This is jAlbum 33

New settings window

Based on support experience, we’ve reworked jAlbum’s settings window to be more user-friendly. The first thing you notice is that it has a much smaller window than before. This is because we’re using a new default skin called “Plain”. Plain only provides the most commonly used settings, and they are therefore easy to find. If you need more “bells and whistles”, go for our advanced skins like Tiger, PhotoBlogger, and Story.

The second thing you’ll notice is that the “Structure” and “Widgets” panels seem to be gone. They’re now moved under the “Advanced” tab, should you need them.

The “Pages” and “Images” panels have been reworked as well. Here’s the new “Pages” panel:

 As you can see, the somewhat confusing “Image linking from thumbnails” section is gone. You now have the equivalent settings (highlighted here) available under the reworked “Images” tab instead:

You now simply tick checkboxes for the types of images you wish to include in your gallery: Scaled images, originals, or both scaled images and originals. (Thumbnails are currently always included).

Here are other improvements to the Settings window worth noting:

• Window size calculation has been improved, now making room for your OS dock as well
• Very large skin UIs now get scroll bars instead of expanding the settings window beyond the screen size
• The “Apply” button has been removed (settings are automatically applied when you make albums or close the window)
• Skins may now supply their own fancy icons 🙂
• The “Hi DPI” settings have been moved to Images->Advanced. We recommend using 2x Variants instead as that gives the same effect on Hi DPI screens (“retina” screens) while maintaining a fast gallery for users with ordinary screens

Backup and restore

jAlbum 33 has two new tools to easily back up and restore album projects. (See File menu). When opening the backup tool you’ll be presented with a window listing your recent projects together with information on disk location, last made date, and last backup date. Simply select the projects to backup and hit the “Backup selected” button. You may choose a custom target folder for backups – the “backup directory” by using the directory chooser button in the top-right.

You may also choose from what location jAlbum should list your existing projects. Choose either “Recent projects” or “My Albums” location.

If you’re moving to a new computer, backup to a USB memory or networked drive, select the “Include linked files” checkbox to ensure that each backup is self-contained. Otherwise, you may not be able to restore linked files on the new computer.

As the backup progresses, jAlbum presents a progress dialog with estimates of time left. Once a backup is done, jAlbum updates the “Last backup” date in green:

To help you locate the right project to back up, hit a key representing the 1:st letter of that project’s name. The first match after the currently selected project will then be selected. You can also search backward by SHIFT-typing characters. Hit Enter to begin the backup process.

During the backup, you can move the backup window to the back and continue working with jAlbum.

Restoring projects is similar to backing up. Just use “File->Restore projects”. Just ensure that the “Backup directory” correctly matches the location where your backups are stored. Now select projects to restore and hit the “Restore” button:

The restore tool will detect if you’re restoring on top of an existing project and give you the choice to either rename the restored project, restore over the existing project, or skip restoring that particular project.

Just like with the backup window, you can move this window back and continue using jAlbum. You can also navigate to projects by typing keys.

These were just some highlights from jAlbum 33. See all improvements in our release notes.