Re: Collected comments

Gunnar,

1) ok, how bout I give you numbers 1...unlimited in the rows/page
selector.

2) when you say "top level", are you referring to the public Album
Catalog? In general, I agree that it's nice to have more choices, but
there are a couple of constraints here. One is that there are some
tricky html/css issues regarding the "drop shadow" effect on the
catalog, and they are compounded by allowing dynamic configuration of
the layout parameters. Also, I'm a little worried that as more things
become configurable, the user will suffer configuration/choice
fatigue. Is this something you think is really important?

3) It should be sorting on date/time. If it's not, then that's a bug.
I'll see if I can reproduce this on my server.

4) Maybe a bug, depending on how you look at it. Even though you set
the quality, there are a couple of places where quality is hard-coded,
for reasons that escape me right now. Ideally, I would really like to
get rid of quality settings all together (see "configuration fatigue"
in 2)) and just have everything use the "compromise" setting. Frankly,
I'm not really convinced that the increase in speed of the "speed"
setting is marked enough to justify its existence. And the improvement
gained with the "quality" setting is so marginal that it's almost a
matter of opinion whether it's better or worse. In reality it's not a
sharper picture-- it's just smoother, at the cost of some detail. 

Do you think the quality settings are worth keeping?

5) yes, we'll add selectable (at least direction), sorting to the
album browser.

6)  You can really add an endless number of "layout" configuration
parameters to the album. I think probably the best solution for this
kind of layout flexibility is to adopt some kind of template system.
It's something I would like to do, but it's low on the priority list.

7) I don't know-- this is the first I've heard of this effect. What
kind of a proxy are you using? What is your "test setup"?

8) ok, I've finally seen the light. A number of people (not all on
this list) have convinced me that hierarchical albums make good sense,
if for no other reason than just to support the huge installed base of
hierarchically arranged photo storage. Pixory will definitely support
hierarchy eventually. However, I plan to fist implement new sharing
features and then cascading attributes, before tackling hierarchical
albums.

regards,

joe


--- In [email protected], Gunnar Heikkilä
<gunnar.heikkila.1@h...> wrote:
> Hi Joe,
> 
> here comes a rather long "collected comments" on various Pixory 
> topics. They all relate to version 2.12 as I am still a little bit 
> hesitant to install a newer version until the ignore subfolders and 
> the discoloured pictures issues have been resolved. Please bear with 
> me if I comment on something you have fixed in later versions. 
> 
> 1) For each album it is possible to specify the number of rows and 
> columns to use per page for the album index. However, as I have 
> earlier commented, it is currently not possible to enter a number 
> higher than 5 in these selections boxes. Since I am using small 
> thumbnails (75) I would like to use at least a 8 columns times 10 
> rows layout. Actually, I would really like to set the "rows per page" 
> selection to "unlimited", giving my viewers the possibility to load 
> all thumbnails and just use the vertical scrollbar instead of 
> manually paging through the pages. Most of my viewers want to look at 
> all thumbnails anyway, but only clicks into some of the pictures.
> 
> I realise that with more thumbnails (even with small ones) the load 
> on the pixory server will be momentarily higher when all thumbnails 
> are loaded (or reloaded when going "up" again, depending on the cache 
> setting in the client), but I think it would still be nice if it was 
> left for me to decide if this server load is OK.  If you think there 
> are serious reasons for not allowing the above "extended rows/columns 
> settings", please explain?
> 
> 2) A related topic is the top level index, where there are no 
> corresponding row/column settings (or thumbnail size setting). In a 
> way you could say that the top level index have the parameters 
> hardcoded as "150 pixels thumbnail, 4 columns, unlimited rows". 
> Currently I have about 150 albums, with a growing rate of about 3 
> albums per week, and one day I might want to somewhat limit the 
> number of pictures loaded for the top level page. Have you considered 
> adding these attributes to the top level?
> 
> 3) Another "top level" issue: The sorting is based on the date of the 
> album pictures. But sometimes I have two albums from the same day 
> (skiing in the morning, climbing in the afternoon), and it seems to 
> me that Pixory in this case uses the album directory name 
> for "subsorting". I would prefer to have all albums sorted after 
> date, and in this case time also, so that the chronology is 
> consistent.
> 
> 4) I have all my thumbnail settings as "quality", but in the .album 
> directory there are always two versions of the top level 150 pixels 
> thumbnails (medium and high). Clearing the thumbnails and letting 
> Pixory create new ones does not help. Is this a bug?
> 
> 5) When I login to Pixory the top level album sorting seems to be 
> a "name sorting", not "reverse date sorting" as for the viewer, and 
> since my directories are named as "YYMMDD Topic" the pictures I add 
> is always last in the list. If I add two albums I need to scroll 150 
> albums down until I can get into the first one and configure it. When 
> I go back I need to do the same scrolling before I can go into the 
> next album. It would be nice with a sorting attribute (name, name 
> reverse, date, date reverse, ...), even if I can live with the 
> current sorting. :-)
> 
> 6) I have the "image size" set to 600 to make it possible to see both 
> portrait and landscape pictures on a normal 1024x768 screen without 
> the need to scroll down. However, if I add a lot of text to the 
> pictures the text will not be visible without scrolling. On the other 
> hand, since screens are wider than they are high there will always be 
> plenty of space at the left or right side of the picture where the 
> caption and narrative could be displayed. Have you considered adding 
> an album attribute for "caption and narrative position" (above, 
> below, left, right)? Also if you use the "right" (or "left") option 
> then of course the picture should not be centered on the screen, but 
> put more on the left (or right) side.
> 
> 7) When I access my albums (as a viewer) through a proxy I noticed 
> that it takes longer time, and sometimes Pixory seems to "halt" for 
> 10-20 seconds before continuing. When I looked into the logs, I saw 
> that with proxy access every thumbnail (or picture) was fetched 
> twice, with a few seconds between the "double fetches". Without proxy 
> the thumbnails/pictures are only fetched once. Is this known "bug" (I 
> assume that it has to do with the "last modified" setting for the 
> pictures being reported as "Unknown")?
> 
> 8) About hierarchical albums: Yes please! I saw that you are thinking 
> on how to handle the user interface, so here are some suggestions: 
> Currently when you are looking at an album you have the album title 
> (e.g. "My vacation") at the top left corner. You could easily(?) use 
> a recursive description style here, where each title is clickable. An 
> example with two sub-levels:
> 
> My vacation
>    New York
>       At the opera
> 
> To make this more consistent you could consider adding "Home", 
> or "Top", as the first line:
> 
> Home
>    My vacation
>       New York
>          At the opera
> 
> This could be combined with an "up arrow icon". A minor negative side 
> of the idea of a recursive title display is that the picture area 
> will be slightly smaller, but I think that is a price most of us sub-
> album fans will be ready to pay.
> 
> When looking inside an album with one or more sub-albums, I think 
> that you should mimic the behaviour of Windows Explorer; i.e. the 
> first entries are the cover thumbnails for the sub-albums (with the 
> same info and text as on the top level today), then the thumbnails of 
> the ordinary pictures (if any) follows. Maybe you could emphasize the 
> current top-level "shadow effect" for the sub-album thumbnails even 
> more, thus making it clear that these are sub-albums? Perhaps 
> a "double shadow" which gives the impression of multiple pictures?
> 
> I have seen that viewers using Pixory their first time often selects 
> the "house icon" when they in fact only wants to get from the single-
> picture mode up one level (to the thumbnails). I THINK that this 
> could be due to the fact that in Windows Explorer you only have 
> an "up icon", not a "home icon", and in some way the viewers feel 
> that the "house icon" should take them up one level (towards "home")? 
> 
> The "four squares icon" might be even more cumbersome to understand 
> for the viewer when you have sub-albums, and thus thumbnails at 
> several levels. You could consider skipping the "house icon" and 
> the "four squares icon" completely, having the "up arrow icon" 
> (together with the recursive title list) as the only ways to go 
> upwards?
> 
> If you go for an "up arrow icon", you might consider to use a 
> different symbol for the "download album" since the up- and down-
> arrow will have completely different scopes. Maybe some kind 
> of "WinZip icon", or a "hard-disk icon" could be used? By the way, 
> you could consider a check-box in the download pop-up window, 
> specifying if only the current level pictures should be downloaded, 
> or if the complete tree should be downloaded.
> 
> OK, thats pretty much sums up me experience after using Pixory some 
> time now. Hope you still manage to enjoy some "Pixory-free time" at 
> least one day per week!
> 
> /Gunnar



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