Gallery experiments

[Rick]

I've been playing with an alternative gallery archive on my private webserver, and I'd now like folks to take a look at what I've got and make suggestions. You can see what I've been up to here.

Comments, please.

[ This Message was edited by: Rick on 2003-07-08 10:53 ]

[Ian]

certainly looks better, although there is some doubling up with having planets and the gas giants with their own pages.

With fewer pictures on each page, there is the possibility of using larger thumbnails.

Have we abandoned the idea of the member-hosted gallery pages?

[Rick]

Yeah, I thought of just having a Mars page, but it would have looked a bit odd with only one image on it. The Planets page is a compromise. There's doubling-up elsewhere too. I don't think that's a problem, as some images (eclipses and occultations, for example) are bound to fall under two or more categories.

I've got (but havn't yet linked into the index.html) pages of pictures by one person. The perl script I'm using to build the index pages should do the right thing with external links, but I havn't tested it yet. Once I'm happy the layout is working Ok then I'll put together a set of templates for other folk to use on their own sites (if they wish). At the moment the blank spaces don't quite fill correctly if there's only one row and it has fewer than six items.

The thumbnail size needs to be constant to keep the layout and general appearance uniform. They're 95x95, I think....

The index pages are built using a custom perl script from input data like this and a template. I want to generate a similar script and set of templates to make the actual gallery pages. Once I've got that done, maintaining and updating the gallery should be much easier.

[ This Message was edited by: Rick on 2003-07-08 15:15 ]

[Rick]

Further tweaked the experimental pages....

[Mike]

Hey ! Massive improvement. I really like it !!

[Whitters]

Hey Rick I like that it looks rather good.

[Rick]

Ok. Stage II is now presentable(-ish)...

The individual image pages are now also generated using a text file. This means I can juggle the format, style and text while keeping them all consistent. The templates are deliberately limited in variety and complexity.

However, I've had to do a certain amount of automatic editing to generate that text file,  which means there's been plenty of opportunity for errors to creep in and for bits to get lost.

So, please can folks check the images they contributed, and let me know if any are mis-attributed, or if there are any corrections they wish made. Please also let me know if everything's fine.

Thanks.

[ This Message was edited by: Rick on 2003-07-11 00:30 ]

[Sue]

Pages look really good - easy to access.

(I happened to notice a typo - Brian,s pics are attributed to Nigel.)

[Rick]

I've checked, and I can't find any obvious mis-attribution errors. Which page were they on?

One possibility is that there's a cache-server somewhere between my machine and yours that has an old copy of some of the pages. Try forcing a re-load (which usually involves holding down a shift key while asking for a reload) to see if that makes any difference.

[Sue]

http://gal.orpington-astronomy.org.uk/weller.html

Bold print says pictures by Brian Weller, sentance underneath says "these pictures were taken by OAS member Nigel  ..."

[Rick]

Ah! I'd looked at the titles and the attribution of the images, but missed that text. Now fixed. Thanks.

[Rick]

Found another bug! The index page had lost a link to the page of Ian's pictures. Now fixed. Sorry, Ian.

[Rick]

Ok. I've re-organised the main site's gallery and added links to external websites (including my archive) from it. Please check it's Ok. The new main gallery page is at http://www.orpington-astronomy.org.uk/gallery/

[Ian]

thanks Rick, I see I'm back

now, must fix that 404...

[Mike]

Personally i'd like to see the main gallery page as what you see when you click the archive link. Much nicer format in my opinion !!