I have been thinking of implementing basic gallery support for typo.
The main benefit of this would be that all site’s data could be
handled at same place and design would be the same over the site.
Gallery should be simple to use and maintain. People who need some
advanced features probably uses separate gallery software like
gallery2 already so there is no need to try to have all possible
features on earth implemented.
Main features:
Easily create and maintain many galleries
Upload system for easy/fast photo uploads
Exif support
Automatic thumbnail creation
Comments on albums/photos
Category support for photos and tags support if needed
Link albums/photos to posts
The best way to do this or at least what I can think of is separate
page for admin area for gallery administration.
It should allow creating new galleries and organizing old ones. Moving
photos to correct categories and so on.
Before organizing photos we actually need to upload those first.
Simplest way probably would be to reuse “resources” for this. I think
more proper way would be to create new upload system to gallery page
where you could upload multiple photos and assign categories/tags
easily. You may also want some alternative way of uploading photos
like manually copying to some location on server and then selecting
them in typo.
You can organize photos to different categories(albums) and add some
basic information. Exif information is automatically parsed and showed
on page. Photos are showed using lightbox.js but that may restricts
the usage somewhat. E.g. where you show the photo information and
possible comments? The gallery as the visitor sees it is very
simplistic and should perhaps use current theme’s properties if
possible?
These are just some fast typed notes about what kind of gallery
support I would like to see in typo. All comments and criticism are
more than welcome.
I’m posting this here in hope that I could get some sort of
understanding whether this is a feature that has even a slight change
to get included in typo.
page for admin area for gallery administration.
It should allow creating new galleries and organizing old ones. Moving
photos to correct categories and so on.
A great Idea but I would much rather see a solution based on a
improved version of typo’s current resource handling scheme, ideally I
would like to be able to use my blog in the following ways:
Create a resource category called “vacation”, mark its type as
gallery (enforces that only pictures gets uploaded), create a
subcategory named “Caribbean 2006” and start adding my photos there.
Create a resource category called “source code”, mark its type as
code (ideally makes sure that the code gets highlighted), create a
subcategory named “Ruby” and start adding ruby source files here.
The general form should be something like this:
Create a resource category named XXX with an optional type.
Type handlers are written to add extended support for certain areas
such as pictures (i.e. galleries with thumbnails, comments…), source
files (highlighting, comments…) and so on.
Subcategory’s are supported but optional thus we can add content to
both the top resource category and its children.
Type should be inherited to subcategories
I would also like to add the type to my sidebar. Thus someone can
browse my blog and click pictures in my sidebar, select vacation and
get a nice overview of all my vacation galleries (i.e. thumbnails or
some other fancy stuff). For source files, we could just list them
according to subcategories.
I have been thinking of implementing basic gallery support for typo.
The main benefit of this would be that all site’s data could be
handled at same place and design would be the same over the site.
I just don’t see gallery functionality as part of a weblog engine, any
more than I see chat, news and e-mail as part of a web browser.
Gallery should be simple to use and maintain. People who need some
advanced features probably uses separate gallery software like
gallery2 already so there is no need to try to have all possible
features on earth implemented.
I would say that that’s a good argument for not building a gallery into
typo at all: it means anyone who really wants gallery functionality will
likely find the built-in functionality insufficient, so they’ll end up
paying the cost in bloat, without getting any benefit.
That said, I don’t object to gallery features in Typo as long as there’s
an easy way to rip them out.
I would be more interested in seeing Typo skins ported over to Gallery2
so
that the two look more consistent when presented together on the same
site.
I think that would avoid reinventing the Gallery wheel.
Create a resource category named XXX with an optional type.
Type handlers are written to add extended support for certain areas
such as pictures (i.e. galleries with thumbnails, comments…), source
files (highlighting, comments…) and so on.
Subcategory’s are supported but optional thus we can add content to
both the top resource category and its children.
Type should be inherited to subcategories
Yeah that seems much better solution and “future wise” if I can say. I
have to take a look at the source and see how those resources are
actually handled right now and how easily that sort of thing could be
developed.
Resources seems to already have some sort of metadata abilities but at
least didn’t do anything different when I quickly tested those. It
would be good to somehow organize and group those resources in general
too and not just for photos.
That was my thought as well, although I have never seen Gallery2.
What about rgallery[1]? It’s a rails application – I haven’t looked
into it in any detail, but if it supports the rails theme plugin[2] we’d
be 1/2 way there to having a gallery that supports existing Typo themes.
Typo themes and themes for the rail theme plugin are close enough that
getting a theme to work for both apps would be easy.
Well idea was to create a simple “gallery” which would allow user to
easily upload photos and show them on the web. There are lots of users
that dont need any fancy gallery2 features and just want to show
couple of photos nicely organized. E.g if you want to include photo in
your post you would need to first create thumbnail for it and then
upload them both to server and then use some textile(?) magic to get
it showed.
Well, anyone can go create an account on Flickr and use that. Takes a
minute or two to set up, and you get commenting on photos, tagging
photos, groups of photos, and so on. I kinda feel like if you can’t do
at least as much as that, you might as well not bother. The bar has been
raised too high for simple solutions to be worth the bloat.
I just don’t see gallery functionality as part of a weblog engine, any
more than I see chat, news and e-mail as part of a web browser.
Well think of it more like photo handling feature not a fullblown
gallery.
I would say that that’s a good argument for not building a gallery into
typo at all: it means anyone who really wants gallery functionality will
likely find the built-in functionality insufficient, so they’ll end up
paying the cost in bloat, without getting any benefit.
That said, I don’t object to gallery features in Typo as long as there’s
an easy way to rip them out.
Well idea was to create a simple “gallery” which would allow user to
easily upload photos and show them on the web. There are lots of users
that dont need any fancy gallery2 features and just want to show
couple of photos nicely organized. E.g if you want to include photo in
your post you would need to first create thumbnail for it and then
upload them both to server and then use some textile(?) magic to get
it showed.
I think better approach would be that typo would automatically create
thumbnail for it and you could nicely link them to your post or show
in complete separate page them all.
Well, anyone can go create an account on Flickr and use that. Takes a
minute or two to set up, and you get commenting on photos, tagging
photos, groups of photos, and so on. I kinda feel like if you can’t do
at least as much as that, you might as well not bother. The bar has been
raised too high for simple solutions to be worth the bloat.
By that logic you could just as well open a account on blogger.com and
drop typo all together - why is it that so many of you feel that
adding gallery functionality or categorized resource handlers will
bloat your blog ?, you can just chose not to use it - typo already
have a ton of functionality that I do not use, still I appreciate
having the choice.
If you want to keep using flickr or some other photo service then by
all means do that. I just do not consider a free flickr account the
holy grail of photo blogging and the existence of flickr is not a
argument for having gallery support in typo. It is a relevant blog
technology, somebody volunteered for implementing it and you do to
have to use it.
all means do that. I just do not consider a free flickr account the
holy grail of photo blogging and the existence of flickr is not a
argument for having gallery support in typo. It is a relevant blog
technology, somebody volunteered for implementing it and you do to
have to use it.
Embrace change.
It’s just eyeballs and opinions Lars. I use flickr but I also keep
all my photos in a local gallery install because I still think sets
of sets is a good idea (and I like my personal data backed up/
local). That and no one has ever supported or rebuilt a gallery that
could actually be integrated into a blog in a way I’ve liked (or
required a lot of massaging/scripting/etc). I think some way of
tapping into a gallery install would be fantastic that didn’t require
me to keep lists of files, or outright directories, etc, in check.
Rather that gallery (or insert some uncreated-local-able service)
have an api and we just tap on that through typo or whatnot.
I’m not sure what the correct answer is moving forward, just that
those who do a lot of photography and blog will continue to stir the
pot and someone with skill will help bridge the divide one day.
minute or two to set up, and you get commenting on photos, tagging
photos, groups of photos, and so on. I kinda feel like if you can’t do
at least as much as that, you might as well not bother. The bar has been
raised too high for simple solutions to be worth the bloat.
Yeah, this is basically my opinion. Back when I first got involved
with Typo, I was trying to decide between working on better blog
software or better gallery software, because I wasn’t happy with my
choices on either front. Typo was an easier place to start, but I
still figured that I’d get back to gallery coding for a while, until I
started using Flickr. Then I just gave up on the whole idea–Flickr
is better then anything I could put together in a reasonable amount of
time, and they’re doing a great job with it. Frankly, the $25/year
they want for “professional” memberships is probably less then I’d pay
maintaining my own site for a year.
adding gallery functionality or categorized resource handlers will
bloat your blog ?, you can just chose not to use it - typo already
have a ton of functionality that I do not use, still I appreciate
having the choice.
If you want to keep using flickr or some other photo service then by
all means do that. I just do not consider a free flickr account the
holy grail of photo blogging and the existence of flickr is not a
argument for having gallery support in typo. It is a relevant blog
technology, somebody volunteered for implementing it and you do to
have to use it.
Yeah, but there’s a simple difference between Blogger and Flickr:
Blogger sucks.
Flickr doesn’t.
I have a blogger blog that I use for work, and I can’t stand it. I’ve
used four or five different blog platforms, either for testing or for
hosting a real blog, and I’m happiest with Typo. Which isn’t all that
surprising, considering how much code I’ve added to Typo.
On the other hand, Flickr works pretty well for me. There are a few
things that I wish they could do, but I’ve been able to implement
everything that I really care about via their API. Frankly, if I was
going to write my own gallery software, I’d probably have to start by
cloning Flickr.
If you want to write your own gallery code, then go for it–no one’s
stopping you. If you’re writing it just to make yourself happy and
serve your own needs, then have fun. If you’re trying to build
something that lots of people will adopt, then you’re going to have to
do a lot of work to beat Flickr, though.
choices on either front. Typo was an easier place to start, but I
still figured that I’d get back to gallery coding for a while, until I
started using Flickr. Then I just gave up on the whole idea–Flickr
is better then anything I could put together in a reasonable amount of
time, and they’re doing a great job with it. Frankly, the $25/year
they want for “professional” memberships is probably less then I’d pay
maintaining my own site for a year.
Well of course you can use flickr or whatever you want but the point
was that not all users want to. People may have already some hosted
webpage with plenty of space for images so why would someone put
images to some slow(?) flickr server. It also simplifies the upload
process a lot. You dont have to first upload images to flickr and then
found out those links to be included in your post.
And if you want to show all your photos in single place within your
site it’s kind of impossible with flickr or at least as long as I
know. You probably can fetch those images one by one from flickr but
isn’t it the same to store on your server then.
If I just want to quickly post some one photo to be included in my
post, I’m pretty sure that I don’t bother first registering to flickr
for that.
Alltough I agree that it’s probably not very good idea to include
every possible feature to typo. Some sort of plugin system would be
good where user could download/activate optional plugins if needed.
That might not be so easy to do but might be “the most proper” way to
handle this.
I also would like to see it more like a feature to resources handling
and not a separate gallery as Lars R. pointed out. It should allow
user to nicely group same kind of media( not just photos) and perhaps
also do some other optional things like thumbnail creation with image
files if wanted. These kind of operations could possibly be handled
like plugins?
As others have mentioned, I recommend a separate gallery app which plays
nicely with Typo and with several functions that can be called from Typo
for
easy display of a photo from the gallery either in the sidebar
(a-la-Flikr
style), or in an individual post.
I would recommend that you look at ZenPhoto, which is a gallery in PHP
that
integrates nicely with WordPress via two plugins (ZenShow and ZenPress).
The
ZenPress plugin allows you to select a photo from your gallery while
writing
an article, which IMO is a great way to do it.
As someone mentioned, there’s a port of Apache gallery to Rails, so
perhaps
a plugin can be written for Typo that integrates that nicely. That would
be
better than using PHP Gallery (which is overly bloated for many people’s
taste, especially those who like Rails apps).
That way you don’t need any gallery admin functions in Typo itself. Just
use
the gallery app for that, add photos to your galleries, and then pull
them
in to your posts when you want them. You can also use that to show
random
photos from your gallery in your sidebar (for those who don’t want to
use
Flickr–I prefer to host my own photos).
I use flickr but I also keep
all my photos in a local gallery install because I still think sets
of sets is a good idea (and I like my personal data backed up/
local).
Same here
I think some way of
tapping into a gallery install would be fantastic that didn’t require
me to keep lists of files, or outright directories, etc, in check.
Rather that gallery (or insert some uncreated-local-able service)
have an api and we just tap on that through typo or whatnot.
That is s great idea - being able to control blog photos through a
application like f-spot (http://f-spot.org/) would be very nice. Do
any of the other major blogs done something like this ?, if so then
perhaps there is some API we could support.
I do however detest the idea of not being able to do at least some
minor gallery editing from inside the the typo admin interface -
sometimes I am not on my main computer and still want to blog on
something, so the support for photo management software should be
optional, not required. I still think that adding resource categories
(sub categories might be a different beast), is the best and easiest
solution. Also it is a general scheme and is not limited to photos.
drop typo all together
There are a couple of important differences.
The big one is that I’ve been banned from blog hosting services for what
I write, whereas I’ve never had any censorship problems over my photos.
The second is that photos I put on the web are downsized secondary
content; if the hosting goes bang, I upload them somewhere else from the
original files. They’re just pretty things to look at, not statements of
belief or anything I really care about everyone being able to see.
If I was a photojournalist, on the other hand, I’d want my own photo
hosting. But I’d also want more than is being suggested for this typo
gallery functionality, so it would still be useless to me.
why is it that so many of you feel that
adding gallery functionality or categorized resource handlers will
bloat your blog ?, you can just chose not to use it - typo already
have a ton of functionality that I do not use, still I appreciate
having the choice.
People hosting on TextDrive don’t appreciate it so much.
why is it that so many of you feel that
adding gallery functionality or categorized resource handlers will
bloat your blog ?, you can just chose not to use it - typo already
have a ton of functionality that I do not use, still I appreciate
having the choice.
People hosting on TextDrive don’t appreciate it so much.
Is there a way to make the gallery a pluggable option so it’s easy to
load
for people that want it but not installed by default? Right now, a
growing
number of sidebar plugins ship with Typo and, from what I’ve seen, the
vast
majority of Typo installs don’t use most of them. It seems that Typo
needs a
way to have pluggable modules that don’t ship with Typo. This type of
architecture would make the bloat argument a non-issue and possibly even
reduce the code by moving sidebars out of the core distribution.
Personally I like the idea of having a gallery capability in Typo b/c it
would be better integrated, e.g. you can apply the same category/tags to
your galleries and possible have them show up on category/tag pages. You
also wouldn’t need a separate rails/mongrel|fastcgi instance compared to
running Typo+rgallery. rgallery looks interesting but for an integrated
solution it would probably need tags/categories and feeds. Even then,
I’m
not sure what a recommended/baseline integration would look like, would
everyone just do their own?
Seems like making the gallery an optional add-on to Typo would satisfy
both
camps: (a) those that want a gallery feature in Typo and (b) those that
want
a Typo w/o the gallery. Is there an good way to do this?
Is there a way to make the gallery a pluggable option so it’s easy to load
for people that want it but not installed by default? Right now, a growing
number of sidebar plugins ship with Typo and, from what I’ve seen, the vast
majority of Typo installs don’t use most of them. It seems that Typo needs a
way to have pluggable modules that don’t ship with Typo. This type of
architecture would make the bloat argument a non-issue and possibly even
reduce the code by moving sidebars out of the core distribution.
I think this is what the aim is in 4.1 All of the sidebars are in the
vendor hierarchy, which would make installing new ones simple,
theoretically. I haven’t looked into the sidebar code itself, to see
what
kind of database tie-ins exist, and how they work, but I think this is
one
of the goals.
Seems like making the gallery an optional add-on to Typo would satisfy both
camps: (a) those that want a gallery feature in Typo and (b) those that want
a Typo w/o the gallery. Is there an good way to do this?
That’s the goal of a plug-in architecture. Hopefully, this can be
achieved, without re-writing my sidebars too many more times
He’s a jaded devious master criminal looking for ‘the Big One.’ She’s
a sharp-shooting streetsmart nun trying to make a difference in a man’s
world. They fight crime!
That is s great idea - being able to control blog photos through a
application like f-spot (http://f-spot.org/) would be very nice. Do
any of the other major blogs done something like this ?, if so then
perhaps there is some API we could support.
Yeah that sounds good but are there available any such apps that
supports some sort of photo uploading with categories and tags?
I do however detest the idea of not being able to do at least some
minor gallery editing from inside the the typo admin interface -
sometimes I am not on my main computer and still want to blog on
something, so the support for photo management software should be
optional, not required. I still think that adding resource categories
(sub categories might be a different beast), is the best and easiest
solution. Also it is a general scheme and is not limited to photos.
If you are going to use some sort of local app to handle all photos to
server then of course you also need to access at least subset of those
features from web interface.
I’m in favor on extending that resources handling to support different
media better and then adding some existing or new API for handling
photo manipulation in client applications.
Intgreating some existing gallery e.g. gallery2 to typo seems pretty
overkill to me but I guess it depends how you do it. Plugins would be
good but it would then need creating some sort of plugin system first.
Flickr Uploadr. Thanks to the Flickr API there are plenty of 3rd party
applications (and plugins for apps like iPhoto) to make it really easy
to resize and tag all your photos and upload them en masse, arranging
them in groups with appropriate permissions, and even geocode them.
I would strongly suggest at least trying Flickr before reinventing this
particular wheel. Like Scott, if you asked me what features I wanted in
a Rails-based gallery package, I’d say “Start by implementing a clone of
Flickr”. Including the API if possible, so I could continue to use
Flickr Uploadr.
