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Gallery 3 Begins
Submitted by ckdake on Mon, 2008-12-01 18:17
Those of you that have been paying attention know that something is going on! At the Gallery Sprint a few weeks ago, we made a lot of decisions and got the ball rolling on a complete rewrite which we've decided to call Gallery 3. Development of new features on Gallery 2 has been frozen, Gallery 1 is now a completely separate project "Jallery", and the Gallery team is now busy at work on Gallery 3. It's definitely not ready to run on your website yet but we've set the ambitious goal of having a 3.0 release by February 1, 2009 and are on track to meet that goal. Read on for details of why we're doing this and what you can expect.
Gallery 2 today
As lots of you know, Gallery 2 does a pretty good job. It's a secure way to put your photos on your website, and if you want a feature, chances are pretty good that it is hiding in there somewhere. Over 3 million of you have downloaded Gallery 2 (compared to 2 million+ that downloaded Gallery 1) so we are obviously on to something, and we have received hundreds of positive testimonials about how Gallery 2 has made people's lives easier. It's been a huge effort and we've been happy with its success.
So what's wrong with Gallery 2?
Gallery 2 does many things for many people and this diversity has made it unhealthy. The code base is too complex and over-engineered because it was designed to fix every single thing that was wrong with Gallery 1 (Second System Effect) leaving its scope hazy and broad. And while the Gallery 2 code supports DB2, MSSQL, and Oracle we don't actually have anyone on the team that knows much about them, so there is nobody to fix bugs or add features in these areas. Gallery 2 was designed from the bottom up with architecture and design patterns first, so the User Interface and User Experience need a ton of work! This is shown by the huge number of strings and documentation that need to be provided in the product for people to understand it, and multiple attempts for tech writers to document Gallery 2 have all failed. Lastly, the product is immensely complex which forces developers to take months or years to get up to speed. This makes it very hard to attract new developers, and that makes us sad.
Hopefully by now you don't need any more convincing that it's time for Gallery 3! We've started from the top down with User Experience as the highest priority, only writing code for things that make sense for our users. Simplicity is also a high priority: both for users (the UI) and developers (the code). We learned our lessons from Gallery 1 and Gallery 2, and are hoping to finally get this right. You probably have some questions in your head and we'll do our best to answer some of them below:
Is there still room for Gallery 3 when there are sites like Flickr, Smugmug, and Picasa?
Since the beginning, Gallery has been "Your Photos on Your Website." None of these services really let you do that, and your data is with someone else. While these services meet the needs of plenty of people, there will always be people that want to have complete control over their website and the way it looks. Some people will want to customize their themes in a way not possible with hosted services, and others want their images on hardware that they own.
Since Gallery 3 won't do all that Gallery 2 tried, what is its scope?
We've made a list of features that we think are important to have. That page includes a list of features that we will implement, as well as a list of features that we'd like someone to be able to implement but that won't necessarily be part of the core product.
You mention decreasing platform complexity, so what platforms are going to be supported?
We aim to create an amazing product that at least 80% of you can use. We've decided that the most common platform, available to all (even if it's not what you're using now, it's something that you could be using easily) is Apache 2, PHP 5, and MySQL 5. This doesn't mean that Gallery 3 won't ever work on alternative platforms, but it does mean that the existing developers aren't going to go out of our way to make it work there, at least not for the first release. If Gallery 3 works on Windows + IIS + PHP perfectly without us trying, that's great, but this policy lets us take advantage of unique features of Apache and MySQL that are not available on other platforms. If you'd really like to see Gallery 3 work on some other platform we invite you to come talk to us. Seriously! Corporate support is welcome as well: for example, if Microsoft would like to own our Windows Server support and is willing to do most of the work and QA on that part, we're definitely willing to cooperate on that.
Where can I find out more?
We don't have a great starting place yet, but the best place to start is the Gallery 3 Category on our documentation site. Everything that gets documented should be in there. There is also the Gallery 3 code in subversion and our shared task list in Chandler. If you want to find out more or pitch in, we have a few paragraphs on that as well.
I too am very interested to how a complete rewrite will affect the process of upgrading from G2.
Hi Photographicon,
I'm on of the people working on improving the user experience of G3 and I have read all your comments here with great interest. I would be really interested in your perspective on what tools we should look at? What kind of features the professionals you were talking about would need to make Gallery work for them? and so on ...
Maybe you could come up with a persona-like description of the things that are important to that user group. Even though it seems like you came a little late for the strategic decision making you would have liked to be part of, there are still a lot of UI, UX decisions open and we are happy for useful input.
One of the objective for G3 is definitely to make usable for less technical people, but I'm convinced that we can do that without sacrificing the pros.
Anyways, I'm really interested in hearing more from you.
--Jakob
Hi,
I read the whole thread and I have some suggestions to make. I agree that gallery should be easier to use, by the website users. But I also think that IPTC data is very important, even for amateurs. Nearly every photo programm today makes use of IPTC or at least the exif description. Also offline programs do a nice job in editing that data.
And to use that right, the first thing would be a functioning search and the extracting of iptc data. It's quite frustrating when you search for a photo you know is there, but don't find it because of that limit to 1 keyword in gallery 2.
When looking at the database structure of gallery2, there is a limit of keywords you can add to photos of 255 chars. How about a table just for keywords, that would simplify the search and take away that limit. Also if on import, iptc data like location, country, photographers name or even split up the photo description in single words (over 2 or 3 chars) added to the keywords table, a search would only need to make use of one field in the keyword table, which would speed up the whole procedure.
A nice addition in the database structure, would also be a table in where new or changed photos with datetime of change would be added. That could be useful for someone who wants to build a searchengine to link several galleries together.
Editing data in gallery is nice, but not crucial. If you add the iptc data to your photos before uploading, you don't really need that function. But if you change the data in gallery, it should also be written to the photo files. I also think that the iptc data should be written to intermediate and thumbnail sizes, even if that makes the file size bigger. Very important: The url to the photo should be written into the iptc, so that a client who downloads the thumbnail will find the photo on the website at a later time through the url in iptc.
Also an automatic adding of the keywords of all photos in an album to the album could also help to search for albums with certain photos.
In the itemtable, I would add a field that tells right away what kind of item it is. That way, if you want to change data directly in that, it makes it easier to filter whithout having to join tables.
Checkboxes under the thumbnails, for adding the pictures to a cart would make the downloading of photos easier.
One of the things I really like in Gallery is the multilanguage interface. This is really nice for me, as I live in Luxembourg where my clients speak german, french or a few english.
UTOPIA or I'm dreaming:
How about taking the multilanguage a step further, and build a keywordlist in multiple languages? That way you could search for photos on a foreign language site, in your own language.
I must say, I love gallery2, just like I liked gallery 1. And I think in time I will also love gallery 3.
Thank you very much for a very usefull program.
Tom Wagner
Ah well, my coding days are long gone and took place when graphics were often made up of rows of ascii codes. So that was just a suggestion for a way forwards that seems to have been adopted by other major open source projects.
The main point of my post though was to try and say, without sounding too much of a suck-up, that Gallery, even in a more focused and restricted G3, far exceeds the stated aim of the project. So if people want to have it do a lot more, maybe there needs to be a commercial 'professional' version available, or maybe the gallery creators can reasonably expect others to add on to their core work since they provide the hooks for optional modules.
Free projects are a complex subject when it comes to support. You can't just say person A is using item B created by person C so they should pay towards it. Person A might be giving their time on the boards doing unpaid support work and so helping other users as well as reducing the load on the team. Person A might be creating things like skins and modules to enhance item B and giving them away free. Person A might be using item B in project D which results in a completely different free resource on the internet benefitting the wider community including, indirectly, person C who likes to surf free sites in his/her spare time.
Everyone uses Gallery for their own purposes and everyone makes their own decisions about what to put back in, either directly into the Gallery project or indirectly into the general internet community. But in the end the Gallery creators decide what they want to produce and what they are capable of producing given their available time and resources. So those whose own needs are for Gallery to go beyond that may have to take a direct part in making it happen.
Referring to http://codex.gallery2.org/Gallery3:Themes I'm a user (non-coder). I'm running a small private homepage using Gallery with xtreme theme. For me Gallery+xtreme is almost perfect to present photos and it is usable for a small homepage as well (not only the gallery). It can even be "misused" as a kind of blog. Two thoughts from my point of view:
"Your photos on your website". If that is the motto of G3 as well, I found it somewhat strange not to have EXIF/IPTC handling within the primary features.
Themes. I learned that "users" often aren't the primary target group. But to have sth. like xtreme theme makes Gallery very useful to non-coders. So I want to encourage the Dev-Team to think about more customization options for users within default themes (or at least one of them).
Great to see the work continues. I for one (per definition of many of these posts) am a lo-end user, maintaining a family and friends based website (including Gallery) for family and friends spread across 4 continents. A large number of that community contribute because of the semi-private nature of the gallery and the knowledge that the photos are hosted by 'one of us'.
The Gallery integrates into a website that include amongst others genealogy information etc. Photos (and the Gallery) contributes to the content of our site, it is not the purpose thereof, Flikr cannot provide what we have. I have been using Gallery for over 4 years and cannot see that changing any time soon.
How many of my type of users there are, I cannot say but I for one continue to have a need for a Gallery that I can control to add value to me and my community. 'Your Photos on Your Website'
Thanks for the many hours of hard work, looking forward to G3.
Yep. This is a good idea and shows the team is focusing. Plugins made by others are the way to go--just ask Adobe, Macromedia when they were Macromedia, and Firefox. Probably the only reason Macromedia Dreamweaver ever got off the ground is because of the fantastic community support system Macromedia developed. If you let them build it, they will come. The plugins that is. Why not let the community build stable plugins that the developers can "plugin" or others, like Fantastico can use in their publications? That way each iteration of G3, be it personal, host specific, or package specific, as it is with Fantastico, can be tailored for specific user bases?
Can't wait to see G3.
Great job guys. I really hope this version comes out polished and ready to go with some really nice professional themes, in a very easy to embed interface.
This is great news and a good decision. I haven't taken a look under the hood, but patching rarely creates efficiencies. Starting from scratch, after you've had time to feel things out, is the smartest move. I'm on Apache w/ MySQL, so no complaints from me there.
Looking forward to February. Hopefully guys will have time to enjoy some of the holidays.
Ask Matt if Automattic want to take over the development of Gallery...... <grin>
Hi bharat,
Since you've responded to several of these comments, I wanted to ask a question of my own or at least give some feedback.
First, despite G2's shortcomings, I am very appreciative of the product and the people who've provided it. It's worked very well, especially for people viewing photos, even if it's been a little difficult at times to manage on the administrative side.
I think G3 sounds great, and I think the emphasis you've given it is spot on.
Here are a few questions dear to my heart:
1. When it comes to theming, the one thing I would ask is something like Wordpress. (I'm not for a moment asking that it work exactly the same, just as easy.) A lot of people find simple php calls to the API extremely easy to implement and document. OOP themes get very difficult for lots of end users (including me -- yes I'm not a real developer.) Also, spitting out the simplest of html allows users to style things as they want with CSS, which lots of people can do.
I saw the excellent screenshots here:
http://www.adamatorres.com/gallery-project/?page_id=274
And while it looks good, I really hope that things are easy to change. Can we place elements in different places? Instead of horizontal tabs could we have vertical tabs? Can we put the navigation thumbnail grid underneath the main photo, etc? With simple function calls and html that's easily styled with CSS, it would be so easy...
2. Will there be an image uploader? If I may provide some helpful criticism, Gallery Remote really is the pits... It's unfortunate that I can't give 10 images the same title and/or caption all at once but instead have to write a title once and then copy it, select the next image, paste the title and repeat ad naseum. HOWEVER, as frustrating as it is, it gets the job done and is way better than the browser interface. However you do it, I think having a way to easily put up lots of pictures and give them titles and captions (which are sometimes the same for multiple images) is of the utmost importance to really giving the user a better experience.
3. Will there be a way to import albums / data from G2? I know it's a little work to write the upgrade and import code, but I bet that would make the difference in having a lot of people upgrade.
I really wish you the best. I'd love to help, but as a graduate student I can barely do half the stuff I want to as it is.
Well it seems as if this thread is going to be a good source of information for the devs, so here are a couple of thoughts:
1. Any template should conform to specific functions, such as being able to choose where the menu is located, top, left, right, bottom.
2. Same as #1 except for navigation links.
3. I don't know much about how this works, although I did it with G2, but it should be a lot easier: Embedding. Somehow it should allow a user/admin to easily implement the entire gallery into his or her websites.
4. Standardized directories where all "local" files go, and if I have forgotten the name for them, they are the files that don't get modified after you modify the interface. You make a copy of them and place them in the "local" folders (tpl files?).
5. What would be even better than #4 is having the options in admin and then the "local" files get updated automatically. If all templates were standardized, after the initial coding was done--which I'm sure would be extensive--it would be DONE, and easy to change colors and other aspects of gallery without having to dig through all of the CSS trying to find the exact css entry you need to change.
6. Harcking back to #5, what options should be available without digging through html, php, and css? Colors for sure. Color of links; lines, backgrounds, image backgrounds; etc. Size: font sizes. Others?
I know this may be impossible because each template is a design the designer makes and it's custom. But some things, much more than they are now, should be at least standardized.
It would just be nice to reduce the amount of threads dedicated to: "Where is the tag, css, php, etc for this line--I don't want it as a separator, or where is the css for this font color?
I can't wait to see this baby fly! Good job.
I would also like to thank those in the forums who are very knowledgeable and have helped me and others save hours, especially Floridave.
Many thanks to the dev team for all their previous work and their efforts going forward.
I like what I've read so far, and eagerly await a version I can try, but I'd love to hear what your plans are for implementation of the code. It would be WONDERFUL to see G3 use a tableless, full CSS design.
And add mine to the voices who have requested a more sophisticated search routine to query IPTC/EXIF/keyword data. Coming from photo management in Lightroom, those pieces of data are the heart of my organization and porting that over to G3 would be outstanding.
Again, many thanks for listening.
Dominic, do you remember when Flikr censored German users not too long ago?
I don't want to be on others mercy what I may show on my homepage. It's my pictures, my server, my choice
Another question is copyright and who can use what under what terms. I'm not so sure that the commercial sites can resist a substantial offer by a big buck company. Sites like photo.net changed their terms of use, I didn't like the idea that somebody else might sell my pictures, so I left photo.net.
It is easy to submit ones pictures to Yahoo, Google and Microsoft, but it might be hard to get them back.
So gallery will stay my first choice for a web gallery and I prefer donating to menalto gallery over paying Yahoo for being censored
First, I'm really glad to read about G3. I've been using Gallery for several years now and I appreciate that it is "here" for folks like me to use and I also appreciate the effort that the developers and maintainers have put in to it.
Since the folks working on G3 have been around for a while and have also gone to the trouble to make a list of things they want to see be supported somewhere down the road, I'm gonna assume they also know how to design G3 so these future efforts will not be too difficult to implement when the time comes.
For my wish list, I'd like to see:
- a not-too-difficult way to upgrade a G2 instance into a G3 instance
- multisite (I want to drive several virtual gallery instances from a single common codebase, similarly to how I do this now with G2)
- EXIF data display
- a ratings module
- I preferred the G1 reorganize capabilities to those in G2, but it's not a big deal to me either way
- A search page where I can preload some default values and have folks say things like "Show me all photos/albums that are rated at 3.5 stars or more, and do (not) have the following tags/keywords".
On this last bit, I'm asking because I am conscious that some folks do not want to inadvertently see any nudity. Some folks do not want their children to see any nudity (yeah, like on the internet this will ever happen). I was more surprised when I got feedback from folks saying "I don't care about the nudity, but you have pictures of *spiders* on your site, and I would have *greatly* preferred either not seeing those, or being warned that they were there."
With that last item, anybody can vote on any pictures/albums they like, but my default search page can specify "show me stuff with ratings of at least N, and by default do not show me pictures tagged as 'spider' or 'nudity'." If folks choose to uncheck those tags/keywords, or select choices to say "Show me all the sunset/sunrise photos" then so much the better.
H
Will there be an "official" upgrade script G2-->G3? If so, will it e.g. migrate the data from the current tags module to the new built-in tag feature? I am currently adding many tags to my G2 installation and I would obviously want to avoid double work
Thanks.
Wow, lots of good comments. Let me answer some of the questions:
One of the primary goals is that theming will be very straightforward. I wouldn't necessarily say that it will be just like Wordpress, but it is very easy. It will also be well documented
There will be an image uploader that will allow multiple uploads directly from within the browser. We will probably not offer as many upload techniques in the core product, but it will be easy for 3rd party developers to add their own upload techniques. And since Gallery3 will support REST it will be easy for 3rd party developers to write their own uploaders.
We will provide a G2 -> G3 upgrade path. It hasn't been written yet, so we'll have to deal with some interesting decisions when we write it (do we copy your g2 data? overwrite it? if we copy it are we going to double your disk usage? do we preserve *all* urls or only some urls?). We aim to import data from G2 tags into G3 tags.
Many of you want EXIF, ratings, and many other modules. We're choosing to not write many of these peripheral modules in the first round. I know that you want them, but we aim to make 3.0 an easy platform to create these modules. If there's a huge demand for them then there should be tons of developers who can write such a module if people really want it. By prioritizing, we're going to get the product out sooner.
happy holidays!
I too am a "professional" user and while Joomla integration is essential for me ... I agree with the core of what alecmyers has stated ...
One thing that I have to stress is the correct ans proper handling of image metadata like KEYWORDS (to heck with tags (tags are not standards based metadata).
I want to be able to upload to specific galleries with out going through 2 days of BS trying to find the right alchemy of feature sets to get everything kinda working.
It is very exciting to hear news of a Gallery3. I am a very appreciative user of Gallery2, and use it specifically because it is on *MY* hardware, and am greatly comforted by this. No matter what happens to global economies, where free photo storage places like Flickr etc could shut down at any time with no option to export your albums, my album will always be stored on *MY* hardware!
Another major feature of Gallery2 to me, is the ability to have a cart where my friends and family can download original quality images of the entire album as one big zip file, and add these photos to their own personal computer collection. I like to take photos of occasions and then share them, and part of sharing is giving the original quality photos away to people without making it difficult for them. Therefore I would love to see Cart and Zip Download *both* appear (currently Zip Download isn't) on the list of modules to be added at a later date.
Great questions, I too would like to know if there will be an upgrade feature for G2 to G3?
Have you read:
Dave
_____________________________________________
Blog & G2 || floridave - Gallery Team
Well good luck
My only comment is that I think it is a bit strange that a program focusing on "your photos on your website" should be looking at tags over exif data.
I would lump tags, geotagging etc together while Exif data is an integral part of photography. As Alec wrote earlier in the thread, I am one of those that doesn't care about dynamic albums, tags, google maps and the like but think exif should have a higher proirity than currently given. Certainly more than tags.
Having said that, I wish this success and sitting out G2.3 while at it.
Goodluck!
--
Gallery version = 2.2.6
Default theme = PGtheme 1.3.0
Web Site: dakanji.com
Can I put a plug in for auto-rotate based on EXIF data?
Also, will there be a WordPress plugin to continue WordPress integration? All I use Gallery2 for is WordPress posts.
Thanks and looking forward to 3.0!
Hopefully ozgreg and the rest of the WPG2 team will make a plugin. I would like to see it as well, but it will have to come from the community.
Dave
_____________________________________________
Blog & G2 || floridave - Gallery Team
Glad to hear this. Faster is better. I'm hoping the upgrade process from G2 to G3 is a seamless procedure. Thanks!
www.DIRTFORGE.com / www.UNLIMITEDdirt.com
I've been using gallery since pre v.1, and it's a great product, and has a great team and a very unusually high level of support and continued development. But isn't everything moving to the cloud? Why isn't gallery eventually going to become a SaaS? I noticed Google hosted an event for you, they must be wondering the same thing, no?
I'd just like to know the thinking behind why you are continuing to develop this as a primarily user hosted product. I think it's conservative to say that you are eliminating 95% of your potential users by not doing it on "the cloud" (or SaaS, or whatever term you want to use).
Don't be afraid of Flickr, they got nothin on you
@ogoog: pre v.1, eh? You've been with us a long time
The cloud is a new idea, and it's got some merit. But many of the people who use Gallery want a little more control over their photos. I know that I do. I originally started writing Gallery because I had my own website and my own photos and wanted to put the two together. Building a product is a very different problem from building a service. It would require us to set up a model where we maintain a 7x24 service which requires a whole different level of support, and ultimately we'd have to hire people and generate a real revenue stream, etc.
You speculate that we're losing 95% of our potential users by not offering it as a service, but if we were to do that then we'd directly compete with the tons of services out there and we'd be doing a disservice to our actual user base who wants more control than we'd get as a service. So ultimately, even if it's only 5% of the overall photo hosting market, Gallery is targeted at a very specific demographic (including me!) that wants to host their photos on their own website.
Happy holidays!
This sounds great guys, I'm really looking forward to what you come up with for Gallery3 and agree that 2 was just too complex. It's interesting to me how much Gallery development mirrors that of Firefox... version 1 was fast, simple, but feature-light, version 2 added lots of features but became slow and bloated, and with version 3 they really concentrated on usability and speed instead of continuing to add a bunch more stuff.
They've also done a good job of resisting the temptation to add unnecessary features... EVERYONE has their pet feature that they think should be in the "core"! I read somewhere that their litmus test is that it must be something 90% of their user base could use, otherwise they have a great extension module system which has really let their add-on community flourish. Looks like Gallery is shaping up the same way.
To touch a bit on ogoog's comment... while I do agree with bharat that I will always want control over my own photos, I would also like to see a first-class Sharing module as an add-on for Gallery, which would enable easy integration with Facebook, Twitter, Ping.fm, blogs, etc. where I could let friends know (automatically?) when I post a new album.
One other comment... my *biggest* gripe about Gallery has to be: its name! It is too generic, so doing a Google search for information on it is too difficult. For example I was just able to find a Facebook app that does do one-way sync from Gallery to Facebook, but it would be much easier if Gallery had a more distinctive name! How 'bout a naming contest to come up with a new name for the project?
Anyway, I know this is a bit rambling, but keep up the great work guys!
Well all we have say is:
See: http://gallery.menalto.com/grd_volume1
We had a discussion about this at the G3 sprint but in the end it will stay Gallery. However you might see more focus on calling it GalleryProject.
Hey, don't get me wrong, I'm all for simplicity but I think "Gallery" is just too generic. But if the subject has already been discussed and dismissed, then I guess majority rules!
Back in 2001 when we named the project, Gallery wasn't a generic name. There was It's become generic because of all the competition that has imitated us and put "gallery" in their name. What can ya do. After 8 years, we're probably not going to rename the project now
Perhaps this is something that needs to be developed by theme writers, but mobile devices are currently exploding -- Gallery3 should provide support for easy browsing on mobile devices.
I just tried to delete an album on my T-Mobile G1 (webkit based browser, like Chrome) and the little pop-up saying "are you sure? yes/no" would auto-move itself to the corner of the screen where I couldn't click either button! Even if I panned the page over so the dialog popup was centered, it would auto-move itself off the screen again! Extremely annoying.
But I know Flickr is mobile-aware -- if you navigate to flickr pages on your mobile device, it knows to format the pages a different way. While some of this can of course be addressed by themes, Gallery3 should make it as simple as possible to have a clean looking interface for both normal browsing and mobile browsing the same gallery -- in particular the admin pages.
Absolutely agree! Many would prefer to maintain ownership and complete control over their own content (photos), which are situated upon their own hosting accounts and their own photo galleries.
Services come and go. Dealing with the changes in business models based upon your content (photos) throughout a service's lifespan and the chaos after its collapse is a burden on the members who have built the free service platform.
www.DIRTFORGE.com / www.UNLIMITEDdirt.com
ha, I think the G3 feature list still contain too much things,
e.g. "View comments"
And hey, pay attention to "keyword" & "Tag". It's really painful if implement them together in G2.
Build a robust bone at first, and has the capability to renew the bone, that's important to the core team.
Wow. I think all the concepts for G3 sound fantastic, can't wait to see it.
I posted this over on the Wiki Talk page for Gallery3 features, but I'll repeat it here, since the devs seem to be actually reading this thread...
I'm the (current) maintainer of the Gallery2 Google Maps module. I'm glad to see this functionality moving into the core, but I have a small request--Could you separate the data from the presentation? In other words, have a "Geodata" module or function where the coordinates are stored, and a different module(s) for the presentation of that geodata. That way people could choose to use Google Maps or Google Earth or an OpenLayers based map (with OpenStreetMap data, for example). This is the direction I'd like to move the current Google Maps module toward. By the way, with regards to Google Earth, I'm pretty happy with the template-based solution I have in the Google Map module now, so take a look if you're interested. It's GoogleEarth.inc and GoogleEarth.tpl, obviously...
Hi,
The preliminary feature list states:
"# exif rotation: rotate images at upload time based on its EXIF info
# EXIF/IPTC: show EXIF and IPTC metadata, pulled from the source photo "
If these features will not be provided initially, I doubt that people would upgrade to G3.
First of all, nowadays almost all cameras support EXIF rotation data. I really do not like the idea to go over each of the photos and do something with the photo that is already there and can be very easily done by software during the upload.
The second item is even more subtle. EXIF and IPTC metadata is something that is very important for amateur photographers. Why? It allows us to stick metadata to the photos, not providing this feature means that we must rely solely on a remote database/server/service/software.
As far as I see it has always been very difficult the transfer of G1/G2 from one site to another, etc. The risk is that it remains so.
Finally, and this is my biggest headache: Gallery 1/2/3 is a closed world. There is no exit from there. Once you have started to use it, any migration from Gallery to any other service is very difficult. My bad feeling is that this remains even more difficult with G3.
Regards
You aren't seriously asking the Gallery development team to write tools for people to migrate *away* from Gallery are you? That's a job for users who want the functionality. If it's difficult to migrate away from Gallery you can only blame yourself and the users around you for not writing the tools to do it.
And as for your contention that Gallery 1/2/3 is closed - well - briefly - that's nonsense. You can download the entire source code for all three (two and half at present) products, and there's an entire forum full of posts and people devoted to helping you make Gallery (all versions) do exactly what you want - including migrating the data to other products like Coppermine. That's the very antithesis of closed.
Hi,
First of all, I am Gallery2 user. Just.
I am happy that you did not contradict with my other points.
As for your last argument: imagine a drawer where you can put your things in, but when you change flat, or buy a new drawer you cannot bring your belongings with you.
Happy packing!
Regards.
I don't think I understood them, to be honest, sorry.
That's exactly my point: there's nobody stopping you! write the tool, and take the data with you anywhere you want!
sure you can. the data is still your data. Either move it yourself to another application, or pay a moving company to do it for you (terrible analogy... You can write a conversion script to migrate the data to whatever new system you choose to use, or have someone else write it for you.)
There are probably hundreds of web-based photogallery programs out there these days, using php, flash, perl, ruby, and who knows what other kinds of combinations of scripting languges and database schemes. It's totally unrealistic to expect Gallery, or any other system for that matter, to provide conversion tools for any or all of those systems. I'd much rather see the Dev's concentrate their time on developing Gallery.
I think you should perhaps look up the meaning of 'open source'.
Sure there is a few import tools but the reason that is, i belive, is that people want to put their photos onto gallery because it is a better product for their needs.
http://gallery.menalto.com/export_photos_to_your_gallery
But you are wrong about migrating to other services.
A few export tools exist that I know about:
Gallery -> lightroom
Gallery -> facebook
Gallery -> coppermine
Gallery -> Flickr
Gallery -> Picasa
http://codex.gallery2.org/Other_Clients#Tools_that_can_get_images_from_Gallery
I bet there is a lot more out there that we don't know about.
I think that is a perfect analogy. I can only add; or get a friend (forums ) to help you move.
Same here.
I am glad that the devs don't develop export tools because they should spend their valuable time developing a better product, and that is what they are doing now.
Dave
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Blog & G2 || floridave - Gallery Team
I've read MANY paragraphs of discussion, but I couldn't answer my question. I'm a new user, with very few and simple demands. I was going to put some effort to adapt a copy of G2 to my needs. I was going to do that THIS week.
Now I see G3 is going to be launched in less than a month.
IS IT WORTH STARTING WITH G2? SHOULD I WAIT AND START MY GALLERY ALREADY WITH G3?
gbonato: if you want to do it this week, then use G2. G3 won't be ready until February 1st. We'll offer an upgrade path from G2 to G3 so you won't get left out.
I would recommend to go ahead and get started with G2. There are a lot of G2 users and a large community built around it so it will stay supported for a long time I think. (As mentioned in this post, even G1 still has a pretty good community following).
Then I'd keep an eye on the G3 progression and maybe test it out when released to see if it has the features you want. The migration should be very simple if past versions are any indication; I have a lot of faith in the Gallery devs and they're not gonna leave G2 users behind.
However if by "adapt to your needs" you mean customizing the display template(s) heavily (by editing the Smarty/HTML code), those changes likely will have to be made over again in G3.
My main claim is that G2 is very, very slow gallery software. G2 is bad choise to handle thoughands of photos on the web... though i still use it
Hope G3 will be have start package that will be simple, powerfull and fast simultaneously.
Waiting anxiously for G3 and hope G3 will be much faster.
Apache2+MySQL5+PHP5 - is good choice, guys! Most of users use this or could use this. Let focus your attention to the main things! God luck guys!!! You are doing great job!
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Grodno, Belarus
Old Grodno photos http://www.oldgrodno.com/ Старые фотографии Гродно. Открытки Гродно.
Something that I just thought of was the pagination for G3. The pagination in G2 required heavy modification to get it to function "normal", or atleast what I consider normal: [first][previous][1][2][3][4][...][17][next][last]. What structure of pagination will G3 have? I've attached 4 examples of pagination from some of the most popular (in my opinion) Photo Stock or Photo Hosting sites out there, for perhaps some ideas about what to do with the G3 pagination. Also I'm aware that the Kohana framework has a library for this (link here). So mainly I was wondering what will be done with the G3 pagination? Hopefully it won't be split in two templates this time (as in G2). Well anyways I hope G3 is coming along great, and I want to thank the developers for being so dedicated to this wonderful product they've created.
Gallery3 - "Third time's the charm".
G3 pagination uses the Kohana library and is very flexible. Themers can create their own pagination template, or copy one of the existing Kohana ones. It should be relatively easy for you to play with. Give it a shot with G3 and let us know what you think.
Hi.
I'm a new user and am looking forward to G3. I very much appreciate the work you've done thus far!
First off, EXIF please! Everything else is just noise.
Something I'd like to see is a layer above a multisite setup. I want to have separate galleries for different people, with no crossover of images possible unless specifically shared. I'd like every new registered user to get their own gallery (multisite) and by default be the admin of it. And users should be able to register and create their gallery automatically by clicking on an auto-generated email. I should be able to (dis)allow these admins to install and/or upgrade themes and plugins. The users should then be able to invite - or share their pics with - other users from other multisites. They would of course be able to restrict the invites/shares as desired.
It's this idea of having multiple sites, but still being able to admin globally or individually that is attractive. If some users want to embed their site, fine. If others want an open all-access site, cool. But some users will want to share specific albums with specific users; and then they'll want to do that again the next week with the same people, but different album(s). Think art directors who work with photographers often.
Which brings up another idea: Projects. It'd be great to be able to create projects that contain certain albums.
And finally I'd like to be able to have uncropped thumbs on an album page with a rating system for each frame visible. It would also be fantastic if multiple frames could be selected on an album page and interacted with (rating, download, add to cart etc) as a group. SproutCore is doing some amazing stuff along these lines.
Oops, one more... How about being able to export and download a contact sheet PDF for an album or other selection? That'd be cool.
Thanks and keep up the great work!
EDIT
OK, nevermind the thumbnail and rating bit... I got confused by the X_treme theme.
Thanks again.
Sounds Great! Will we still be able to embed the gallery into another website?
I would like to have an approval function, too. It's a major function when you are using Gallery for a community. The rights management of Gallery has to be overworked.
Hope to see this very, very soon