JAlbum 7 represents the biggest rewrite of JAlbum since its first launch. The goal has been to make JAlbum easier to use for beginners and professionals and at the same time enable us to add more features without ending up with something looking like the control panel of a nucelar power plant. Here are some news in brief:

- User interface completely redesigned.
- Now co-developed on Mac and Windows to ensure that JAlbum should look good and work perfectly on both systems
- JAlbum now allows you to build virtual album structures. This means you can pick images and folders from anywhere on your harddisk to your album. Just drag and drop them onto JAlbum!
- Completely redesigned publish section -easier and more powerful
- Improved album sharing. If you had problems sharing your albums straight from your hard disk before, give it another try!

When I started on JAlbum in 2002 I never dreamt it would be as popular as it has become. Today, there are over 7 million JAlbum albums on the net. The program is being used every 5 seconds around the world. What people especially seem to like about JAlbum (apart from being free of course) is the flexibility and control. You store your images where you want and you can customise the albums the way you want.

Again I wish to say a big thank you to all of you who have made JAlbum what it is today. This includes people making JAlbum skins, translating JAlbum to 30 languages and supporting each other in the user forum. At that time I never realised that popularity could be a problem either. Even though JAlbum has come far, thanks to its vibrant community, I've found myself spending more and more time with support (answering way over 12.000 emails for instance) and less time with development. (You should see my to-do list...) This has been frustrating as there are so many smart things to add to JAlbum. I realised I had to scale up this project if it is to have any long term future. Now we are finally a team of four dedicated guys working 100% on JAlbum. We all believe in keeping JAlbum free and instead rely on for instance web site ads, partnerships and donations. Let me present my friends:

Anders Callertun, web development
Anders is a long time friend and colleague of mine. We've been working together in several companies over the past ten years. Anders is a guy to rely on. He has always helped me out when in need. Aside of being a very skilled developer, Anders loves photography and media. He is also the author of the "Slide show" skin. (Don't tell him I wrote that cause he isn't too proud over that skin .)

Daniel Frisk, JAlbum development I've been working together with Daniel for 5 years. We share a common love for Java, snowboarding and a good debate. If it wasn't for Daniel, I would never have discovered important Java components that has meant so much for JAlbum's functionality. It's great to have him onboard with his great development skills and curiosity about new cool things to add to JAlbum.

Carl Mårtensson, "everything else there is to making a company work" Let's face it, here we are, 3 developers. There are so many things to making a company work we just aren't experts on. Carl is filling those gaps perfectly and is also an enthusiastic JAlbum user and rather skilled in the graphics department too.

So far the JAlbum web site has mainly been about downloading the program and perhaps asking some support questions in the forum. We want our site to be more than that. It will be a gathering place for album lovers! You will be able to easily browse at other people's albums for inspiration, discuss albums with others (in a better format than in the forum), have personal blogs etc. As a first step we have redesigned the site to support more features without becoming hard to navigate. Your comments on the changes we've made are most appreciated! We want to bring forward the richness and variety JAlbum albums have. Have a peek at the featured albums we showcase on the site.

The next addition will be a skin repository directly on jalbum.net where you shall be able to easily download new JAlbum skins that suit your site and taste. Anders Engblom has done a wonderful job with the existing JAlbum skin repository. I'd like to thank him for his efforts and his help with the new skin repository.