Elegant solution to too many Sub Albums...
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Gaza
Joined: 2004-08-25
Posts: 6 |
Posted: Wed, 2004-08-25 19:41
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This thread had a number of solutions to the problem of having too many sub-albums, however I didn't like any of them as they distracted from the feel of gallery. As a result I implemented some quick iframes changes to the source, which allows for a scrolling pane for the sub albums (if they are too big to fit in the cell), but keeps the style of the orginal gallery. This change also speeds up the displaying of your root gallery because it doesn't have to recursively find all the sub albums on the page load. The iframes load seperately from the main page thus load after the fact. A demo of the implementation can be found here: http://gallery.tvg.ca:8080/ To implement this is really simple. 1. Create a file called albumTree.php in your root gallery directory with the following code: <?php require(dirname(__FILE__) . '/init.php'); $albumName = $_REQUEST['albumName']; ?> <html> <head> <?=common_header();?> <BASE target="_parent"> </head> <body class="albumdesc"> <?=printChildren($albumName);?> </body> </html>
2. Open album.php in your root gallery folder and find the following line (in version 1.4.4 (pl1, not sure) it is on line 396: And you are done, that simple. If you want, you can change the height of the iframe from "100%" to something suitable for your gallery skin, ie I use "200". Let me know what you think and if you have any changes/additions. Cheers, |
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Posts: 3236
I have done this to my gallery, and I have to say I love it. For albums with tons (or even just more than 10 or so) it makes the gallery look a lot smoother.
One suggestion though, with the "100%" for both entries, on my gallery I could not see the iframes at all. I thought I had boned something up. If you set them to something like 100 x 100 it would at least maybe make sure they are there... and let people know they need to tweak em
Posts: 3236
A small tweak would be to add the following above your iframe in albums.php
... and comment out the following which is found in util.php. As an asside what does the _("Sub-albums") portion do, pull the language file's version of "sub-albums"? It just doesn't look like a normal php variable to me.
if ($depth==0 && !$printedHeader++) { echo "<strong>". _("Sub-albums") .":</strong>"; }Of course, what all this does is put the word "Sub-albums:" directly above the iframe instead of inside it, which means even if people have scrolled... they will still see the "Sub-albums" thing. You can see what I mean at http://fryfrog.com/gallery/
Posts: 90
This is cool, but do remember that if you have a lot of albums 100+, this will make the root album extremly slow. Having sub-albums show on the root page, gives me a 800% slowdown. My gallery: http://www.mrx.no/
Posts: 3236
If you are running 1.4.4-pl1, open your config.php and look for the line below. If it says "yes" change it to "no". If you are running an earlier version about 1.4.3-1.4.4 check out this thread for some code changes you can do.
Posts: 6
The only problem with this is if an album has no sub-albums then the title will still show, where as if you keep it in the iframe then only the albums with sub albums will show the title.
Posts: 6
The plus side of this change is that displaying of the sub albums doesn't happen on the root page anymore. The root page will load fast and call each of the album's iframe's, which will then load through a seperate http call.
Posts: 3236
Gaza, I tested what you mean. I don't have any main albums w/o at least 1 sub album so I didn't even think of or see it. It is indeed a drawback, and I don't see any way around it. I guess it boils down to which you like visually
Also, he is dead on about load times. Even if you have the slow counting of album hits turned ON (and your albums.php normally loads in 30 sec), it will be much faster with the iframes.
Right now, when I load the page the thumbnail highlights AND the sub-albums load at about the same speed down the page. Previosly, the ENTIRE page would just not render until it was all done.
These are the results of the following command run with slow photocount ON and OFF. I also use a php optimizer called "mmcache". From the results below, using the iframe seems to allow slow count to be enabled with almost no impact on main page load time.
That being said, you have to see the page load to see what it does. The main page loads fairly quickly, but the "iframes" are like little pages inside the main page. Each of these pages has to load also and THAT does take a little longer. As you watch the screen, they tend to fill in at about the same rate the thumbnails do.
If you would like to see what I mean, you can look at http://fryfrog.com/gallery/ and watch the behavior. I have left the slow count ON so that it is a little more emphasized.
Slow Count ON
Connection Times (ms) min mean[+/-sd] median max Connect: 0 0 0.0 0 0 Processing: 4150 4382 320.1 4315 4932 Waiting: 320 341 13.2 349 352 Total: 4150 4382 320.1 4315 4932Slow Count OFF
Connection Times (ms) min mean[+/-sd] median max Connect: 0 0 0.0 0 0 Processing: 4136 4161 27.0 4168 4193 Waiting: 322 338 12.1 343 351 Total: 4136 4161 27.0 4168 4193Posts: 23
Is there a way not to use the background from the main page? I have one of the blade skins and the top left image is too dark to read text over when reproduced in each iframe.
Posts: 6
Yes, you can do what formatting you want to albumTree.php, like add your own style sheet and change the body's one to yours.
Posts: 135
I did this mod to my gallery as you say, but the sub-albums do not scroll. Do you know how I can fix that.
http://woodshopphotos.com/gallery/
Thanks,
Chris
Posts: 3236
The only one with sub albums long enough DOES scroll, but it doesn't have scroll bars. I can put my mouse over top of it and mouse wheel scroll it. Search google for iframes and how they work, there is an option to turn on / off scroll bars (or put it in auto).
Posts: 135
Got it, thanks!
Posts: 20
this is the best solution to having lots of sub-albums... i love iframes...