When it comes to multi-level, elaborated albums (with all the bells & whistles) jAlbum is the natural choice for many photographers. However, sometimes you want something simple – although professional-looking – for your site. For instance when you’d like to share an event right away or show some photos related to your business. Historically, we have had a few skins for this kind of task, like Mr. Burn5, Compact, or Fully, but most of them got dated and they don’t play well with mobiles. So it’s high time to offer alternatives.
The first of this line is the new Lucid skin. This skin starts with the first photo right away. You can easily flip through the album with a mouse or finger – Lucid should play well with both. If you only have folders, the skin will display them instead of the images (see above).
While you will not find all the advanced features of Tiger or Photoblogger – e.g. feedback, site-wide search, or shopping cart – the most popular features came even with version 1.0. Google maps, social sharing, custom pages, full-screen mode, and background music to name a few.
It comes with 7 color styles, and 3 thumbnail layout modes: “grid”, “dots” and “masonry”, see below.
The control bar was designed to be the least possible distractive. If its background color isn’t transparent the bar will occupy its space and push down the images accordingly. The controls are laid over when it’s (semi-)transparent, and the bar remains fully transparent until you move the mouse over it. This way the images can fill the browser window as much as possible.
Embedding is also simpler, because this skin was designed to work in tight places. It also comes with a responsive embedding code, which adapts to the available space. However, please note, embedding a web page into another is still not a good idea, due to mobile usability problems related to scrolling and smaller buttons.
One more thing… We’ve introduced a “live design preview” in this skin. When you change colors or fonts you see the effect immediately – you don’t have to go rounds with Make and Preview. This makes it incredibly inspiring playing around with these settings.
Now download and try the Lucid skin! (It also comes bundled with jAlbum 19+.)
Your feedback is welcome!
Laza
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