In jAlbum’s early days, many skins, such as SimpleViewer, displayed thumbnails and large images side by side. This layout worked wonderfully when users primarily had large, landscape-oriented monitors.
However, the advent of mobile phones made these galleries feel cramped and difficult to navigate. As a result, thumbnails and lightboxes evolved into separate entities, and users became accustomed to jumping between them.
Lately, I’ve decided to revisit this concept, wondering if it was truly obsolete. It turns out that modern mobile devices have aspect ratios large enough to accommodate both elements with minimal compromise. The primary challenge was optimizing the thumbnail layout for small screens in both portrait and landscape orientations. For mobile users, the Split skin offers swiping not only on large images but also on the thumbnail section.
I also had to elaborate on how folders and custom pages would be handled. They’re now represented as a folder tree accessible via the “hamburger” menu icon. In folders without images, this menu is visible right away. It works great, much better than I initially envisioned, especially on the smallest devices where other skins can be cumbersome to navigate. The Split skin offers minimal clutter, self-evident navigation, and fewer clicks to access a picture. The user experience resembles a mobile’s native gallery app, but with an advantage: it displays thumbnails alongside the images, eliminating the need to jump back and forth. Visitors will instantly feel at home with its intuitive swipe and pinch-zoom gestures.
The Split skin has been intentionally kept lean on features, and we’ll likely maintain that focus, as it’s designed primarily for mobile use and novice users.
Here are some features and customization options already available:
- Google Fonts
- Independent color customization for different sections
- Navigation types: Subfolders, Folder tree, and Collapsible folder tree
- Sharing to Facebook, Threads, Bluesky, X, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit, Email, and Link
- Actual and visited thumbnail marking options
- Three types of title pages: Empty, First image, and Theme image
- Image caption customization, including photo data
- Custom code addition
Navigation panel options:
Folders
Tree
Collapsible
Title page variations:
Empty
First image
Theme image
The skin comes with six pre-designed styles:
Check out this sample album!
I hope you’ll enjoy this simple yet stylish album skin!
Do you have any ideas or suggestions for improvement? Let me know: laza@jalbum.net
/Laza