Matrix and
MatrixSlide have had a good run - eleven and eight years, respectively. But it's time to put them out to pasture.
I'm not withdrawing the skins, but there won't be any updates with added features or improvements. If a browser change produces some unwanted effects, or if a jAlbum update causes problems, I'll fix the problems if it can be done without too much rewriting, but that will be the extent of it.
Why are these skins destined for the "legacy" category?
- The underlying Highslide JS script is now abandonware. There haven't been any real updates since 2011. There is no support, which means that its problems will never be fixed.
- The expander for videos is not responsive to the viewport size - videos are a fixed size. I'm always surprised that many users never noticed that.
- The thumbnail table in Matrix is not responsive to the viewport size. That would require a complete redesign of the skin. And it still wouldn't work on a phone - if a meta viewport is set so that the thumbnail table appears properly, the image expander gets fooled, and fails miserably.
- The expander won't honor CSS margins, so no CSS box-shadows are possible. That means that images all have to be reprocessed to accommodate a simple color change. I've never been able to code-hack my way around that.
- The expander is not swipe-enabled, and never will be.
- The expander navigation icons are too small for fat fingers, and their fixed sizes are deeply embedded in the script.
So, what skin should you use instead? Well, it would be a mistake to search for a skin that looks just like Matrix, but doesn't have its problems. Perhaps it's time to find something with a more up-to-date appearance. Try out any of the more recent skins. Some of my "planetary" skins -
Mercury, Neptune, Pluto - are all more modern, with lots of opportunities for customizing. All of them behave fairly well on mobile devices, but still put on a good show on a large monitor.
Saturn has a more traditional "look and feel," and has a lot of options, so that's another choice to consider. It's probably the most "Matrix-like" of my newer skins.