Photo Album Request

I have a request. it is not a bug but could certainly be seen as an improvement.

How a photo album displays it's content can make it or break it as a usable feature. There is nothing more irritating to a user than a slow loading, cumbersome display platform.

I know this from fact as I currently own and use one just like it. My current photo album for towtalk.net hosts many thousands of images from it's users and it is an absolute bandwidth HOG. It is so slow sometimes that my users just give up altogether. The reason it is so slow is because, just like yours, it's reloading the ENTIRE PAGE for each new image displayed. I solved it to some degree by stripping the page code to the bare minimum but that's just a bandaid on a symptom. I also think, in my feeble abilities as a webmaster, that this also results in many many more trips to the ol database than are really needed furthering the bottleneck.

Can we say massive backups on the bandwidth highway?

I know the technology exists, using Ajax or something else that would allow you to just load the new image into the viewer without reloading the entire page. Is it possible to look into this change with the next beta or even the RC? A slow photo album for my uses could be a deal breaker as it is one of the most heavily used features on my site.

I've been going back and forth about photo albums for a long time.  I griped about the page load in the Beta 4 blog.  Below is unoboonex's response:

We're making them as close to your suggestion as possible now. Page reload is needed, because every photo resides on it's own dedicated page now, with comments, blocks etc. AJAX reload would need either a separate viewing system, or complete overhaul of photos module. Photo of the day is reloaded within same page, for it doesn't show comments and info blocks for every photo, oh and there' s no permalink to it. We can think of a photoviewer in an album for quick preview.

Their answer to this cumbersome navigation, which they claim is here to stay, is Cool Iris.  I have nothing against cool iris, but what they have done in Beta 6, is place two separate and entirely different album navigation systems next to one another.  Given the choice, I believe that the majority of a sites users, seeing the cool iris viewer, will assume that is the way they are supposed to view albums, and never land on the page where they can post comments and rate the photo.  I think some folks like this, but I'm pretty sure they will find out that their site members will be just a little confused.

On the view-album page, I would rather have seen a popup larger version of the photos on a mouseover/hover, loaded via ajax, then onclick go to the photo viewing page.  I pretty sure there's a bit of a time crunch at Boonex, and a push to get a product released, so I speculate that photo albums are now considered complete.  I just hope that this Cool Iris viewer is not used as an excuse to stop future development of photo albums.

At least we have photo albums with privacy settings, and that in itself is a giant step forward, when compared  to D6.

Hmm. I too can see some of their reasoning but in the end (in my opinion) it's the user that will determine if it's worthwhile or not.

Mine won't like it.

On the view-album page, I would rather have seen a popup larger version of the photos on a mouseover/hover, loaded via ajax, then onclick go to the photo viewing page.  I pertty sure there's a bit of a time crunch at Boonex, and a push to get a product released, so I speculate that photo albums are now considered complete.  I just hope that this Cool Iris viewer is not used as an excuse to stop future development of photo albums.

I also agree this would be a much better idea.

What I really would have liked to see would have seen the consolodation of the main albums page and the photo viewing page, where the album thumbnails appeared in a side panel block... at least for viewing.   At least that way, people would land on the main photo viewing page, and would see the comments block and ratings. Then you could have a 'View Slideshow" button that popped up that  Cool Iris gizmo.

In my opinion, the Cool Iris viewer on the view-album page, is the worst possible place for it.  I think it's always best to refine the infrastructure first, then add fancy embellishments second, rather than try to disguise a less than perfect infrastructure with some fancy ornaments.  Like they always say..... There's never time to do it right.... but there's always time to do it over.

For me I use a album mod from Aramis on my Dolphin 6 sites, and they have to look at this one. Seperate albums, tree different viewers.. and fast loading everall.

I will stay by this one if I will go to use Dolphin 7... Not these standard photopage..

As long as your users don't care about privacy settings, that's fine.  Most people that join a social networking site would like so have some control over who can view their photos.

Well it has a tree level privacy: public - friends only and password. So there is privacy enoch for a photoalbum. :)