jAlbum 35 is here! A new major release sets expectations, and I think you’ll appreciate this update, especially if you’re a long-time jAlbum user. v35 will help you keep your ever-growing list of jAlbum projects organized and presented in neat folder structures called Project Groups. Another improvement worth mentioning here is Project Previews – Just hover the mouse close to a project icon and a preview will show:
The preview will show a screenshot of the final web gallery if such exists and is current, otherwise, it will show a larger version of the project thumbnail. To have previews refreshed, open the Project Gallery (CTRL/CMD + G)
Background
Through my use of jAlbum over many years, I’ve been longing for a better way to separate jAlbum projects of various kinds. For instance, I have loads of test projects that clutter the “Recent projects” list. I also want to keep better track of “favorite” projects that I’m especially fond of (like my ice cream galleries or our Norway trip). Furthermore, I can imagine active users wanting to organize their projects by theme (Nature, Portrait, Weddings, Travels, Urbex, etc), by year, or perhaps by client.
Enter Project Groups
To address these needs, jAlbum 35 now allows you to create Project Groups where you can store your projects. You can have any number of project groups and even put groups within groups, just like you organize your files within folders on your hard disk. Projects can easily be moved between groups by a simple drag-and-drop operation.
Folder-based groups and virtual groups
There are two kinds of project groups:
- Folder-based groups
A folder-based group corresponds to a physical folder on your hard disk. A project can therefore reside in only one single folder-based group. - Virtual groups
A virtual group keeps references to the projects added to it. You can therefore add projects to multiple virtual groups if you wish. See this as a way of “tagging” your projects in various ways. (The Recent Projects group is a special kind of virtual group. Projects are added to it automatically as you open them in jAlbum.)
Choosing the current group
When jAlbum 35 starts, it selects the Recent Projects group by default. Everything behaves just like before now. To select another group, click the “Recent Projects” title in the top-left corner. A panel now expands, revealing the default groups set up for you:
- Recent Projects – Keeps track of recently opened projects
- My Albums – Folder-based group, showing the contents of the “My Albums” folder
- Favorites – Virtual group where you can add your favorites.
- Samples – Folder-based group listing jAlbum’s bundled sample projects.
- Tests – Folder-based group for your tests.
“Favorites”, “Samples” and “Tests” are just added as examples to get you started. They can be renamed and deleted if you wish.
To select a group, just click it, then click the panel’s title again to collapse it. In the title, the name of a virtual group is displayed within <angled brackets>.
Hint: You can quickly move between groups by clicking and holding the mouse over the title, then drag the mouse over the desired target group and release the mouse button. (The project group panel works like a menu.)
Adding, renaming, and deleting groups
You can either add groups to the main group list or as a subgroup of another group. To add to the main list, use the small “+” button next to the group list. To add a group as a subgroup of another group, right-click it and select “New Project Group” or “New Virtual Project Group”. To rename or delete a group, just right-click it and choose to rename or delete.
Moving and adding projects to groups
To move a project to another folder-based group, just drag and drop it onto the target group. The same goes with virtual groups. When adding to virtual groups, you see the mouse pointer showing a reference arrow to indicate that you’re adding a reference instead of moving.
You can also move projects between groups straight from your file system (folder-based groups are just hard disk folders). This is convenient in case you wish to move multiple projects. There is however an advantage to moving projects using jAlbum as it also updates any references inside virtual groups.
Ordering projects
Within a group, projects can be ordered by use, alphabetically, or reversed alphabetically. To change the ordering, use the small button to the right of the group title.
Summary
With the addition of Project Groups, jAlbum 35 will help you keep your projects organized according to your needs. We’ve updated the Multi Maker, Project Gallery, and Backup/Restore tools to be aware of Project Groups as well. To read about all the improvements in v35, see our release notes.