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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 have used gallery 2 for a club with 150 to 350 members and nearly 20,000 photos in 2 years. I think a rewrite is a good idea but the features look like they do not cater for groups sharing photos ... users with no editor capability to add albums... download as secondary feature. The new feature list makes it look more like a personal/ single user gallery than a multi user one - and there are lots of those around.
I always thought Coppermine was leaner and faster but didn't have an easy to understand interface for ordinary users - gallery was better at this, though far from perfect. Ordinary folk still have trouble creating albums and uploading photos.
I hope users are given enough (simply worded)privileges to interact in gallery 3.
Andy
Essentially, as discussed at *great* length in the past, that is what the team are aiming for. You can read more about whom G3 is aimed at here: http://www.adamatorres.com/gallery-project/?page_id=138.
@andy duggan: in Gallery3, users have the ability to add albums and photos. We have a similar permissions model to Gallery 2, but in slightly less depth. The advantage of losing some of the weight is that we get to make the product much more intuitive to your end users and much, much faster. I suspect that gallery 3 will work for your camera club, and I'll be interested in your feedback.
I eagerly anticipate the new version!
Thanks for the comments ... We are an outdoor club actually (Outdoor Club Japan).
Im still looking forward to gallery 3 - just praying it will upgrade smoothly :-P
And I think, yes you are heading in the right direction with a leaner , easier gallery.
Andy
I'd just like to say, one problem I have with Gallery2 (and this may just come down to theming, but it'd be good to know that necessary hooks for this if applicable get implemented on a core level) is when viewing with a widescreen, being restricted to however many thumbnails wide the admin has defined the gallery to be. It'd be great to be able to see it automatically determine however many thumbnails wide in the window will fit, and adjust this as the window width is adjusted. For all I know this many already be able to be done, but if not I hope this gets considered
Love Gallery2!
Sounds Great
Just after reorganising my whole album into its new subdomain...maybe i should have waited for a month
Is thare any plans for an upgrade..... iaw use the storage folder the database table and delete all the other "crap"
Also love this idea.... I use 200 for the thumbnail size. But the numbers never work together well. Currently, they adjusted their position depend on how many thumbnail would appear on a row. Though, who can cater for all the different screen size ?
This idea do has its problem .... should it adjust according to "screen size" or the "Browser Window size"? If changing according to screen size, it would still not fit nicely when you are not using the full screen width. If changing according to the "browser window", it would mean the template has to calculate again everytime the window resize. Won't this be too busy.
As the adminstrator, you might still want to control the number of rows in one screen.
Looking forward to G3 ....
Pleased to discuss....
Will gallery 3 be easier to bridge/integrate login with other open source packages?
Thats one point that really bugged me - the best gallery and forum (phpbb) were not easily integrated for 1 user login.
I have been an admirer of Gallery for many years and wish it great success. I rearchitected another open source gallery (Gallery Server Pro) a little over a year ago and I can appreciate the challenge.
Roger Martin
I am looking forward to Gallery 3. I have been really impressed with the functionality of Gallery 2, but it is very difficult to learn and modify/customise for those of us who don't have any formal coding experience.
I used Gallery 2 for my website at Photologium.com, and whilst it works well, implementation was initially very challenging. I hope this aspect is improved for Gallery 3.
I need to add my voice to the view that a PayPal-compatible cart should be part of the core application. I sell my photos on my website and for me (like many people), the absence of a PayPal shopping cart would render Gallery 3 almost useless for my purposes.
Good luck with the programme development and I look forward to seeing what arises.
I was a Gallery 1 user for a couple years before I migrated to Gallery 2. Unfortunately, I had to go back to Gallery 1 because G2 did not have the Postnuke integration that was promised.
So, what do I want to see most out of Gallery 3? CMS integration. I run a Postnuke website with G1 and a Joomla! website with RSGallery2, and would love to instead go with Gallery 3 on them both.
Please, do not overlook our CMS website builders this time!
I fight for years to make zoom gallery works fine in my site, recently I change joomla/zoom gallery for Wordpress/Gallery. Please, make embedding work as soon as possible. Thanks for good work!!! http://www.clubedatrilha.com.br
9 days to release. Can't wait~
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect
Alexandre Racine
http://www.salsamontreal.com - Évènement, photos et beaucoup plus!
Can anyone tell me wether it will be possible to integrate an existing user login system with Gallery 3? This feature was available in 2, but I haven't see anything about it mentioned in the features for 3. Thanks.
Yes, the authentication system in G3 is completely separated into a module and can be replaced by a different module. We haven't actually tried writing a replacement module yet (so there are bound to be some rough edges) but in principle it should work.
Great, because I would like to use Gallery to add an image gallery to my website and allow my existing users to have access. At one point I attempted to integrate Gallery 2 into my website, but became confused because there appeared to be two different things in the documentation refered to as 'user integration' and I couldn't understand the instructions. Perhaps now I will wait for 3 to be released and attempt to integrate that into my website. Hope this new version is stable soon!
I am quite excited to hear about a new release. What I consider absolutely vital is an import tool for Gallery 2 data (including comments), image view counts, user registration, and an image rating feature - if not as standard features then as add-ons. On my gallery installation, I am the only one who uploads pictures, but users can rate and add comments.
I will definitely want to upgrade at some point, and I'll be happy to donate if I like the product.
Looking forword to the new release of G3. And I'll be really happy if there is any information about what would be retained when I transfer from G2.
I also think that it is very important to be able to integrate gallery in existing systems, like Drupal, Wordpress, Joomla, etc. Wouldn't it be great if Gallery would be _the_ solution for all those CM and blogging systems? The pluggable auth systems sounds very promising already. Hopefully there will be a nice embedding API.
I'm sure you're doing a great job, thanks for your effort.
Gallery is the best web gallery evar. Thank you so much for all of your hard work to date!
I'll reserve judgement until the first release, but as a very strong proponent of PostgreSQL and someone who's used it with Gallery 1 and 2 I hope it makes it in as the #2 supported database.
I have enough on my plate catching errors in PostgreSQL support and patching up Drupal and its modules every time someone forgets that database exists over there.
I would really adore a very easy way to integrate G3 into Drupal. The process for integrating is so hard right now that it's blind luck and very good backups that keeps my own G2 integration working so smoothly.
Thanks again and don't let my comments detract from my adoration and praise for your product thus far. I recommend it to everyone.
The only thing i'm missing is Lightbox support.
Its a new modern way of showing youre pics, so there must come some support for gallery quickly
For me the most important feature is to reduce the ridiculous file count.
We're just days away from an initial release of Gallery 3. It's not really ready for prime time yet, but it'll be a fantastic introduction to the new stuff that's coming. To catch up on some comments from above:
1) We're only supporting MySQL now which has allowed us to get the code ready much faster. We may consider other databases for Gallery 3.1, but sorry -- I don't hold out any hope for that in the 3.0 release. And we may require a Postgres expert to join the team before we really support that database.
2) Integrations -- we have not yet really explored how this is going to work but we have put a lot of thought into it. After this initial release we'll be doing more exploration on this but for sure we will aim for Drupal and Wordpress as integration targets, and probably Habari and PostNuke too since we've got devs who are excited about those platforms.
3) Gallery 3 is *way way* smaller than Gallery 2. I can't stress this enough. It's teeny tiny in comparison. You're going to love it.
I want a pony. I don't know why you're wasting your time with these other features. If Gallery 3 doesn't come with a pony, no one will use it.
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
It's pony eve.
To me the most important things in the new Gallery would be:
1) built-in one-login integration with three major CMS - joomla, drupal & wordpress.
2) multiple user capability with extra easy way to uload, create and manipulate (edit/delete/rotate/move/rearrange) users own albums/pictures - something along the lines of flicr or picasa
3) languages optional and as a separate install!! I do not need all those 200 langauges clogging my system
4) no po files! Why cannot you have just plain text files so that the admin can quickly modify them?
5) themes, themes & themes! Much, much easier way to design them or tweek them.
The above are my moot points with the Gallery2 . Too complicated for the users and a pain for the admins.
I can't wait for Gallery 3!!!
It must be my best present of Chinese Lunar New Year
As of this moment it is February 1, 2009.
When will G3 be available for download?
I'm so excited to see the "finished" product.
To everyone who contributed to G3, I wish to say thank you.
:]
Gallery3 - "Third time's the charm".
As the Chandler Hub shows, the G3 is going to be released at 12am, on Feb. 1st, 2009.
I'm just waiting for it.
Great job, guys!
Oo, i can't wait!!
The plan is to release it today, probably around midnight pacific time.
I'm waiting up for it
, its 11:47PM here lol.
will it be a beta for testing or final release? i've tryed out trunk last night, got some problems with.
As upgrade from 2 looks doubtful reading thru the comments, will there be a script to at least import album and photo data, and the photos
Even all under admin wouldn't be so bad. A lot of time and effort has gone into titles, summaries and keywords, not to mention multilingual translations.
Andy
Does anyone know the status of when Gallery 3 will come available for download? I know it is supposed to come out today....I can't wait anymore I am ready to see the new gallery!
Patience! We'll have something for you today. It's not yet ready for prime time, but we've made tremendous progress in the last 3 months and we have something that's good enough that we'd like to give it to you and get your feedback.
Great! I'm excited. I haven't dealt with Gallery 2 a whole whole lot I have kind of been waiting for the new one before I get started creating all my albums and all the work. Thanks for working so hard I know it must have been a ton of work the least I can do is wait a few hours lol. Thanks again.
Oh sure, release it now. Now that I finally have Gallery 2 working the way I want ;-)
http://newfoundlandartstore.com/gallery/main.php
I am too excited and waiting since 3 month
Thanks to developers in advance!
Just to manage expections...
It's a technology release and hasn't been audited for security yet. And key features like "reset/forgot password" are yet to be added. So we can't recommend running this release on your website yet.
For enthusiasts, it's a great time to give it a try and to give your feedback to influence the product. And for power users with PHP or web design skills, it's a great time to look under the hood, to start adding your favorite feature.
Its cool, take your time :] but hurry. but also take your time. somehow
Is there a link that we can download + try or it's ok to just pull it from nightly builds? :D
Sorry for the delay. We're not quite finished with all release preparations.
Please stay tuned. We should have a story + download ready with one day delay.
@yeahy
there you go
Download GNU tarball
http://gallery.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/gallery/gallery3/trunk/
I wonder what localizations will be ready at release?
Installed it, and its working perfectly!!
Looks excellent, much better admin panel.
I'm impressed.
A small question, this could have been answered in the previous post, but I am too lazy today to read through all those posts.
But will it be possible to upgrade from gallery2 to gallery3?
(After the product is finished)
grtz,
Twan
Just downloaded and installed and a quick first impression:
Good things:
1) Installs & runs effortlessly on II7 (FastCGI), PHP 5.2.8 & MySQL 5.1.3
2) Clean uncluttered interface
3) admin panel - clear, easy to follow
4) simple upload module for the users
Not so good:
1) no user albums
2) permissions - all or nothing. Authenticated users if given the edit permission can add/delete & otherwise manipulate albums/pictures that do not belong to them.
3) no per user or group permissions
4) cannot turn-off the comments
Could not install on my running Gallery2 system.
Installed fresh Apache, PHP, Mysql on another WinXPPro system, could not get G3 startet, many different errors.
Installed Ubuntu 8.10 in VirtualBox on my Win7 Beta machine, installed Apache, PHP, Mysql on the virtal Ubuntu distro and wow - G3 starts and runs! Thats just cool
Right now fooling around, creating albums, installing Imagemagick - this looks promising.
Maybee ill switch to Ubuntu from WinXP ...
What type of errors did you get? I am getting a 500 Server Error. A misconfiguration on the server caused a hiccup. Check the server logs, fix the problem, then try again. This happens when I go to the installer directory for the first time.
I have read the FAQ and it says to edit your php.ini file and set "short_open_tag" to 1 I could not find a php.ini file from the trunk that I downloaded. However I did find the short_open_tag in the htaccess file and it shows this;
php_flag short_open_tag 1
php_flag register_globals 0
php_value upload_max_filesize 20M
php_value post_max_size 100M
Apache version2.2.10 (Unix)
PHP version5.2.8
MySQL version5.0.67-community
Operating system Linux
Any help would be much appreciated...I am interested to see what it looks like and play around with the new gallery!