INTERACT FORUM
More => Old Versions => Media Center 12 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: JimH on March 29, 2007, 01:57:59 pm
-
We've got some new pages up on the pix01.com photo sharing site.
(http://www.jriver.com/~jriver/2007/misc/pix01.jpg) (http://www.pix01.com)
www.pix01.com
Please try uploading a gallery -- directions are on the site. Requires a recent build of MC 12.0.
[Previous thread is here: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=39364.0]
-
Just had a look at it and have a few basic qu's and suggestions:
1. First thing I did when I got to the site is click the picture to view the gallery and it didn't work - had to click the text. Images should be clickable.
2. clicking the thumbnails shouldn't have to pull a whole page, it should just use JS to change the image. Considering things like AJAX are becoming more and more the norm these days, a simple image change via JS is pretty much expected as standard, a full page reload looks outdated and slow and adds more load to your server than necessary.
3. Are each of the albums just static html pages or are all the images/albums saved in a DB? If they're static pages you might want to consider changing it at this early stage to use a DB for it as it would give these advantages which just emphasize yourselves for your DB management skills:
- Albums can insantly change how they look - users or album owners could choose a template and instantly have their whole album viewable in that template so easily switch between styles, colours, layouts, etc. - The images would simply be pulled from the DB to fill in the newly selected template page
- Users could contribute themes to 'the site' and these would then instantly be able to be applied to thousands of galleries making all albums instantly be able to make use of it instead of having to recreate a manual album and then upload it again.
- Users can easily take advantage of other users graphic design skills and enjoy their professional style layouts instead of being limited to their own poor layout skills or any other layouts they had happened to download at the time they created an album.
- releases photos from a static structure and add's the ability to use functionality like in MC to filter, search for and order photos creating instant smartlist albums. Concepts from inside of MC could be applied to the web albums to allow photo collection owners to create their own specific ordering etc, but then for users to also create their own virtual photo albums from these collections.
- Would allow tags to easily be stored for all the images that would be searchable, used to order collections, to filter them, etc.
- Users could easily change an album to show more or less fields for their photos in the album just by adding new tags on the output page that were then automatically filled from the DB. Users could also choose to show more or less fields individually as well (owners would obviously get ultimate control over what visitors could change/see etc on a per album/picture basis).
Not sure if you already are maybe using DB based albums but if not I hope you'd consider it for the above reasons.
Also, just like with MC11 I think it was when u got a graphic design company to make PixOS skin, I think it would really help to launch your photo sharing service if you got a few professionally made layouts created to really give it that visual 'umph' that makes visitors of the site want to instantly use it to host their albums because they look so incredible.
Photos are taking off in a BIG way in the digital world and services such as this are booming right now. I really hope you devote as much energy to this as has always gone to MC.
-
Some nice photos! Great old Land Rover and a fantastic wood shed! I'm envious. OK, whose are they? What's the story?
-
for me it is not so clear how to manage my albums, change that one is public or not, or remove an album or an image. also is it not really clear for me what 'not public' means.
i tried the link for more info underneath the post but it points to a site that is not there (at this moment?).
an other thing. when drag and drop in the share on web, it is hard to see what is already there. ofcourse i could make a playlist first, but that would make the drag and drop useless.
nice feature.
thanks
-
I just added the wiki page.
http://wiki.jrmediacenter.com/index.php/Pix01.com
You can't modify an album. You can upload a new one with the same name and a different set of pictures. This over-writes the first.
Choose "Sign in" to manage your albums. Right now, you can only make them public or not, and delete them.
Public means that it will show on the index page or in searches. If it isn't public, the only way you can share it is to send the link.
-
thanks, i guess it makes sence then to make playlists with the same name as the galleries to manage what is inside.
im sorry that i did not try to log in. thought it had to be managed all from inside mc.
-
A playlist should automagically be created for each uploaded gallery. (If not, feel free to mention it.)
-
A playlist should automagically be created for each uploaded gallery. (If not, feel free to mention it.)
they are there for the new ones. nice. going to take the old off and make new ones.
just a thought. would it not be nice if when you rightclick on one of those playlists, you can choose share to web also. and that it then takes the name of the playlist. :)
-
just a thought. would it not be nice if when you rightclick on one of those playlists, you can choose share to web also. and that it then takes the name of the playlist. :)
Excellent suggestion. We'll do it.
-
I have not tried Pix01 yet, but since I don't think it's a common request I guess there's a feature that you could add that it's not there now:
- automatically adding a customizable watermark to all uploaded images
if you wonder why, it's just for people like me, paranoid about National Geographic photo journalists stealing my best shots...8)..
-
You can uncheck the "public" option and the files will only be visible to you.
-
jimh,
I want the world to see my photos, I just don't want anyone to use them, but as I said it's something not very important.
BTW, just another suggestion for jriver:
if you wanna avoid the effort of creating a web interface for editing\adding\etc. photos and albums, you could create an object in the MC interface called something like MyPublishedAlbums, automatically populated when you publish anything on Pix01.
Expanding MyPublishedAlbums one could access all Albums and expanding each Album one could access each photo. Then adding\removing\etc photos and albums could be managed in MC exactly like we do now with playlists and MC will automatically sync the content on Pix01.
If you create this object, another nice option could be to link a published album under MyPublishedAlbums to an existing playlist located anywhere inside MC.
To add reliability you should also add the option to use the info\data stored on Pix01 to recreate\repopulate the MyPublishedAlbums object in MC, just in case the MC db gets corrupted.
-
Good idea. ;) Uploaded albums are each saved to a playlist.
-
yep, that's what I meant.
and come to think of it, it should be enough to automatically create, or let the user directly publish, standard playlists (either dumb or smart ones); all you have to do is to add the "Published" flag to the playlists. That way the MyPublishedAlbums could simply be a smart playlist automatically populated with all playlists flagged as published.
-
Is there any way to push files to Shutterfly or Yahoo Pics, or some other common apps ...
ESPECIALLY Shutterfly for my purposes!
Anybody got a way to do this easily?
PS: Any limit to Pix01.com ? Can upload my entire 100K file library into a bunch of diff libraries ?
-
There's no limit for now and I don't expect we'll add one.
No way to do Shutterfly. We tried to talk with them, but they weren't helpful.
The only other possibility is to share to a site that runs server software called Gallery. MC12 can currently do that.
What else would you like to see with Pix01?
-
What else would you like to see with Pix01?
I'd like to see a slideshow capability with variable speeds which still allowed manual forward/backward advance. I notice that people have come to expect a slideshow feature on online photo album sites.
Larry
-
If anyone knows the basic javascript to make such a thing I can bludgeon it into a template.
-
and come to think of it, it should be enough to automatically create, or let the user directly publish, standard playlists (either dumb or smart ones); all you have to do is to add the "Published" flag to the playlists. That way the MyPublishedAlbums could simply be a smart playlist automatically populated with all playlists flagged as published.
That's a really good idea!
-
How about pushing to smugmug.com?
thanks,
Osho
-
If anyone knows the basic javascript to make such a thing I can bludgeon it into a template.
I think that a site license is not free, but http://www.bananalbum.com/ looks nice.
It can slideshows photos.
I guess you (jriver) could get some sort of license to use it at a reasonable price
-
I used to use banana album. There was something about it that gave me a lot of grief. Looks wonderful.
-
I see some progress on the pix01 home page. Nice. I like the way that's going...
Now, what do you think? --> http://tinyurl.com/2t7w5y
The original sized photos have been resized by the server, but that's OK, I was just kind of curious as to whether a customised noire template would be accepted. It looks OK for me @ 1680 x 1050 using ie7 or firefox.
The info on the right side of the photo is generated on-the-fly by using a custom library field that contains some html and mc expression language.
-marko.
-
found this in an album called 'chicago'....
(http://pix01.com/gallery/CFA850CE-8713-41D6-9AD2-2E04912DEAF1/Chicago/image5.jpg) (http://pix01.com/gallery/CFA850CE-8713-41D6-9AD2-2E04912DEAF1/Chicago/bigslide5.html)
is that where they did the train chase in the french connection, or does it just look like it?
-
is that where they did the train chase in the french connection, or does it just look like it?
As far as I know, the chase in The French Connection took place in New York, and was shot on location in Brooklyn. I guess elevated trains tend to look similar.
Larry
-
The default gallery renders really badly on Safari(as in Mac).
-
....
The info on the right side of the photo is generated on-the-fly by using a custom library field that contains some html and mc expression language.
-marko.
I think that's pretty cool, nice work!
-
found this in an album called 'chicago'....
(http://pix01.com/gallery/CFA850CE-8713-41D6-9AD2-2E04912DEAF1/Chicago/image5.jpg) (http://pix01.com/gallery/CFA850CE-8713-41D6-9AD2-2E04912DEAF1/Chicago/bigslide5.html)
is that where they did the train chase in the french connection, or does it just look like it?
I took this picture because my brother told me it was the setting for famous scene in a movie. Don't remember if it was french connection but I'll check on that next time I speak to him
-
Blues Brothers?
-
Blues Brothers?
That rings a bell. Most certainly Blues Brothers. :)
-
We (mostly Bob) have added a few features to the site.
You can click on a plus (+) for an album if you like it or a minus (-) if you don't. These then go to the top (or bottom) of the Ranked heap.
You can visit any user's collection and do the same.
We're still tuning it, so please tell us what you think.
www.pix01.com (http://www.pix01.com)
-
i absolutely love the idea of pix01 and have been trying it out...
some things i would love to see:
1) a home page url for all my public galleries
2) a link to that url on any of my galleries
3) the option to make each album viewable to a different group and then have a url for each group (e.g. family photos, friends, work etc) - you should be able to select more than one
4) somewhere to leave comments when viewing someones photos - pixie could send you an e-mail when this happens
5) for the bottom frame (thumbs) to not reload when you select a picture having scrolled along a bit - this should be static
6) the option to choose different themes/skins would be nice :)
I must say that i really like this idea and could see myself using it a lot and recommending MC to others based on this... it is so simple to use and really boosts MC's profile in the image dept... now all we need is a more advanced image editor!!
-
More changes.... Next to Rated, Recent, and Random, there is a link called "more". Guess what it does.
-
i absolutely love the idea of pix01 and have been trying it out...
Thanks.
some things i would love to see:
1) a home page url for all my public galleries
Good idea. We'll try to add it. You can log in to see your own galleries.
2) a link to that url on any of my galleries
Maybe, but hard to do since the galleries are built on your PC, then uploaded.
3) the option to make each album viewable to a different group and then have a url for each group (e.g. family photos, friends, work etc) - you should be able to select more than one
I think we're headed toward search driven solutions.
4) somewhere to leave comments when viewing someones photos - pixie could send you an e-mail when this happens
Would be nice.
5) for the bottom frame (thumbs) to not reload when you select a picture having scrolled along a bit - this should be static
We're working on this.
6) the option to choose different themes/skins would be nice :)
You can choose different templates now in the configuration for the Share to Web option.
I must say that i really like this idea and could see myself using it a lot and recommending MC to others based on this... it is so simple to use and really boosts MC's profile in the image dept... now all we need is a more advanced image editor!!
Thanks again.
-
cool... i'm glad to hear that these are being worked on...
i think you misunderstood my number 3 (I was really tired when writing it!)
3) the option to make each album viewable to a different group and then have a url for each group (e.g. family photos, friends, work etc) - you should be able to select more than one
What i mean is that when you upload the gallery you currently have the option of making it private or public. I think it would be cool to be able to define different groups that could view it - so say i had some photos of an alcohol laden works night out i might want to make this viewable to work & friends but not my family. Each group could then have a url that drops them onto a homepage showing all the galleries viewable by them.
It was just a thought but think it could be really cool...
-
You can choose different templates now in the configuration for the Share to Web option.
Could you elaborate on this a bit more? I'm aware that we can pick different templates when using the "Create Web Gallery" tool, but I do not see how we can do that when using the "Share to web" option. Here's all I see in the pix01 options:
(http://www.theganghut.co.uk/pics/ia/12/pixoneoptions.jpg)
perhaps the template choice got left on the cutting room floor?
For now, I see that we can use a different template by placing it in the Noire template folder, but obviously that's far from ideal as it will get overwritten everytime MC is installed.
Another thing I discovered today was that the description field in the "Create Web Gallery" appears to accept any ammount of text we care to chuck in there, but when using the "Share To Web" option, that field is limited to 80 characters. 80 characters is not that many really, I'm not sure at the moment, but I think that allowing more might be useful?
In case anyone's interested, here's what I got up to template-wise this afternoon: More Template Testing (http://tinyurl.com/3ycuvf)
Part of me thinks it's quite neat, while another part of me wonders if it isn't a little on the 'busy' side... waddaya reckon?
I've made the thumbnail page the landing page because for some reason, I think it flows better that way. I've used 4 custom calculated fields combining expressions and html to adjust the displayed information according to the the available tag info, the theory being that no matter what, I shouldn't have to worry about "Unknown this" or "Unknown that" showing up and spoiling the party.
Whichever size of image you're viewing, clicking the image will advance you to the next, and when you reach the last one, clicking on it will return you to the thumbnail page.
-marko.
-
Pix01 temporarily foobar. Should be back later tonite.
-
Pix01 temporarily foobar. Should be back later tonite.
Mostly back however uploads since last Friday afternoon have been lost. Please share them to the web again (VERY sorry about the BooBoo). The galleries show up in the website but the pictures are missing. Since the missing pix01 galleries should exist as playlists on your PC and the titles are online, it should be pretty simple to resubmit them.
-
oops!! :D
-
Nice pictures, Park. Really fun to see your life in Tokyo. Beautiful pictures of the cherry blossoms(?). Thanks!
-
Thanks Jim,
I spent the day making a mother's day web page with links to those galleries for both our mums. Using MC to make playlists and then drag and drop uploading was smooth. Not a single problem.
Glad you liked the cherry blossoms. They line virtually all rivers here, and "cherry blossom viewing" is an excuse for people to picnic and unwind and get drunk outisde together. They even have cherry blossom forecasts on the weather in the weeks leading up to it.
This apartment is the most space I've ever had injapan. I'm enjoying having more than one room, and playing my media in different rooms via wi-fi.
-
Someone else has been playing around with templates.
It has an unfinished feel about it (slideshow options aren't there and left/right appear the wrong way around), but the general idea is there. Clever filmstrip!
http://pix01.com/gallery/95AD3A85-F8B4-4BD3-BAFC-07FB7B2AEE44/Template_Testing/
-
Someone else has been playing around with templates.
It has an unfinished feel about it (slideshow options aren't there and left/right appear the wrong way around), but the general idea is there. Clever filmstrip!
http://pix01.com/gallery/95AD3A85-F8B4-4BD3-BAFC-07FB7B2AEE44/Template_Testing/
That's ours. It's still in a test mode, but I'm guessing you'll see it next week. Darkpenguin is the guilty party.
-
That's nice.
By the way, I think that the captions are a bit small. And they blend in to the background a bit much. It took me a few seconds to find it at first, and that was when I knew to look for it.
And, I have uploaded 4 or 5 galleries, but never recieved an e-mail like the program said I would. Still waiting for an e-mail with a restore code in it too. I requested it yesterday. Perhaps there's something wrong.
-
And, I have uploaded 4 or 5 galleries, but never recieved an e-mail like the program said I would. Still waiting for an e-mail with a restore code in it too. I requested it yesterday. Perhaps there's something wrong.
That could be a spam filter on your PC or at your ISP.
Try adding jriver.com to your white list.
-
You're right Jim. Hotmail was filtering them all into junk mail. Thanks.
-
Thanks, KingSparta, for uploading all the great photos (again).
Jim
-
Yep, they are nice...
-
Someone else has been playing around with templates.
It has an unfinished feel about it (slideshow options aren't there and left/right appear the wrong way around), but the general idea is there. Clever filmstrip!
http://pix01.com/gallery/95AD3A85-F8B4-4BD3-BAFC-07FB7B2AEE44/Template_Testing/
Actually, that gallery is now the current noire template. This one is the same photos in the slideshow template.
http://pix01.com/gallery/95AD3A85-F8B4-4BD3-BAFC-07FB7B2AEE44/Template_Testing_2/
-
Dark penguin, with that template, if you switch to thumbnails, then click on a thumbnail and you always go back to the first image of the slideshow instead of the thumbnail you clicked on.
-
That was far more of a pain to fix that you would have thought. Should be in the next build.
-
Well, I just used it for the first time. I read no instructions about using it anywhere before starting.
First thing I did was create a gallery (careful you don't select too many photos and hit preview - LONG wait). This gallery ended up as a playlist in MC. This was nice, but I was expecting it to ask me if I wanted to publish it (which I did).
Then I saw the icon in the action window, and clicked it. It let me upload the gallery to Pix01, but I couldn't select the template this way.
I did like the options I saw on the first attempt, as one day I may load this all to my server, but today was just trying to get a test set up on the server.
Now that I've got them up there, I like it. It was really painless, even it it did take a couple of attempts to get what I wanted.
Suggestions:
- I would also like to have the option of a slideshow.
- I would like to see the name of the photo someplace, maybe on mouseover or as Marko set up in his template testing. (Excellent work btw Marko) I'd like to maybe steal that template one of these days.
- I think the option to add stuff from our MC database to the galleries (as Marko has done) is great. Pictures are nice, but names, keywords and stories are REALLY nice to those who may not know what they are looking at.
- I would also like it if you do add a feature to show the name of the photo, that we can select which field provides that name, as i have all of my photos named in all lower case, single word filenames to comply with Linux rules for my own website, and don't want that listed as the name
Also, does anyone (JIm?) have any comments on the first posters suggestions? The one about using a DB structure to store the photos, and all the benefits that structure provides?
It sounds like some really powerful stuff to do it that way, and totally leverages (could) the power of the MC database.
-
In case anyone's interested, here's what I got up to template-wise this afternoon: More Template Testing (http://tinyurl.com/3ycuvf)
Part of me thinks it's quite neat, while another part of me wonders if it isn't a little on the 'busy' side... waddaya reckon?
I've made the thumbnail page the landing page because for some reason, I think it flows better that way. I've used 4 custom calculated fields combining expressions and html to adjust the displayed information according to the the available tag info, the theory being that no matter what, I shouldn't have to worry about "Unknown this" or "Unknown that" showing up and spoiling the party.
Whichever size of image you're viewing, clicking the image will advance you to the next, and when you reach the last one, clicking on it will return you to the thumbnail page.
-marko.
I don't think it's too busy, and I agree about landing at the thumbs page first.
Is there any way to carry your descriptions (or any field in MC for that matter) to being shown either below the photos in the filmstrip view, or maybe having them show as a hover window in that view?
Also, how exactly did you do that? Did you take a local gallery and modify it to show these fields, then upload that; or did you somehow code that onto the page directly?
I'm not much of a html person, but have used Front Page a few times.
More importantly, how can I do that?
Thanks, and great work.
-
The way you change the look is to change the template. The templates are found in C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center 12\Data\Web Gallery. Pix01 uses Noire or (if you tick the option) Slideshow. Some of the code in those templates is pretty rough.
[DB:THIS][NAME][DB:END] is a database call. It will pull [NAME] from the database for the current item. If you change that ([CAPTION] is used elsewhere in the code) you can pull whatever information you want.
(Course we overwrite those templates on new installs. So save your work.)
-
Thanks for the info. I'm not sure I'm quite ready (or able) to manipulate that just yet; especially as I imagine this is still a bit of "work in progress."
Am I correct? Is this something that will be getting some attention in the near(ish) future, or is this about all you have planned for the photo sharing for a while?
-
For right now it is designed to be a simple way to upload photos. Additional features are always considered but this is designed to be extremely simple.
-
still messing around with template tweaking...
Captions make a mess of the thumbnail page if they are too big, so I thought, why not get MC to truncate them using the mid() function, and place the caption in a tooltip instead. It works, kind of.
If I put title="" info into the <a href> tag, iexplorer doesn't show a tooltip, and firefox truncates the info to something like 50 characters. If I put the caption into the alt="" info, iexplorer shows the whole thing (it does have a limit, but it's generous enough for most captions) but firefox does not. Very frustrating.
new pc (http://tinyurl.com/2a3sl2)
-marko.
-
Marko,
How did you get other tag info to appear in your slideshow template? I'd like to map a couple of my fields to show up in my galleries.
Thanks,
Bri
-
Marko,
How did you get other tag info to appear in your slideshow template? I'd like to map a couple of my fields to show up in my galleries.
Thanks,
Bri
real brief here to begin with....
I presume you're asking about this info here...
(http://www.theganghut.co.uk/pics/ia/12/pix01/infodisplay.jpg)
==============
This is two table columns to the right of the photo, the first is right justified, and the second is left justified.
I created two new expression based database fields to produce the content.
1. Named "html-info-labels" looks like this: <span class="style1">Photographer - <br>if(isempty([Camera]),Camera - <br>Date - <br>Status - ,Camera - <br>Date - <br>Aperture - <br>Flash - <br>Focal Length - <br>Shutter Speed - <br>Status - )</span>
2. Named "html-info" looks like this: <span class="style2">if(isempty([Artist]),Not Specified,[artist])<br>if(isempty([Camera]),Not Specified<br>[date]<br>if(isequal([filename (name)],edited,8),Edited /([needs editing]/),Original)</span>,[camera]<br>[date]<br>[aperture]<br>[flash]<br>[Focal Length]<br>[Shutter Speed]<br>if(isequal([filename (name)],edited,8),Edited /([needs editing]/),Original)</span>
The expressions take care of outputting relevant info depending upon whether or not the [camera] tag is populated, and the styles are specified in the .css file.
Once that's all set, all that's needed in the gallery template file is to call the single database fields that will produce the information, like so: [DB:THIS][html-info-labels][DB:END]
I know I'm biased, but I think it works great, and looks great. If you look at the PC Building (http://tinyurl.com/2a3sl2) example, you can see the expressions in action by comparing the data shown for the photos against the data shown for the two screenshots at the end.
What I know about writing html code could be written on the back of a postage stamp, with space to spare, which leaves me with the firm belief that someone skilled in the art of writing web pages could probably use this method to get MC to turn out some pretty neat things indeed.
Of course, if you just want a couple of existing fields to show up in your gallery, then all you need to do is find the place in the template that you'd like them to show up, and enter the code as shown by DP a few posts back, like so: [DB:THIS][Your Field][DB:END] and the contents of [your field] will be shown in the gallery. Bear in mind that if the field is empty, you'll get "unassigned" or "unknown" which is something I personally don't like too much, so I used expressions to take care of that eventuality.
-marko.
-
That's great. Thanks Marko. I'll try to have a play myself sometime this week.
-
That's great. Thanks Marko. I'll try to have a play myself sometime this week.
I think you just put up several new albums. Great pictures! Thanks.
-
Thanks.
I've noticed that with the "Slideshow" template, that when you click on "Slideshow options", the menu goes off screen if the browser is maximized. Any way to get the menu to jump to the left instead of the right?
Also, I'm having trouble getting my "Wakayama" gallery to work. I've tried uploading it twice, but it just shows the first few thumbnails and no full size pics.
Thanks,
Bri