Default sort order vs. inherited sort order
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nicokaiser
Joined: 2004-10-04
Posts: 118 |
Posted: Sun, 2005-01-02 20:45
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My Gallery has a default sort order (ascending name) which I'd like to have for new albums. However, the root album does not use this default sort order, so its child albums inherits its custom sort order (descending date) instead of using the default order. Can I tell Gallery not to inherit the sort order but to use a default? ---- |
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Posts: 7994
Unfortunately, you can't. This is an easy feature to add, though. Let's see .. what would be the best way to do it. Right now in the site admin we have the default sort order for layouts, so we could have a checkbox there saying "always use this for new albums". Or alternatively, in each album where you choose the sort order we could have a checkbox saying "don't let children inherit this" (with better wording). What makes more sense to you?
Posts: 118
I think the first one makes more sense. Otherwise a "default sort order" would not make sense.
Posts: 7994
I started working on this last night but then I realized that really the right thing to do is to simply leave the layout, theme, order-by and order-direction fields blank in all new albums. That way they'll take the defaults automatically, and if you change the defaults, you'll change it for all those albums also. We should rename them to "globals" instead of "defaults" in this case.
The downside is that if we go this route, then there's no way for you to specify that you want all new sub-albums to look like the parent album. So imagine the scenario where Bob hosts G2 and likes the Matrix layout, but Alice has her own User Albums and prefers the Hybrid layout. Right now if she sets her user album to use Hybrid, then all new albums she creates will have Hybrid. But if we make this change, then she'll always get Bob's global layout (Matrix) and will have to change it every time.
Can you think of a good way in the UI to allow us to have both behaviors?
Posts: 314
bharat, I don't think there is right or wrong way to do that. The root issue here, as you noted, that when you create a new album, you may have two competing defaults - from the global setting, and from the parent album. Which one to take? Some people (like nicokaiser) would prefer global, others (like Bob and Alice) would probably like parent. So, erring on the side of flexibility, I'd vote for the checkbox "always use global"
We had a somewhat similar discussion with mindless about size limits (whether to traverse the parent albums for the setting, or to copy parent's settings when a subalbum is created. While that issue is, of course, different, - I think that such checkbox will be better than either alternatives making our discussion moot.
Posts: 7994
Ok, I agree with what you guys are saying. I put it in the hands of the site administrator, so there's a new dropdown on the Site Admin -> Layouts page that lets you choose which mode you want. Enjoy!
Posts: 2
I know this thread is 2.5 years old (!), but I just wanted to thank you for these forums; this is exactly the answer I was searching for.