I was in touch with Tim Plumb recently, who is closely tied to PulseCMS and he showed me a couple of examples. You probably remember him from Freeway and I showed him the kind of subtle touches I wanted in a slideshow, but haven’t heard back from him.
Photographers are dealing with art directors etc and subconsciously at least the presentation of the web gallery is almost as important as the images themselves.
Yes I do remember Tim from the Freeway days and he’s a great contributor to PulseCMS.
This is a demo page I did of the PulseCMS gallery at http://webdeersign.com/tp5demo1/gallery4/ . I restricted the size of the lightbox but it could easily go full screen. It’s OK for most but I agree that a super slick gallery & lightbox would be needed for the fringe cases. However, if an organisation has an Art Director they should commit to a paid gallery service really.
Look at
https://juicebox.net/demos/
I use it and it’s extremely flexible.
Andy
http://www.apswoodwork.uk/photos.html
I accept that the majority of people are just looking for something that shows the images and nothing more.
When I mentioned art directors I was talking about the ones who work for magazines and advertising agencies who view the work of countless photographers. The competition to stand out as a photographer or makeup artist etc is staggering and hard to appreciate unless you have ever visited a major agency and seen 50 portfolios lined up on a desk.
When it comes to a traditional printed portfolio you would typically pull out every stop to gain an advantage, from the quality of the printing paper to the way composite cards are folded and it all matters. When we move to the digital realm with a website the gallery has to fulfil a similar role, but right now none of them are really doing it.
Perhaps the best transitions and moving fades I have seen recently were with Joe Workman’s Impact stack, but even there the actual slideshow options are limited and I don’t know how it handles retina images.
I am in the process of transitioning from commercial assignments to fine art photography and I’ll be selling limited edition prints, but it will still require the same approach.
Take a look at my existing site. It isn’t responsive and I haven’t updated it in ages, so the images are old. Look at the way the slideshow works though and how thumbnails are highlighted when you pass over them with a cursor, even while its playing. Also the slideshow can be stopped at any point by clicking on a thumbnail and then start from the same point. It’s just lots of subtle points and smooth transitions.
All of this was hand coded, but it could have been done in Freeway I imagine. It includes some mild nudity, but nothing that would shock the average reader of the Sun. www.ashleykaryl.com
Understood. In that case you need a super slick Gallery. However, my understanding of the main 3rd party RW Galleries is that they are all based on open source code.
I have yet to see a really slick gallery that does everything just right.
This is the key problem and I see it everywhere.
There are lots of off the shelf portfolio galleries. They vary in quality, but ultimately you end up with something that looks like thousands of other sites and there isn’t generally much space for improvisation or adding specific functionality.
Agreed. @norm, that’s a pretty good point being made there. ^
That example is a pretty basic slideshow with common features. If you like it you could even use the same thing in Blocs. Since the HTML portion is basic it would work in the HTML Bric and the needed CSS and JS are simple as well.
What exactly are you looking for in a gallery then, what specific features? There are plenty of open source galleries that can be modified via there own built in options. I am just confused given that example why you can’t find something to your liking as those are pretty standard features in many which are available.
I would agree these are pretty standard features, yet all the online galleries I have seen appear to be pretty ugly. It’s partly about functionality, but also a question of finesse. I am not pointing at any one particular gallery or slideshow here; rather to a general problem as I see it across the internet.
As an example, if you tick an option for a slim thumbnail border on most galleries you end up with a clunking great thing that dominates the image. Small thumbnails also tend to be huge and the way images breakdown for mobile is generally heavy handed with very little consideration over spacing. As webdeersign said, neither of us has “yet to see a really slick gallery that does everything just right”.
I am coming round to the idea that the best option may be to lose the thumbnails altogether and just have a simple arrows for backwards and forwards, but that would feel like a step backwards in many ways. One way or another I’ll have to shift to a responsive design soon that is also retina enabled.
The cart options and how that will be incorporated for online print sales will be another factor to consider, but I’ll be spending a small fortune on the photography, so presenting everything really well online will be vital.
Yeah I fully understand everyone has different thoughts on esthetics and such. But just try to find one with the general mechanics and features that you want. You can find plenty of “starting points” and if they don’t have changeable options (which many do, for styling, features, etc.,) regarding modifications you can generally do such modifications by learning a bit of CSS to determine and set the styling yourself, or JS to alter a feature.
If you are hoping to find the perfect one to use as is, then yes it may be tough. There would need to be a gazilion perfect ones to please everyones desires (ha ha). A lot of the ones you find were actually spawned or inspired from others for that very reason. They too could not find the features they wanted, or felt they could be improved upon and expanded. That’s common in scripting and software.
If you can’t find something at all or don’t feel comfortable modifing things, then perhaps you have a chance to create something for the niche of users you feel could benefit from what you have in mind.
[quote=“Flashman, post:10, topic:194”]
One way or another I’ll have to shift to a responsive design soon that is also retina enabled. The cart options and how that will be incorporated for online print sales will be another factor to consider, but I’ll be spending a small fortune on the photography, so presenting everything really well online will be vital.[/quote]
I think @webdeersign touched upon using Pulse, which works with Blocs. You may find your gallery and cart options with a combination of each Blocs + Pulse.
Pulse has a lot of add-ons, that may assist you, some galleries and a few carts:
https://addons.pulsecms.com/
https://help.blocsapp.com/pulse-cms/
Hi Andy, i’m very new to this, but I’m trying to add a gallery the same as yours. How on earth do you get juice box to work with blocs.?
cheers,
Paul
Hi Paul.
Here goes (don’t be put off, it’s not as bad as it seems and well worth it)
Most my galleries are Flickr albums, so JuiceBox (jb) gets the images from there, not within Blocs.
This means I can upload images when working and they become instantly visible.
Read this;
https://juicebox.net/forum/viewtopic.php?id=2304
This explains the code needed.
Below is a screenshot of the code I put into a HTML brick to direct to the gallery.
When I export the jb gallery I rename the exported folder (i.e. to jb-main, etc.), then add this to the exported Blocs folder to upload to my host.
Then it’s a case of having some Flickr albums and tweaking the look.
I also have some small galleries with images that don’t need updating which are added directly to blocs. These are simple slideshows.
hello. I like the simplicity of the slider on your web page. I’m new to Blocs, so would you please tell me how to incorporate a slider like yours in a website? Thanks! - Randy
@Creative Hi Randy, I’m more familiar with Blocs now than when I originally posted. In the case of the slider above at the top of the thread what you have there is a carousel bloc with two parts. The top part is a slider, while the bottom four thumbnails are unrelated static images.
If you click to add a bloc you will see an option for “Carousels” with a range of choices, including one without the thumbnails below.
So are you saying that Blocs doesn’t yet have the ability to incorporate linked thumbnails images - which when clicked on will preview large in the main carousel window?
I couldn’t get the captions to behave in the carousel, then I found the built-in Lightbox interaction, which does exactly what I want. I’m still working on this site but you can see the Lightbox in action here: http://bramhill.net/mulvey.html.
Hi,
can you please confirm that there’s no way (yet) to add 2x images in the built-in Carousels?
Thank you,
Davide
Hi Davide, welcome to the Blocs forums,
I believe that remains correct concerning the built-in carousel features. That there is still no controls via the UI like there are for regular images for adding 2x and 3x images for carousels.
Carousel Bloc or Bric:
Regular Image / Bric:
Since this post regarding this feature for the carousels was made 1.4 years ago.
If you are considering buying/using Blocs and this absence is one of your deciding factors or concerns, you can always contact @norm (the developer) regarding the status of having 2x / 3x images in the carousels.
Otherwise you can do some “post edits” after “export” of your project(s).
In an app with “no code required” there are many standard features that should not be 3rd party offerings.
The rest more boutique offerings can be left for third party developers to be create and sell. I especially liked this line from a web app…
“The latest web standards are applied with highly efficient code to deliver fast loading, search engine friendly websites for mobile, tablet and desktop computers on all popular modern browsers.”
Many of us don’t have the time to hunting around for simple features included in most web design apps natively.
I’m not saying ten different varieties of carousel sliders. Just one or two…of the common use functions. Audio players, etc. Norm is already on it. This will help sell Blocs to those for whom it was I intended to sell to and help it to be more popular:grinning: most people looking for an app like Blocs don’t want to “buy the car and have to go looking for tires…”
