blog.gallerama.com

Happy New 2013 from the Gallerama team! May it bring more great captures, and site updates.

We’re happy to announce that slideshows, available for all galleries hosted on Gallerama, now feature a new, beautiful, animated look which pans large images across the screen using a technique known as the Ken Burns effect. The new slideshows are also aware of the windows size, so feel free to maximize your window to make them larger.

The development of this feature was partly driven by our desire to make slideshows on touch and mobile devices look more appealing, so be sure to give this a try on your tablet or smartphone.

And, as always, please let us know what you think!

We just released a new version of the Gallerama site which contains a number of bug fixes as well as other site-wide enhancements and optimizations.

Release notes:
- Updated homepage design.
- New typography across the site.
- Default gallery layout has been updated.
- Updated gallery and photo sharing options (Google+ is now available).
- Form buttons have been updated.
- Link to iPhone app has been added to the homepage.
- Various bugs fixes.

We hope you like the new Gallerama. Let us know if you notice anything funky.

You can now access your Gallerama photos, create new galleries, upload photos and browse features

galleries from your iPhone, with the Gallerama iPhone App, available in the Apple App store free of charge!

Check out the screenshots below, and visit the Apple store to download it.

Hey folks! We hope this update finds you well. We’ve this week rolled out a new release which features a few random bug fixes and enhancements but most importantly it also provides the ability to create completely private gallery groups. At first it may not be completely obvious why this is a big deal, so we’ll explain. While password-protected galleries were always an available option, creating a private group now means that any galleries (and their photos) which are a part of that group will be completely invisible to anyone except you.

How can this be useful? Well, say you have a gallery that’s not quite ready for prime time. You can create a group “Not ready” and make it private, then assign the gallery in question to it and get it ready before officially launching it. Or, suppose you don’t ever intend to share a gallery but would like to store the photos on Gallerama. Private groups help here as well. Cool, right? It almost feels like this should have been a feature from day one, don’t it? Well, the focus has always been on sharing and showcasing photos, but we couldn’t think of a single reason to exclude such a handy feature any longer.

To use this feature, just create a new or edit an existing gallery group and check the private checkbox.

Enjoy!

We just augmented our layout collection with an elegant and very flexible layout we’re calling Flexi. What makes Flexi unique is that it always nicely fills the browser width by using percent-based dimensions for images instead of hard-set, pixel values. This means two things: 1) the photo column widths are consistent regardless of the photo aspect ratio, and 2) the gallery proportions are preserved regardless of the user’s browser window. This makes Flexi a great cross-platform layout as it will look great not only on desktops, but on smartphones and tablets as well.

By controlling the number of columns, and inserting appropriate photo titles and descriptions you can truly tailor the layout to perfection. Here are just a few examples to give you an idea of what’s possible:

Three columns of photos of varying orientations, with titles. Preview »

Six columns of square photos, without titles or descriptions. Preview »

A single column, great for photo blogs. (In this case, a maximum width is set to preserve photo quality) Preview »

As usual, clicking on each photo will display a large version of it, along with standard tools such as Share (Twitter, Facebook, etc.), Email, EXIF data and (if enabled for gallery) option to purchase prints, etc.

Flexi available right now, so log in (or Sign Up if you’re not a Gallerama member) and show us your customized Flexi galleries. Look for the first gallery layout icon:

Alright, back to work. Enjoy.

Assigning default photo titles, per gallery

A fresh set of updates now provides quick control over your photo titles! While previously all photos were assigned Untitled as the default title, you now have the option to set it, per gallery. Initially, photos will be assigned the file name (without the file extension) as the title, but you can easily override that for each gallery by providing the Default Photo Title. To do this, go to My Galleries, and click on the Settings button for the chosen gallery.

Sorting gallery photos by filename

Additionally, you now have a quick way to sort your galleries based on the file names. This is generally convenient if you preserve the camera assigned file name sequene, or if naming your photos sequentially is a part of your workflow. This option is available in the Photos tab on the My Galleries screen.



Special thanks to Michelle Zassenhaus for the suggestions here. Y’all should follow suit.

Layout enhancements

We’re continuing to make our gallery layouts faster, prettier and more search engine friendly. The latest beneficiary of that effort is our default layout which we think you’ll agree meets our goal in every way. Here’s an example: http://glr.me/g/636

If you follow Gallerama on Twitter, you likely noticed a few recent post or two regarding some new releases. Here are the specifics:

- Short URLs (ex: http://glr.me/g/1670) are now used by the Share (Facebook, Twitter, etc.). Gallery covers or selected photos will be displayed by capable social network sites.
- Gallery and Image page titles have been optimized such that the title is up front, followed by the artist’s name. This has SEO benefits, as well as helping with bookmarking, etc.
- Custom fonts on public Profile and All Galleries pages now use Cufon instead of sIFR. The result is much faster load times and better cross-browser support. In addition, minor visual enhancements have been made to both of these pages. (We’re working on converting remaining sIFR implementations to Cufon as well.)
- Sign Up form is now snappier and snazzier, with the help of new Ajax validation.
- Loading (and editing) of photos on the My Galleries screen is now much faster and includes a few visual enhancement. Most notably, the info box displayed as you move your mouse over the thumbnails now displays a larger preview.
- The Brick Wall layout now uses the fade effect for display of photo caption.
- A few other visual enhancements are scattered about.

Enjoy!

We don’t like spam and try to avoid contacting our members unless we have important information to share, but this month’s newsletter was packed with the good stuff and we were thrilled to announce it. If you haven’t received it click the link below for the details.

Gallerama.com November Updates