Tiger skin in practice

Perhaps the title is misleading, but we’re still not in the poaching business. Our skin’s purpose is much more noble, I bet you already know. 🙂

I made a few sample albums to test how the skin works from the user’s perspective. This little exercise was also beneficial for facing everyday problems – you might stumble upon them as a user – and fixing a few bugs in the process. Finally, I put up four different albums with different looks to show how flexibly Tiger albums can be customized.

I’m not sure if this is widely known, but jAlbum saves the settings along with the uploaded albums (unless you opt out), which makes it possible for other people to copy the look of the album. Naturally, only the public details – like colors or layout – not the sensitive data, like Facebook App ID, or your email address. Use the File -> Import -> Settings from Published album and copy/paste the album’s URL.

1. Travel album

Perhaps showcasing travel photos is the most frequent use of jAlbum. When I travel, I prefer showing off my pictures in a low-key, elegant way, that prioritizes photos. Besides using folders based on years/locations, I use keywords to label places. This makes it easier later to collect images made at the same place or made along the same concept (e.g. panoramic photos). I used Tiger’s default style (Linen) and modified a few things.

This album has more than 1 600 photos, which took some 15 minutes to make on the first run, but subsequent makes took only ~25 seconds. Pretty quick, isn’t it? We have streamlined both jAlbum and the skin to process large albums as quickly as possible. Initially, jAlbum had to go through all files to gather camera dates, but this information is now cached, speeding up future album builds considerably. Previously, this process could take 10 times longer.

2. Multimedia album

Adding video files to a Tiger album hasn’t been a problem since the beginning, but lately, the so-called “External content” feature has been added too. Using this, you can add ANY content you want (instead of the original picture): custom HTML code, an external website, or embed a YouTube/Vimeo video. You name it. This content then shows up in the lightbox embedded through a window. You can even use jAlbum variables in the code. If you’re curious, you can read how this album was made. The album also demonstrates an unusual way of using face tags.

3. Shopping cart

The PayPal-based shopping cart component first appeared in the Photoblogger skin. It collects the chosen items locally and allows the customers to edit the cart (change options, quantities, etc.) before they send it to PayPal. Previously, Turtle skin had two different types of shopping carts: one that sent items to PayPal right off upon clicking the button in the lightbox, the other made it possible to select more items, but only on the index page, and all had to have the same price (and same other options). For the visitors, this was probably hard to follow. Check out how the new shopping cart works! Did you know your visitors don’t have to sign up with PayPal? Besides using their PayPal balance, they can pay the usual way with their credit card.

If you’d like to have some custom content above the page – like here – use the Settings -> Tiger -> Header -> Custom content feature. This way you can add your site’s logo and/or site navigation instead of the ugly, user experience-killer – IFRAME – method. Similarly, look for the Settings -> Tiger -> Footer -> Custom content box to add your custom page footer content.

4. Album with map locations

Thanks to jAlbum 14’s new Location setting feature you can easily add GPS coordinates to your photos if missing. Previously, I went through all these Venice photos and copied the coordinates from Google Maps to Turtle’s proprietary “Location” text field, which was a bit of a hassle, I have to admit. Now Tiger skin not only reads those Turtle-specific fields but converts them to “standard” xmp.GPS values right away. (You have to run “Make album” at least once though, because the skin code runs only during album making.)

Tell us, what you think! Your comments are welcome.