Frequently asked by you

You know, we are a small company – have no customer relations department somewhere in India – so we give support by ourselves in our spare time. It takes time, true, but it's great to hear your thoughts about our work. Thanks for all the positive feedback – almost every – and the negative too. It's good to know where you got stuck in album making and which features would you like to see in the future. Here is a small compilation of questions you ask frequently, most of them related to the Turtle skin, as I give support mainly to my skins.

Where can I change this or that?

Settings window

We are aware finding the Settings window isn't obvious sometimes, and currently working on to improve it. Still you can go to settings either by clicking the "gears icon" below the project on the left hand side or clicking the "skin icon" next to the selected skin or choose the "Album » Settings" menu. The skin's proprietary settings are gathered on the skin tab (called "Turtle" for example).

 

Select folder thumbnai

How do I change the Theme image?

In jAlbum you can pick an image to represent a folder, called "Folder thumbnail". This image will be used as the thumbnail in an upper level folder, you can click on to navigate to the folder. At the top level this image represents the album itself. This image will be used as album thumbnail when you upload the album to jalbum.net – otherwise it is usually not used in the album itself. However, in Turtle this image doubles as "Theme image" – you know, the big one on the thumbnail page. It is also used as thumbnail when sharing over social sites. You can select it by Right click » Use as folder thumbnail. You can even select a folder. As album thumbnail (at the top level) you can pick one that's buried deep in the subalbums too, just go to the Settings » General » Album thumbnail and scroll through using the little triangles. If you want this image only as theme image but don't want to include in the album, you can exlude it at the same time – jAlbum will take care of this situation. I know there is some ambiguity with jAlbum's terminology of "folder thumbnail" and Turtle's "theme image", but this is a kind of recycling of an already existing jAlbum feature for a similar purpose. Just remember – the "Theme image" in Turtle is the same as the "Folder thumbnail" you choose with jAlbum's right click menu.

 

Vertically split thumbnail page layout...

Settings window

This one was not asked frequently, but I guess most of you don't even know this feature exists, did you? If you want to have a portrait oriented theme image on the left hand side with the thumbnails right to it, just use portrait image bounds in the Settings » Turtle » Design » Theme image size box, e.g. 400x500.

 

The album won't start, only load animations show up instead of thumbnails. What shall I do?

This must be a javaScript error. The most common source of this error is using quotes or apostrophes in file- or foldernames. I know it's tempting to give folders plain english titles with apostrophes, but web servers, web technologies (Javascript, Flash, ...) and external libraries (Google Maps, Paypal, Facebook) might fail on these. Those who author websites know it well, but you should think of it too. When you create an album, you are creating a website. So keep with the plain ol' web-safe characters ( a-z A-Z 0-9 . - _ ) as folder and file names. You can give them descriptive titles in Edit mode » bottom right corner » Title, and use any character you like. Also you might want to check if the Settings » Advanced » Naming » URL encode links setting is on, which might help with file and folder names containing non-websafe characters.

Settings window

 

How can I add description to a folder?

Do you see the other red arrow above? Yes, that's where you can add descriptions to a folder. These desriptions will appear below the page title, and in the list of the sub-albums. But how to get to this page? If you are using double click to swap between Thumbnail and Edit mode, you might find it hard to get to the edit mode of a folder, because if you double click it, it will simply take you to the images in the folder. First select the folder's thumbnail, then either use the Edit mode button on the top right corner or click the Edit link over the thumbnail or use the context menu (right click) + Properties. You can even use HTML formatting in the folder descriptions. For the top level page just go to the Settings » General » Album description. It's the same as a folder description but for the album itself.

 

How visitors can download the originals?

As a first step, obviously you need to include the originals in your album. You can do this by a global switch on Settings » Pages » Link to (originals | hi res images) via scaled images. Or just select those images where you want the originals attached, Right click » Include original. The album will show a link (a button with a down arrow) to the original on the Info panel. When the visitor clicks it, the image will open in a new browser window. This is how browsers handle links to images. If you want to download it, just save from the new window (right click » Save as... or by drag and drop). You can also save it directly from the album by right clicking the download button, and selecting "Save link as...".

Settings window

 

How to stop visitors from downloading your photos?

While you can take steps to stop saving your images, there's no absolute protection on the web. One can easily take a screenshot for example, you can't stop it. Also the real source of the images can be easily revealed with debugging tools. Remember, an image visible on the web is also suspect to copying. If you are concerned about stealing your images do the following:

  1. Never upload the high resolution images along with your albums
  2. Apply watermark
  3. Use Turtle's Right click protection feature (Advanced tab)
  4. Add a copyright notice to the album header or footer, you can even add one to the image caption (Caption templates)

 

How can I use the same settings in several albums?

If you want all your new albums to start with the same settings just make an album with the desired settings, then choose: File » Save as default... This way all your new albums will start with the saved set of settings. If you only want one album to use the settings from another, just use the File » Import » Settings from jAlbum project menu.

 

How can I add my logo in the header or footer?

First save your logo as PNG or GIF (8 bit with transparency) or 32 bit PNG in the final size (shouldn't be too big, e.g. over 200px wide). Place this image in the skin folder's (Ctrl-Alt-S from jAlbum) 'res' subfolder. You might need to have administrator privileges. Please don't overwrite the skin's own logo.png file. Now you can refer to this logo in the header or footer as: ${resPath}/mylogo.png. Here is an example:

<div class="center">
<p><a href="http://mysite.com/"><img src="${resPath}/mylogo.png"></a></p>
<p>Please visit my site!</p>
</div>

Please note, if you make any modification to a skin, it will be lost after a skin update. So please keep track of what you've modified, and save the necessary files in another location (e.g. a pendrive), to be able to re-apply the changes to the new skin version.

 

How can I translate a skin?

It is now pretty straightforward with jAlbum's built-in translation tool. Pick you language in the Tools » Preferences » Language and use Tools » Translate » Translate selected skin if you want to do it from scratch or select Update to translate only the missing keys. If you have finished with it, please send me the translation file (Tools » Translate » Find skin translation » texts_XX.properties) to be attached with the next skin update. Thanks in the name of your fellow citizens.

 

How to optimize Turtle albums for less capable devices?

Turtle 2.x is using many advanced visual effects, like transitions, zoom effect, drop shadows, etc., which might consume too much of computation power on less capable devices. Here are my recommendatons to make the least resource-heavy albums:

  1. Use small image sizes, e.g. 600x480 (Settings » Images » Image bounds)
  2. Use smaller theme image e.g. 600x200 (Settings » Turtle » Design » Theme image size)
  3. Disable some of the transition effects, a simple Cross-fade should do (Advanced » Transition type)
  4. Disable the drop shadows (Design » Use 3D effects)
  5. Select a style with no graphic backgound, Black, Gray, White or Yellow

 

Plase write me if you are still missing something. I plan to cover more topics like shopping cart integration, geotagging and video embedding in the upcoming posts. Stay tuned!

/Laza

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Laca Molnar

Laca Molnar 9 years ago

@butron: you can either choose another thumbnail from the video with the slider (below in Edit mode) or you can add a completely different one by saving a JPG file in the same folder as the original video, with the same name and the extension changed to "thm".

butron

butron 9 years ago

How do I change the icon representing a video with turtle?

Lewis Werner

Lewis Werner 10 years ago

Thank you Laca! Meanwhile I realized, that I can log in in IE (and moderate comments) but not in Chrome, but this will be probably problem on my side.

Laca Molnar

Laca Molnar 10 years ago

Hi Lewis,
The comments (the jAlbum widget) are stored on jAlbum servers, and you can moderate them only if you are logged in on jalbum.net.

Lewis Werner

Lewis Werner 10 years ago

I wonder where are the comments stored. I don't use jalbum.net storage, just offline jalbum software and own storage. Users can comment my photos as guests, the same for me. I can't edit or delete comments (neither mine own).

Laca Molnar

Laca Molnar 10 years ago

Hi Rina, for a blog page I'd suggest a simpler skin, like MrBurn5 or Slim or Fully, because embedding a complicated page into another complicated page always triggers usability problems, like double scrollbars.

Laca Molnar

Laca Molnar 10 years ago

Hi Roy, You can use the Send feedback feature to let users select photos and send feedback on them through ordinary email. This is limited to some 20-30 photos per occasion, because only a limited amount of text can be passed to an email client.

Roy Moses

Roy Moses 10 years ago

Can my ' viewers create a favorite folder as they go thru the images? Forward this folder to me to view the images they select?

Rina van der Veld

Rina van der Veld 10 years ago

Thanks Laca,

It worked when I created a 'res' folder in the main album.
Thank you for the HTML code for the full-width image. I will try that later. I love this theme. Is it also possible to use this theme with a blogpage?

Thanks again for your fast reply.

Laca Molnar

Laca Molnar 10 years ago

Hi Rina,

I don't know what has happened. You can also create a folder in the main (top level) folder on the album, called 'res', and drag and drop the logo here. Make the album and Upload. Check if the logo appears in the local preview with F12.

If you want a a full-width image in About page, right-click About.htt and Select "Edit". Now you can add anything to the HTML code. Something like this should work:

<div style="text-align:center;"><img src="${resPath}/filename.jpg"></div>

Put the file in the "res" folder mentioned above.

Rina van der Veld

Rina van der Veld 10 years ago

I'm trying to add my logo in the footer taking all the steps you explained above, but the image won't show. Instead I get a small picture icon and when I publish the album it shows a question mark. When I go back to the Res folder of the skin my logo is disappeared. I'm the only user of my iMac, so I must have administrator privileges. What did I do wrong?

Is it also possible to use pictures in the about.htt page? So not only a tumbnail on the left side, but a full image in-between the text paragraphs like in s blog.

Laca Molnar

Laca Molnar 10 years ago

I'm aware the documentition is lagging. You can click the "Help" link on Turtle's settings panel, and you will find the description of the different settings. For the new Turtle version 5.x the documetion will be totally rewritten, but this work hasn't been finished yet: http://lazaworx.com/static/help/

David Bowling

David Bowling 10 years ago

May I respectfully suggest an all inclusive, single, online manual (per skin) that looks like the very efficient one for a recent scanning program I used called Vuescan (hamrick dot com). He has taken every menu item on every tab [for jAlbum it would be the settings box] and listed them in order on pages with descriptions of functions and comments about ramifications of selecting the item. Please check out his manual. If employed it could save you many, many hours of answering questions and increase both yours and the user's productivity exponentially.
Having said all that, not as criticism, but hopefully as help, I've received many compliments on many aspects of the elegant presentation and functionality of my album from viewers. Thank you for your work !

David Bowling

David Bowling 10 years ago

May I mention, please, that many questions I've had while doing my first album with the Turtle skin have involved very time intensive searching and searching for the answers [ many times to nothing more than trying to understand what a check box does and how it would affect other settings] on disassociated blogs - many times never finding it. (Continued)

David Bowling

David Bowling 10 years ago

I don't understand why it would take 45 minutes, then, to upload nothing more than a few caption changes. It must be something I've done. I'll have to check some settings to make sure nothing was changed causing additional work for it.