next the pic appears at the bottom and I have to scroll down again. It seems the headers and ads are taking up the top half of the screen. Just a mention NOT a criticism

Gerry, the forum header and the ads are the same size on the Gallery as they are on any other page. The best any admin or webmaster can ever do is to try to strike a happy medium with sizing of various objects. Different people run different monitors at different resolutions. As a result, there is no perfect, one-size-fits-all solution.

A screen grab of the Gallery at 1920 X 1080 resolution -

And now at 1680 X 1050 -

And now, at 1680 X 1050, with a single click of Zoom added to Firefox (which is where I typically run that monitor, since it is set back in a corner) -

And the machine sitting right next door is running at 1280 X 1024 -

You can see the differences in the miscellaneous images, showing in the lower-right corner of each image, as well as in the real estate used up by the sponsor's ads. The miscellaneous images go from nearly 2.5 rows to .5 row, depending on the resolution I am running. And none of them show the full display image, although it gets close in the 1280 X 1024 resolution.

Believe me, I try to make sure everything is as fluid as it can be, but when I'm displaying a uniformly-sized image, I'm left with getting everything else to fit around that image. Sorry.

And yes, Matt stays in Peterborough, 85 miles or so north of Londontoon.

As for the additional storage room, I hope this will help everyone out. We've got more room with our new server, so I was able to open things up a bit more.

 

[Gerry]

Mike
It was a mention only. As I said the extra space and ease of uploading is a real treat. Peterborough eh. Its where the passport office is. BTDT
Gerry

 

[Mike]

I'm going to have the Gallery closed down for a few minutes, to perform another upgrade.

 

[Mike]

OK, the upgrade is complete and everything seems to be working according to plan (howzabout that for a switch).

 

[bigfrank330]

I just used the NEW GALLERY WOW what an upgrade
Mike this is awesome -- very easy to use and able to direct upload
VERY NICE

 

[Mike]

I'm glad to hear you like it. The upgrade from Gallery 3 to Gallery 4 is really a night and day difference. I hope more people will realize how easy everything is to use, now that we've upgraded.

Here is a new feature I suspect many have not yet picked up on. If you copy the URL of an image in the Gallery and paste that URL directly into a post, as-is, it will display a thumbnail of that image in the post. Clicking on the thumbnail will take you to the image, as it is displayed in the Gallery. We obviously cannot offer unlimited album space like Photobucket, et al, but this will allow a member to directly upload an image, from his or her computer to the Gallery, and then display a thumbnail of that image in a forum post.

http://www.tbucketee...1208-laurencup/

 

[Mike]

OK, I'm getting ready to upgrade the Gallery to the latest Beta release, so it will be closed for a few minutes.

 

[Mike]

And we're already back. Although I notice a couple of bugs that were claimed to have been squashed are still present. :hi:

 

[Mike]

I stand corrected. The bugs were squashed. It just took a smarter man than myself to make the function work.

I will have the Gallery closed for a few minutes.

 

[Mike]

And we're back. Apologies, that took longer than I had anticipated. All images have been rebuilt in all albums and should now be properly watermarked.

 

[Mike]

OK, the Gallery will closed for a few minutes. We're at an official release, so this will be the last upgrade for a while.

 

[Mike]

Short and sweet, just the way I like upgrades to be.

Testing a quick function -

http://www.tbucketee...leeping-beauty/

OK, the Gallery is up and running on the official IP.Gallery 4.0.3 release. Enjoy!

 

[Mike]

I'm going to be doing some banging about in the back room, so don't be too concerned if things are acting a bit odd out here. I'll try not to crash the entire site. :shrug:

 

[Mike]

Well, nothing broken, so I suppose life is good.