Picasa Web Albums
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doomdead
Joined: 2003-04-06
Posts: 174 |
Posted: Thu, 2006-07-06 16:12
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After seeing googles new feat. the Picasa Web Albums, I'd have to say, its pretty nice. It doesnt compare with Gallery feature-wise, but it has a few things I'd love to see Gallery adopt. One thing I noticed thats real spiffy is when you browse images, you can click next or previous, and the page doesnt refresh, the image is just there, as if it preloads either image. The images are also stored in progressive scan? two passes and the image is loaded. Anyways, go check it out, I see ideas for Gallery! and 1 gallery that I know of you can preview |
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Posts: 13451
Preloading images like that (presumably via some Ajax) is possible with G2 as well, it's just a matter of making a theme that does it. http://opticalpork.com/main.php doesn't reload either.
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Posts: 174
Well. I sure think it would be spiffy if someone could write a preloader plugin that could work with any theme. preloading whichever direction you last clicked, and keeping it in the local cache. i think it would save bandwidth and of course speed it the whole viewing experience.
Posts: 12
I am surprised that this topic seems to have been dismissed so easily. Although a new user to gallery, I feel there are room for improvement in terms of user experience. Sure the technolgy used in picasa web album is simple. But that's all from a developers eye. From a user's eye, it does not matter what is underneath. And they should not care. What a user cares is how responsive the application is.
With that said, here is a list of things that I feel Gallery could learn from Picasa web to improve the user experience:
1) reduce the delay of loading the first page. I know gallery has the performance enhancement after the first page. But the loading of the first page is always slow. Every visitor of my gallery complains.
2) preloading of images. This goes back the original question at top. Gallery is designed to have a traditional web interface - every click goes to a new page. Preloading is difficult in this design. The enhancement like lightbox/thickbox is nice for a fancy album. However they are to flashy. Picasa Web is just the right UI in this aspect.
3) editing a captions and summaries should be on the photo page -- no need to explain, intuitive. Google set the expectation for the latest web application.
4) tighter integration with desktop. This is probably out of the scope. But with a polished desktop environment, picasa web is well positioned to gain popularity.
Posts: 7985
Hi, tonglaji. We're not dismissing this topic; it's something that we care about deeply. To address your points:
1. When you say "first page" do you mean the root album of your Gallery? Or do you mean the first time a page is viewed? Or do you mean the first time that anybody has viewed your gallery in a while? If you can explain what you're seeing I can discuss more about your performance issues.
2. This can be addressed in a theme. Themes have control over how images are displayed and can adjust whether it's a traditional experience (matrix theme) vs something much more dynamic (hybrid theme and others). We may switch our default theme to something much more web-2.0 which will improve users first experiences.
3. We have a summer of code student working on this issue.
4. We are working on XMLRPC and WebDAV interfaces to G2 that will make tighter integration much easier.
Posts: 12
thanks bharat for the informtive response. Makes me feel much better. As a new comer, I'd like to see confirmation that gallery crew are on top of every change on the radar screen, so that I know I made the right choice ;)
1) I did not intend to turn this into a discussion about performance issues. However I think this fit in the user experience discussion as well. What I meant was "the first time that anybody has viewed my gallery for a while." I understand gallery does performance enhancement at that point - namely generate the entire site. However, the generated cache prevents dynamic contents such as random highlight. I just can't seem to find a good timeout value for the cache. On the other hand, picasa web has almost instant response - a much better first impression.
2) Yes. I have played with several themes. Matrix seems to be too plain. Hybrid is a little hard to navigate. PG seems to be very heavy weight. I settle with Carbon - an excellent them by Web-1.0 standard. I am not trying to be picky here. To me the right UI should look like Carbon -- straightforward, nothing unexpected. And it should have the speed of hybrid. Not surprisingly, this is what picasa web does. The look seems traditional, but the feel is slick. The dynamic themes for gallery I played with so far are all too flashy, and the majority of them break the browser back button.
3) Can't wait for the student to complete. I was going to do it myself ;)
4) can you elaborate on this a little? Is there any targeted desktop application?
Posts: 397
This is very good to hear. As one who is looking at applications that can support artists, photographers, etc, the user experience is always lacking in any application or web site I have ever seen. Well, not every one, but the user experience is real thin generally.
I know much of this can be heightened in templates (aka themes) and in fact was on the cusp of diving into learning the techniques and building some myself. There are so many features that are lacking that could create a far greater user fulfillment, starting with how metadata is handled and presented. I REALLY Was hoping some was going to grab the bull by the horns and flush out the Ajax theme, or further its incorporation into PGtheme for instance. Presentation of this kind of meta information is a big gap imo. And how one imports metata into objects is a big ticket item too. But it is great to hear others echo this sentiment....
G2 and the associated mods are terrific... there is just this nagging thing called user fulfillment that sags behind. I know... I need shut up and make a functional theme that does this stuff. Now, about those skills...
tx
Posts: 7985
@tonglaji:
1. I believe that what you're seeing there is the penalty of loading the database tables back into memory, and our cache files back into the disk cache. I'm aware of this particular issue and have been planning on profiling it to see how we can reduce the problem. It's hard to compare our solution to Picasa web -- they have thousands of machines to store the data and keep it ready/active, whereas your server goes idle and perhaps fulfills other tasks. You could minimize this by writing a simple script that calls wget on your G2 url once a minute.
2. We are planning on having a theme competition and having an Ajax based theme will be a category; hopefully this will stimulate more creativity along these lines!
4. Sure. Check out Gallery Remote (http://gallery.menalto.com/downloads). Is that the kind of thing you're talking about?
Posts: 397
Theme competition with Ajax as the "theme"? Yes yes yes. How cool is that. Am learning how to build themes with an associate and Ajax was on our to-do list to learn. This is excellent to hear.
Posts: 12
bharat, can you update us with the summer code project you mentioned earlier? And how is 2.2 coming?
Posts: 7985
Summer of code is just about wrapped up, and our student has done very well! If you check out the 2.2 AJAX branch from SVN:
http://svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/gallery/branches/DEV_2_2_ajax
You can install it and try it out! We'll try to roll these features in for 2.3.
2.2 is moving slowly. We wound up with less resources to work on it this summer than we had anticipated so we're opting to hold it back and get it right before releasing it. No ETA as of yet, sorry.