It was quite some time ago that I recollected all the recent changes in the skins. The recent changes were mostly under the hood.
1. Embed skin
The big news is the brand new Embed skin. I wrote about it in this blog post: Embed your gallery into any webpage
In short, this is an easy-to-embed skin for any webpage, using only JavaScript rather than IFrames or other outdated techniques. We have developed a new WordPress plugin to make it even easier for WP users.
2. jAlbum feature implementations
For the current skins, most of the new features are implementations of the new jAlbum features, like:
- Custom views
- Linked folders
- AVIF file support
3. Thumbnail load optimizations
The second big chunk is about thumbnail load optimizations:
- Now the skins load only 20-30 thumbnails at a time, so browsers can render them in smaller chunks, which lets them use much less memory. The album visitor will notice that the thumbnails render immediately, with no hiccups while scrolling.
- Limiting search results to 1000 items in order to avoid infinite searches. When there are more, the skin alerts the user.
4. Code review
The third bunch is a mixed bag. I asked the AI to find bugs in my code. Naturally, it could find a lot. I felt humbled and envied its brain, which can read 10,000 lines of code in a fraction of a second. Hundreds of possible bugs were fixed – perhaps many of them would have never surfaced -, and I hope none were introduced in the process. 🙂
5. Mobile usability
Besides all these comprehensive changes, the swiping library has improved a lot. It handles pinch zooming much better now. This library is part of Lizard, Photoblogger, Story, and Tiger skins.
6. Story skin enhancements
Mixing media and text was a distinguishing feature of Story skin, but with version 8.0, it now also supports displaying these text clips or custom pages in the lightbox, paving the way for mixed-media slideshow presentations. Read this blog post: Spice up your story with text clips
/Laza