jAlbum 31

Released: May 9, 2023

30.3

News and Updates

• New bundled skin: "Plain". Plain is easy to use, plain looking and looks great on both mobile and desktop. See blog post
• Less surprising long album builds: jAlbum now has an indicator (botton-left corner) showing whether current settings differ from those of the album (white) or whether image settings differ as well (orange = long album rebuild to be expected)
• Less surprising long album builds #2: jAlbum now warns at the beginning of an album build in case image specific changes has been made to a large project (>100 objects)
• Less surprising long album builds #3: jAlbum now allows you to revert to the last used settings, thereby avoiding unwanted long album builds. Just click the indicator icon in the botton-left corner, followed by "Revert settings"
• Less surprising long album builds #4: jAlbum now shows you what changes have been detected. Just click the change indicator in the lower-left corner (an asterisk) and the changes will be revealed.
• jAlbum will warn if user attempts to use image effects while linking to originals (in which case the image effects are ignored)

Bug fixes

• Changing to another folder having the same name would not update the theme image selector
• Deleting images from Review mode would partly lose keyboard focus (Windows)
• "Show in file system" would trigger an error if the backing file or folder was missing. Now opens the parent folder in such cases

Released: April 5, 2023

30.2

News and Updates

• Updated bundled skins Tiger, PhotoBlogger and Projector
• Windows version now signed with extra high security "EV" certificate

Bug fixes

• Fixes issue where "Sample Project" and "Welcome to jAlbum" projects disappeared from recent project list after restarting jAlbum. (They were only kept if user opened them on their 1:st session)
• Fixed issue with "Apply ordering to sub folders" only working on the closest level
• Fixed potential painting issue with high quality thumbnails

Released: March 9, 2023

30.1

News and Updates

• The thumbnails of jAlbum's user interface are now sharper than before (using 320x320 pixels instead of 160x160 pixels). See blog post
• Preferences window reorganized to be more logical
• Language options are now also presented in your language
• Improved painting quality of superimposed icons for thumbnails of jAlbum's user interface
• Improved behavior of "Batch rename files" external tool. Now supports undo + bugs fixed
• Bundled skins updated
• Improved performance when making albums using "Process only updated sub directories" option

Released: February 9, 2023

30

News and Updates

• New "Pixelate region" image tool to protect sensitive parts of images. See v30 blog post
• 27% faster reading of WebP images
• Reads WebP images with transparency as well
• Reads lossless WebP images as well
• "Order by type" improved to not only consider categories (videos vs images for instance), but also file types within a category
• Updated bundled Story skin with improved interaction behavior, mobile experience and new thumbnail layout option
• Updated bundled Tiger skin with improved interaction behavior, mobile experience and new thumbnail layout option
• Ordering menu now has an "Apply to sub folders" item.

Released: January 19, 2023

29.3

News and Updates

• New advanced option to remove diacritic marks from generated file names. This improves compatibility with servers that can't handle foreign characters properly
• Updated bundled Story skin

Released: December 20, 2022

29.2

News and Updates

• Keywords can now be renamed and deleted for multiple selected images. (Right click selected keywords in jAlbum's keywords list to reveal new context menu)
• Improved crop image tool: Now starts off with a full size crop box. No longer defaults to "Keep ratio". Helpful grid lines added to crop box. Use ALT qualifier key for centered resizing.
• Instead of aborting, will now log unexpected errors and continue album generation for unexpected errors occurring during image processing
• Improved uploads: Re-enabled "ssh-rsa" encryption algorithm to ease connecting to old ssh servers
• MultiMaker window now stays on top. (Minimize it or close it if it disrupts the view)
• Developers: Updates to Work API.
• Added "copy to clipboard" button to connection error dialog
• Developers: Skins may now set the cleanResFolder=true skin property if they want the "res" folder to be cleared on each album build
• Translations updated. Thank you dear translators!
• External tools adjusted to make use of updated Work API
• Minor API enhancements (VersionNumber class)

Bug fixes

• Previewing galleries containing foreign characters didn't work (since 29.1)
• Textual edits weren't committed to the project if making an album using a keyboard shortcut while editing a text
• Fixed bug relating to JSON page generation causing JSON pages to be read before being fully created
• Fixed NullPointerException occurring when editing a JSpinner in Edit view->Raw settings and leaving Edit view while using some skins
• Fixed problem with HTML editor

Released: November 1, 2022

29.1

News and Updates

• Now uses up to 8 CPU cores for image processing instead of 4 for faster album builds
• Faster page processing due to better parallelism when updating pages (most noticeable on networked disks where up to 6x write speeds have been achieved)
• Faster metadata reading during album builds due to better parallelism. Now uses 24 threads instead of # of CPU cores. (most noticeable on networked disks where up to 3x read speeds have been achieved)
• Faster counting of # of total files during album builds due to better parallelism.
• jAlbum now remembers the thumbnail zoom position between sessions
• More conservative rewrites of resource files during album builds. Speeds up album builds.
• Removed obsolete code
• Developers: New Profiler API to address performance issues
• Developers: Now supports Groovy properties in skin UIs
• Developers: Dump threads now separates active from passive threads for quicker analysis
• Avoids creating already created directories. Improves album build performance
• ZigZag skin now allows order of images and text to be reversed
• ZigZag skin now uses Groovy as scripting language
• Prints status info during album builds for file attribute reading too
• Translations updated. Thank you dear translators!

Bug fixes

• "Show in file system" was causing failure launching the external browser afterwards (Windows only. Since v29)
• Deletion of unused JPEG images didn't work properly when switching from JPEG to WebP
• Fixed rename error occurring if one edits a project name and directly clicks on another project
• Fixed bug causing missing folder descriptions for non JSON skins (since 29.0.2)
• Fixed error when writing WebP theme images
• Minor bug fixes

Released: October 5, 2022

29

News and Updates

• jAlbum now runs natively on M1 Macs ("Apple Silicon") too. 3x speed improvement!
• Mac versions now using new "Metal" graphics pipeline (more energy efficient)
• Future proofed: Runs on Java 19 instead of Java 14
• Faster JPEG processing: 1,25x vs previous version
• Faster WebP writes: 1,94x faster vs previous version (Sample Project)
• Faster HEIC image reading: 1,69x vs previous version (iPhone 12 HEIC images)
• Faster TIFF image reading: 5,6x vs previous version
• More robust reading of TIFF and PSD files
• System console: More clever scrolling of output panel. Ability to execute statements in either panel
• Windows version now has a fully working "Open in file system" ability
• Supports new image formats: HDR and IFF
• Easier to set up monitored projects (projects that gets updated and uploaded once changes are made)
• Updated sftp library capable supporting modern encryption algorithms
• Updated Groovy language support (v4.0.4)
• Updated JavaScript language support
• All external tools rewritten using Groovy (shorter, cleaner code examples)
• Updated BeanShell scripting language to comply with Java 18's module system
• Updated look & feel library. Improvements to Windows rendering
• MultiMaker can now force rebuild projects. (Use ALT key)
• MultiMaker now keeps green color on made projects until window is closed and reopened
• Recovery tool is now aware of Variants (making better choices when recovering)
• Updated skins, including an updated Responsive. Thanks Jeff!

Bug fixes

• Fix to recovery tool not handling certain file name combinations
• Fix: File->Recent projects->Clear wasn't working properly
• Fix: If a skin disables widgets, then the widget activation button under Settings->Widgets is also disabled
• jAlbum wouldn't remember the maximized state of the window when opening jAlbum by double clicking a project file
• Monitoring is now paused for the currently open project (to avoid spurious updates while working on current project)
• Fixed compatibility issue with WindowBlinds (Windows)
• Minor bug fixes

Released: May 14, 2022

28.1

News and Updates

• Will now warn if a skin update also requires a jAlbum update
• Updated Polish, English and Swedish translations
• Updated bundled skins Tiger, PhotoBlogger, Story, Projector and Minimal
• When uploading projects in the background, jAlbum no longer pops up the resulting gallery in the browser. A notification is shown, and that's enough for background tasks.
• jAlbum no longer does regular network calls to check for new "collaborative images" if no such projects are active

Bug fixes

• Fix to accidental deletion of audio clips if an image is renamed when only the case differs
• jAlbum was reprocessing excluded images that were used to represent folders every time, therefore slowing down repetitive album builds
• The progress bar wasn't updated while processing excluded images that are also used to represent folders
• The progress bar could sometimes display more progressed than total images
• jAlbum would buffer up and flood our servers with checks for "collaborative images" if the computer was woken up from sleep
• "Import settings from published album" would fail if album is hosted at jalbum.net and URL ends with a slash
• jAlbum would incorrectly generate the "imageRenditions" variable and JSON file entry for 360 images lacking renditions

Released: May 2, 2022

28

News and Updates

• Support for attaching and recording audio clips to objects.
• Skins Tiger, PhotoBlogger, Projector, Story and Minimal updated to play audio clips.
• The image tools "Straighten", "Brighten" and "Gamma" now gets keyboard focus when activated. Use cursor keys to quickly adjust values and Enter to save.
• Developers: Various API improvements: New MediaUtil class to simplify retrieving metadata from media files. MonitoredWorkQueue can now indicate progress. JSmartToggleButton now has a "selectedText" state.
• Translations updated. Thank you dear translators!
• Developers: Skins may now disable arbitrary non-relevant UI components
• Developers: Use new audioClipPath, audioClipType and audioClipDuration (TimeCode instance) variables when present to produce audio player for objects that have attached audio clips

Bug fixes

• Infinite "Make album" - "Upload" loop for monitored projects fixed
• Fixed broken folder thumbnail images for folders containing dots (since v27)
• The status bar sometimes indicated "make (All)" while in fact only changes were being made.
• Fixed some bugs introduced in v27

Released: March 24, 2022

27

News and Updates

• New "folder thumbnail" image category now managed by jAlbum, thereby unburdening skins from managing folder thumbnails. jAlbum managed folder thumbnails can have sizes, shapes and image filters that differ from ordinary thumbnails and closeup images.
• The "Crop focus" tool now also supports folders and folder thumbnails.
• Minimal skin now supports "folder thumbnails". See sample gallery
• Faster builds: Now uses fewer IO calls during album builds. (The "Sample Portfolio" project was built in 20% less time on a networked drive using a 4 core computer)
• Pops up progress dialogs faster during album builds
• jAlbum can now report statistics on Web locations as well as on folders (image count, folder count etc)
• Developers: Skins may now call engine.setStatus(String message) to provide better status reporting during long builds.
• Developers: engine.setSlides() now working from within init scripts
• Updated bundled skins.
• Translations updated. Thank you dear translators!

Bug fixes

• Fixed bug in font selector
• jAlbum didn't print the reason for aborted album builds if the background engine was used

Released: January 27, 2022

26.2

News and Updates

• Added a "Set as default" button to the text filter of jAlbum's edit view (advanced section) to facilitate adding texts to multiple images. (Alt-click button to reset)
• The background uploader now also updates your profile page on added galleries (if you're signed in, that is)
• Updated Korean, Finnish, Slovenian and Polish translations. Thank you translators!

Bug fixes

• jAlbum would sometimes write duplicate file entries to the albumfiles.txt file

Released: January 4, 2022

26.1

News and Updates

• New "Background mode" preference: Use background processing when hitting the "Make album" and "Upload" buttons
• Lower resource usage (threads)
• Lower CPU usage during uploads (especially for Mac version)
• Reports amounts > 1 GB as GB (or TB if needed) instead of reporting amounts in MB only.
• Upload speed reporting for background uploader
• Background uploader now pops up a confirmation window on first upload or when uploading to a new location
• Faster (multi-threaded) local size calculation
• Background uploader now updates progress bar during long file transfers too
• Faster local vs remote file comparison before upload begins. Total gain for 26 GB networked gallery: 1 min 30 sec vs 15 min
• Updated bundled skins Tiger, PhotoBlogger, Projector, Lucid, Animatics and Story
• More robust abortion of uploads when not using zipstreaming
• Windows version now bundled with the latest Java 14 (v14.0.2)
• Added find & replace dialogs to System console and "List metadata" tool. Hit CTRL/CMD+F or CTRL/CMD+R to open dialogs.
• More responsive abortion of background uploads
• More detailed progress reporting during uploads
• Minor usability improvements to find & replace dialogs: ESC key now closes all the time. Beeps when searching past last matching string. Selects all text to find when reopening find dialog
• Translations updated. Thank you dear translators

Bug fixes

• Windows version was leaking "User Object" resources, eventually triggering out of memory conditions. (Fixed by updating embedded Java to v14.0.2)
• Fixed bug causing negative time left estimates on huge galleries
• Removed erroneous progress reporting during uploads ("x of 1 files")

Released: December 8, 2021

26

News and Updates

• Faster loading of HEIC image thumbnails
• Windows version now offers more screen real estate as the title bar and menu bar are integrated into one bar (applies to all look&feels except the standard Windows look&feel)
• Faster uploads: The deletion of old stale files from earlier uploads is now performed over multiple connections.
• New license model: Moved from 30 day trial to a non expiring free version. Users that don't have a license can now run jAlbum 26 forever, but with some limitations, see purchase page
• Translations updated. Thank you dear translators!

Bug fixes

• Fixed occasional StackOverflowException on startup
• Improved skin loading robustness

Released: November 12, 2021

25.1

News and Updates

• Faster consecutive background builds. (Better caching of script related data between album builds).
• No longer invalidates a working license if user signs in with an account that doesn't have a license
• Updated 3:rd party Groovy scripting language library to v3.0.9
• Updated 3:rd party JSON writing library to v4. More RAM conservative.
• More informative if web root is missing (printed "null" earlier)
• Updated bundled skins

Bug fixes

• Exiting jAlbum on Ubuntu Linux didn't work (system tray not available)

Released: October 5, 2021

25

News and Updates

• 30 new trial days for everyone. Free update to anyone who is on a current support and update plan
• Albums can now be made and uploaded in the background while you continue working with jAlbum. This is a huge time saver! See blog post
• Project monitoring: jAlbum monitors projects for changes and makes and uploads changes automatically in the background. See blog post
• Improved MultiMaker: Make and upload multiple projects easily. Now with a rewritten more informative user interface and adapted for the new background processing engine. See blog post
• 100% faster image processing* (Measured on a full rebuild of a 80 image gallery consisting of 16MPixel images). See blog post for more details
• Lower memory usage for image processing.
• Faster metadata parsing. The time to read .properties files (for instance long folder comments) has been reduced by several magnitudes.
• Better reporting: Started, completed, aborted or failed make- and upload tasks are now clearly reported to jAlbum's system console along with project name and timing information
• The Preferences-Details panel has now been given more space
• Added Creator, Copyright and Copyright URL metadata to the album maker's change detection
• Improved error reporting
• Updated bundled skins.
• Updated translations. Thank you dear translators for your help with translating this version

Bug fixes

• The property panels of jAlbum's Edit mode did not always fit
• jAlbum could sometimes hang when opening projects while a Tiger skin was loading
• The JAlbumUtilities.countCategories() API included objects in hidden files

Released: July 14, 2021

24.1

News and Updates

• jAlbum's system console can now be accessed via the F7 keyboard shortcut even if the progress dialog or upload window is active.
• Bundled updated Tiger and PhotoBlogger skins
• Added mkv as supported video format
• More robust skin loading: Recovers from inability to write certain property values to UI components
• Added warning dialog when choosing WEBP as single output format
• JAlbumUtilities.getCameraDates now no longer falls back to file dates

Bug fixes

• Didn't always release ftp connections (happens when doing empty or nearly empty uploads). Old bug
• Now a cap of 16 upload threads to avoid out of memory / thread conditions if connections hang during upload
• Delete local album was resetting the structure type to "mirrored" even though the UI didn't reflect this
• Changing file dates didn't work (broke with Java 9)
• More robust against problems populating the recent project list
• Forgot to add support for superimposing a play icon on video thumbnails on v24
• Directory chaining didn't handle linked folders properly

Released: June 30, 2021

24

News and Updates

• Variants introduced to image processing: Now lets the browser choose the image size and format that best suits the user's display (See Settings-Images-Variants) and read our blog post
• Reads and writes the improved WebP image format
• Reads the improved HEIC/HEIF image format (commonly used on iOS). Credit to IDR Solutions (JDeli)
• Bundled with major update to Mininal skin now supporting Variants, multiple icon sets, cleaner look and responsive, full window slide images
• Bundled with major update to Tiger skin now supporting Variants, instant preview and improved zooming.
• Two types of directory chaining offered: "Full tree" vs "Siblings"
• Handles flipped images as well
• Faster object counting (uses multiple threads, skips ordering objects)
• Better error reporting if jAlbum fails to start
• Made folder deletions more consistent
• Database file importer now better detects type of CSV files passed
• Developers: New API calls to retrieve objects faster (unordered) and to retrieve filtered lists of objects
• Developers: New ja:picture tag to simplify adding Variants support
• Developers: New imageSrcset and thumbSrcset variables for Variants support
• Developers: Hidden folders are now marked as "hidden" in generated json files
• Developers: IO.zip now allows FileFilter to be specified
• Reads user configurable config dir/system/filetypes.xml too
• Added "currentFolder" variable to external tools
• Updated translations: Thank you dear translators!

Bug fixes

• Fixed ConcurrentModificationException in uploader
• Search bar now resizes target window so controls fit
• AlbumObject.getDescendants now handles (ignores) circular folder references
• Fix for Windows not being able to write properties to hidden files
• The image file chooser of the web location panel didn't pick up the right folder of the currently selected image

Released: February 12, 2021

23.2

News and Updates

• jAlbum now interprets flipped/mirrored images correctly (mobile phone selfies for instance)
• New flip/mirror button added
• Improved error reporting if errors occur during uploads
• Folder icon changed from bluish to outline for better visibility.
• The theme image selector of the folder properties panel now has an "Edit" context menu that opens the current image in a larger window
• Adjusted colors of the crop focus to comply with dark look&feel
• Changed more icons from png to scalable svg (broken images, broken links etc)
• Removed several unused icons
• Updated bundled skins

Bug fixes

• Fixed collapsed property panel when opening Edit mode (old bug)
• Replaced Windows file chooser library (from xfilechooser to JNA). Now we rely on one library less

Released: December 10, 2020

23.1

News and Updates

• Faster auto correction processing
• Significantly faster previews
• Updated bundled skins PhotoBlogger, Story, Animatics and Lucid
• Minor robustness improvements

Bug fixes

• Mac version would sometimes not run on enough RAM memory
• Updated broken facebook importer (now complies with updated facebook APIs)
• Would sometimes fail building albums with an ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException
• Preview window would sometimes trigger a not needed album remaking
• MP4 video GPS coordinates weren't imported as jAlbum gpsLongitude and gpsLatitude variables causing videos to not be correctly positioned on maps.
• Fix to logic determining if an image is a photo-sphere or not

Released: November 17, 2020

23

News and Updates

• 30 new trial days for everyone. Free update to anyone who is on a current support and update plan
• Faster/snappier Explorer view. Feels 30-50% faster on a 4 core CPU
• Faster album remakes (around 20% on a 4 core CPU), due to better use of multiple threads
• Faster filter processing due to better use of multiple threads. Image filters are now required to be thread safe (i.e. not contain state that changes during execution of the filter() method). (Filters that aren't thread safe should have their filter() method marked with the java "synchronized" keyword.)
• Faster initialization of consecutive album builds. Cuts about one second from album builds.
• Now allows hiding of web pages. (For supporting skins only. See Story skin)
• New "Last tool" menu item that executes the last used tool, including external tools and plugins. It's bound to the CTRL/CMD+L shortcut and can be accessed from both the Explore view and Edit view. This feature considerably speeds up accessing a commonly used tool while moving through album objects.
• Improved drag and drop behavior: You can now decide to either position dropped files on the caret location (jAlbum switches to Custom ordering) or to let the default folder ordering decide the position. The behavior depends on where you drop (drop in the margin area to let the folder decide)
• Improved drag and drop behavior: External files can now be dropped onto the folder tree in a predictable manner (copy vs link behavior), just like with the Explore area
• When jAlbum switches sort ordering for a folder, this is now indicated clearly with an animated text
• Updated metadata-extractor library to v2.15. Now reads Exif from PNG and HEIC/HEIF images and supports MP4 GPS coordinates among other fixes and improvements.
• Now allows ordinary web pages to be put inside the "res" folder (included in "res" folder of output)
• New "Import comments from rss file" external tool to import comments from really old albums (prior to jAlbum 8.14).
• Paints user installed external tools in bold (Windows + Linux)
• jAlbum's text editor and system console now understands Lua language syntax too
• jAlbum's text editor now adjusts the line number font size in accordance to the text font size
• Updated JNA library from v4.5 to v5.6 thereby improving compatibility and performance when interacting with native OS calls.
• Paints hidden items somewhat darker now for better visibility on bright look and feels
• Updated non-thread safe filters XBorderFilter, AutoFilter and PropertyChangingFilterWrapper to be synchronized
• Updated bundled skins
• Updated translations. Thank you dear translators!

Bug fixes

• Mac version wouldn't work properly on Mac "Big Sur" OS (object deletes, skin updates for instance)
• Fix to occasional make album crash when switching skins directly followed by making albums
• jAlbum should now never accidentally suggest to upload a gallery to a folder called "album"
• jAlbum now remembers even if you upload to the root of your ftp directory (valid for non jalbum.net accounts). It would previously always suggest the project name unless a target folder was set.
• Color selector wouldn't work under Java 8
• jAlbum now remembers the sort order and adds newly added files to the right ordered location if you add files using the "Add" button. So if you have "Order by camera date" set for instance, then adding files using the "Add" button will put them in the right order directly (required a screen refresh before)
• Dropped items were not always positioned correctly
• Fixed bug where nothing was printed to the system console if one executed "print" in JavaScript from within the console (swapping back and forth between languages resolved it though)
• Dropped items would be re-arranged surprisingly on next screen refresh
• Fix to incorrect references to global context (wrong engine could sometimes be referred to)
• Woudln't print camera dates older than Jan 1 1970 in the tool-tips of objects of the Explore view
• Fixed repainting of thumbnails when "Hide" is toggled
• Revisiting the Arty image tool in edit mode several times for the same image would result in multiple versions of the Arty UI
• jAlbum's text editor didn't remember the last selected font size
• Division by zero error when processing empty albums

Released: October 9, 2020

22.1

News and Updates

• Added metadata import tool for ACDSee
• The originalDate variable is now also generated for videos (mp4 and QuickTime)
• Added help button to html editor
• The external tools list is now ordered case insensitive
• Updated bundled skins Story and PhotoBlogger
• Updated translations. Thank you translators!
• Developers: Added allowHTMLEditing and fullHTMLEditing client properties to smart text component so these features can be added without skin requiring jAlbum 22
• Removed Java 11 dependency

Bug fixes

• Fixed issue preventing jAlbum from starting due to a corrupt "Java Assistive Bridge" installation
• Mac version could occasionally crash when hitting the Add button to open the file chooser
• Text components shouldn't have hover buttons
• Fixed issue where renames to newly created folders would be interrupted
• jAlbum's deep-data.json generation could cause out of memory conditions for huge albums
• jAlbum's search wouldn't work if "My Albums" location was pointing to a non existent folder

Released: September 9, 2020

22

News and Updates

• New "Multi Maker" window that builds and uploads albums from multiple projects in the background at the same time. See Tools->Multi Maker.
• Embedded html editor rewritten using new library. ("Squire". Respects your current tag structure)
• HTML Syntax highlighting added to description/comment text components
• Syntax highlighting and variable completion added to jAlbum's system console
• Updated html editor now shows reduced buttons for ordinary objects, but a full suite of buttons for comments for pages only
• Groovy language library updated to v3.0.5
• Developers: New Work API vastly simplifying automating data processing. See new *.groovy external tools for examples.
• The theme image's crop focus can now be adjusted with the cursor keys as well as mouse (for better precision)
• jAlbum's system console now remembers the last used language
• Developers: New JSmartSyntaxTextArea component for enabling syntax highlighting in your skins. (It's a drop-in replacement to JSmartTextArea which defaults to html syntax)
• jAlbum's embedded code editor now has improved syntax highlighting (script elements are for instance colored differently)
• 8 External tools rewritten to use the new Work API, reducing the code to maintain to 20%
• Updated bundled skins
• Translations updated. Thank you dear translators

Bug fixes

• Fix to icon caching (the wrong icon was sometimes delivered)
• Extremely long project names sometimes caused problems with "Remember last selected item"
• Embedded browser would sometimes not initialize properly

Released: July 15, 2020

21

News and Updates

• Embedded visual HTML editor! Right-click a comment or description and select "Open HTML Editor" and take it from there. Now you can style your album- and image descriptions without any HTML knowledge.
• Comes with 5 new modern user interface themes ("look and feels") thanks to the open source FlatLaf project. (The new default "jAlbum Dark" look replaces Darcula, which has become abandoned.). New looks can be added by users to jAlbum's system/themes folder.
• Icons modernized
• Now embeds xmp metadata into GIF, TIFF and PNG files as well as JPEG images.
• Prepared for Oracle's upcoming GraalJS JavaScript engine, which will replace the Nashorn JavaScript engine skins like Tiger and PhotoBlogger currently run on. (Nashorn is no longer present in the next Java version to come)
• Made Preferences window less tall by using 2 columns for checkbox settings
• Developers: New system/base.css file providing common styles for the new html editor to all skins (prepended to common.css)
• Icon sizes for various file types bumped to 320x320
• Updated bundled Minimal skin. Thank you jGromit!

Bug fixes

• Edits to folder titles and folder descriptions would get lost if one navigated to another folder using the folder tree without leaving the edited field first
• Minor bug fixes

Released: June 5, 2020

20.2

News and Updates

• New "Group by Calendar" organizer! Images can now be grouped in folders and tagged based on matching calendar events. (See Organize - Group by Calendar)
• jAlbum now remembers and navigates to the last selected object when loading a project (configurable under Preferences)
• Skin specific custom web pages (like About.htt and Contact.htt) are now added as "dynamic links"* to projects, instead of as copies. This ensures that these files are also updated when you update a skin. ("Dynamic links" means that the link updates automatically as you switch skin). In short: less ugly error messages when you switch skins in projects that have custom web pages.
• jAlbum now runs on Java 14 instead of Java 13
• Develpers: The JFileSelector component now allows file drops to its associated text field.
• Updated bundled Story skin
• Old copies of skin specific web pages are now updated on album build. (Backup copies are placed next to updated pages within the project). This significantly eases the move from old Turtle based projects to modern skins, like Tiger
• Updated translations. Thank you dear translators!

Bug fixes

• "Generate embed code" would break the current album (res folder was emptied)
• Metadata.getCameraDate() didn't revert to last modified date
• Fix to the "Batch make album" external tool (better error reporting if matching account profile for uploads can't be found)
• Organize - Flatten was sometimes printing error messages to the system console
• Corrected help page links

Released: May 14, 2020

20.1

News and Updates

• Copy-drag supported! Items can now be copied instead of moved during a drag-and-drop operation by holding down a CTRL (ALT on Mac) while dragging items
• jAlbum's new details editor view is now enhanced to allow easy copying and pasting of desired metadata aspects like Title, Comment, Author and Copyright between items. For instance: To apply the same title on multiple images, click the "Copy" button next to the title field, then multi-select target items and paste.
• New Story skin bundled
• Detects and ignores album folders as input to album projects
• Displays progress during album builds and uploads in the taskbar icon. (Currently on Mac only)
• jAlbum now keeps track of selection after a completed drag and drop operation
• Improved character encoding detection for EXIF metadata
• jAlbum's "lifeboat.zip" backup file now always includes the current project settings (previously contained the last saved settings)
• The addition of web locations made more robust (handles empty img width and height attributes)
• The "New empty page" option is now disabled if skin lacks full site support
• Offers to move existing album if target folder is changed under Settings - General
• Developers: If skins supply their own templates/empty-page.htt, this will be used for the New empty page action instead of the default from system/empty-page.htt
• Cleaned up old unused code
• Developers: New addedDateRSS variable. Works like addedDate, but formatted for use in RSS feeds
• Updated translations. Thank you dear translators!

Bug fixes

• Dates could be mixed-up between images under certain circumstances (spotted in album.rss file) due to concurrency. Really old bug
• The RSS feed (album.rss) would not always update the published date elements. Now uses dates when items were added to album
• Copying an item that doesn't support xmp meta data, like videos, pages and web locations, wouldn't include applied meta data (titles, comments, ratings etc)
• Division by zero error if attempting to upload album after no changes made since previous upload
• Switching projects using CTRL+1-3 while having a text field component focused would lose the edited text
• Now prints error and skips writing larger than 64KB xmp chunks to images instead of bailing out
• Corrected painting of move/copy hint next to cursor while dragging items over folder tree

Released: April 7, 2020

20

News and Updates

• New configurable "Details" view mode for jAlbum's explore view to facilitate viewing and editing 12 different metadata items like titles, comments, keywords and creator (See Preferences-Details view)
• Rewritten upload engine providing better usage of multiple connections which leads to better performance and upload robustness
• New "Group by Creator" addition to jAlbum's file organizer (organizes images in folders based on the xmp creator)
• Writes more compressed xmp metadata to files = smaller files (around 30% compression of the metadata) and less risk of breaking the 64KB boundary of xmp
• Performance enhancement to comment reading (parses the comments.properties file once per folder instead of once per file)
• The representing thumbnail and theme image selector of the folder property panel now also allows files to be selected via the file chooser
• Metadata management library updated from Apache Sanselan to Commons Imaging
• Skin developer API updates: JDraggableList supports Enum types too. JSONMaker now supports serializing Enums and TimeCode too. AlbumObject.setTitle accepts nulls too (deletes title).
• Web location editor now handles web servers with incorrectly configured SSL security
• Again respects the encoding setting under Settings-Advanced when reading IPTC metadata (Since v14, you had to set the desired encoding using a system property)
• Updated bundled skins
• Updated translations. Thank you dear translators!

Bug fixes

• Fixed NaN error in upload rate reporting

Released: March 7, 2020

19.3.6

News and Updates

• Convert link to copy now also manages sub folders
• Faster and more memory efficient JSONMaker (affects performance for skins like Tiger and PhotoBlogger)
• Bundled skins Tiger, PhotoBlogger, Lucid and Animatics updated
• Mac version now signed and notarized using Apple's new stricter rules

Bug fixes

• Recovers from IO errors during disconnect by performing a forced disconnect instead

Released: January 23, 2020

19.3

News and Updates

• Added a "Keep both" option when adding files and name collisions occur
• New "Date format" preference for how dates are displayed within jAlbum's UI
• Simplified date format selection. Now suggests formats and presents a live date example.
• Renamed various terms to avoid confusion. "Make All" is now called "Force Remake". "Make Changes" is now called "Make Test". "Album Project" is now simply called "Project"
• Updated metadata-extractor library (v2.13)
• Respects a deleted Sample Portfolio project (doesn't recreate it on start up)
• Prepared for upcoming gift cards
• Updated bundled skins

Bug fixes

• Area tagging could sometimes throw a nullpointer exception (since 19.2)
• Main window could show up in an unreachable location when disconnecting an external monitor and starting jAlbum.

Released: December 7, 2019

19.2

News and Updates

• New "Duplicate project" function to simplify making several album projects based upon the same set of images
• New bundled Animatics skin, replacing Mr.Burn5
• Updated Groovy scripting engine to v3 rc1
• Less aggressive cacheing strategy when previewing albums using the internal web server (less need to reload pages to ensure you're previewing the correct content)

Bug fixes

• Face region tags weren't located correctly for portrait oriented images (wasn't following standard)
• Nullpointer exception on startup if auto-signin active using wrong credentials
• More graceful handling of broken image metadata (jAlbum would hang on certain images with broken image metadata
• More robust launching of external preview browser on Linux systems

Released: October 24, 2019

19.1

News and Updates

• Now runs on top of Java 13 instead of Java 11
• Mac version ready for MacOS Catalina
• New Lucid skin bundled (replacing Fully)
• Updated bundled skins Tiger and PhotoBlogger

Bug fixes

• Fixes from v19.0.6 service update
• Mac version had problems handling typing of foreign keys by holding down key and selecting alternatives from menu (fixed due to Java update)

Released: September 30, 2019

19

News and Updates

• 30 new trial days for existing users. (This is naturally a free update for everyone who is on a current support and update plan)
• Multilingual spell checker integrated in jAlbum's text editing UI controls
• New enhanced search bar added to the top-right corner of jAlbum's window. Quickly locate anything: Settings, preferences, projects and even metadata within the current project like titles, comments and keywords.
• Updated 3:rd party libraries (JNA, Metadata-extractor and Groovy)
• Supporters: The feature search now saves a screenshot of the relevant UI window if SHIFT or ALT is held down as one navigates to the UI setting
• Developers: Added timing information to system console window
• Now copies any file that's found inside the "res" folder of a project to the "res" folder of the album and not just supported files
• Updated bundled skins Tiger, PhotoBlogger and Projector
• Translations updated. Thank you dear translators!

Bug fixes

• Strips black borders from appearing on thumbnails from some cameras in Explore view (Nikon and Canon)

Released: August 26, 2019

18.4

News and Updates

• Now uses an embedded web server to serve previews, thereby working around problem previewing JSON based albums on external browsers.
• Uploader now displays current data transfer rate too
• Updated embedded web server from Jetty 6 to Jetty 9, thereby gaining years of fixes and improvements.
• Now prints remote album size during size calculation (better feedback during long calculations)
• Developers: Meta object now added for video too
• Updated bundled skins Tiger, Projector and PhotoBlogger
• Updated status bar icon (for album sharing)
• Updated English, German, French, Dutch, Turkish, Swedish and Korean translations. Thank you dear translators!
• Minor improvements

Bug fixes

• Now correctly formats dates according to the current locale setting
• The title bar of the settings window could sometimes appear beyond the screen bounds
• Fixed crash bug when starting album sharing on Linux (Since Java 9)

Released: June 24, 2019

18.3

News and Updates

• jAlbum's Text and Logo effects now supports layers, meaning that, for semi transparent images, the texts and logos may be positioned all over, on top or behind the existing images. See demo
• You may now individually control whether to force thumbnails or closeup images to JPEG format (see Settings->Images->Advanced)
• New MarginFilter capable of adding semi-transparent margins/borders to images.
• Supporting other users? Hold down SHIFT or ALT while searching for a UI setting to have the path written to the clipboard too
• Developers: Skin UIs may contain tables too (JTable instances) that becomes persisted with the project and appears as variables in the skin. (The generated variables contains the table contents in CSV format)
• Developers: new getJSONMaker() API call to AlbumBean (engine)
• Developers: Improved error message for embedded skin editor
• Updated the bundled skins Tiger, PhotoBlogger and Projector
• Translations updated. Thank you dear translators

Bug fixes

• The settings window could sometimes appear too far to the left or top of the screen
• Fixed handling of EXIF data for certain images
• Fixes/updates to Facebook importer plugin
• Labels would appear faint on OS X Look and Feel (Explore view) if file names were more than 15 characters
• Minor fixes

Released: April 16, 2019

18.2

News and Updates

• jAlbum now has search!. Type your way to that color or font setting instead of browsing through deeply nested settings panels. Finding the right setting has never been easier.
• Bundled updated Tiger and PhotoBlogger skins

Released: April 1, 2019

18.1

News and Updates

• New work flow indicator to better assist new users in the start-make album-upload album work flow (shows for unlicensed users only)
• Somewhat faster album deletes when deleting published albums
• Uploader now has a better auto-discovery mechanism for determining the web root URL and web root folder.
• Uploader has a new mechanism to auto-discover the ftp server name given the web address. Correctly identified server names turn green
• Bundled the completely rewritten PhotoBlogger 2.1 skin.
• Made generic error dialog expandable to reveal full stack trace
• Minor robustness improvement to uploader. (Reconnects if ftp server reports that data connection is down during transfer)

Bug fixes

• The preview address of the upload window was incorrectly adding a slash (/) when referencing plain files
• The upload dialog is now modal in order to avoid bug in Mac OS X where the upload confirmation dialog appears behind the upload dialog.

Released: February 4, 2019

18

News and Updates

• New Project Gallery allowing you to visually browse web preview thumbnails of your album projects (See File->Project Gallery or new button next to the "New project" button). The project gallery allows you to explore all projects present in "My Albums" as well as all projects listed under "Recent Projects".
• Robustness improvements to uploader
• Faster album uploads, especially updates to exiting albums due to rewritten media RSS handling and minimizing network IO calls
• Exclude now deletes cached thumbnails
• Removed obsolete Show thumbnails with high JPEG compression quality option
• Removed obsolete Progressive mode image setting
• Removed obsolete URL-encode links option
• Languages updated. Thank you dear translators!

Bug fixes

• More robust uploads. Now recovers from upload problems arising due to inconsistencies between the "manifest.jmf" cache file and the true contents of the server.
• Fixed broken Media RSS generation (URLs weren't absolute)
• Save changes warnings were sometimes generated even though no changes have been made

Released: December 20, 2018

17.1.5

News and Updates

• Updated bundled skins Tiger, Projector and Responsive
• Added convenience link to Preferences->Album from within New Project dialogue to simplify permanently changing file locations

Bug fixes

• Media-RSS support was broken (since 17.1) also affecting mobile viewing
• Album uploads would fail if the "manifest.jmf" cache file got out of sync with the server state. Now detects this and recovers upload instead of failing.
• Albums using non-standard index page names or extensions ("album.htm" for instance) wouldn't have their thumbnail showing up correctly on the profile page after publishing.

Released: December 4, 2018

17.1.1

News and Updates

• Added Dutch translation update.

Bug fixes

• Deleting published albums via ftp wouldn't work
• Windows version had trouble handling https based web locations
• Location editor wouldn't work on Windows (ECDH keypair problem blocking Google maps)

Released: December 1, 2018

17.1

News and Updates

• Completely rewritten skin template parser. Potentially faster as templates are now parsed once to an internal object tree (Abstract Syntax Tree) and from there evaluated to final pages multiple times. The new parser not only caches the internal object tree, it also caches compiled scriptlets for scripting languages supporting this (JavaScript and Groovy. BeanShell doesn't compile well so far)
• Introduced Groovy as scripting language. Note, this is still an experimental alpha. The sharp release is scheduled for Q1 2019. Read more here.
• Update image reading library to TwelveMonkeys 3.5. Problematic CMYK JPEG images should now work again.
• Adapted colors for Mac OS X Mojave
• Now allows preview browser to be operated while building album
• Removed obsolete "Local Flash preview" preference
• Added ability to force image processing even if source image is smaller than image bounds and no image filters are applied (Settings->Images->Advanced)
• Moved "Video support" to Preferences->Advanced (no need to touch for the vast majority)
• Updated Korean translations for ZigZag, Mr.Burn5 and Responsive

Bug fixes

• Problematic CMYK JPEG images should now work again
• Adding some https web locations could cause an SSL handshake error
• Fixed bug causing loss of skin project settings if loading skin while another skin is still loading
• Fixed crash bug upon opening preview window on Mac OS X Mojave
• Ensured that the text field specific undo stack is cleared when the user is about to edit titles, comments or keywords. Users can now safely hit CTRL/CMD+Z to undo without going past initial value

Known issues

• Preview browser can occasionally hang while being operated on OS X Mojave. This is likely a bug in OS X Mojave or the underlying Java. We'll provide an update as soon as possible or trust that Apple's next service release fixes this.

Released: October 29, 2018

17

News and Updates

• 30 new trial days for everyone. Free update for you with an active support & license plan
• Completely rewritten review mode featuring thumbnail navigation, image zooming and multiple image comparison (1-6 images)
• Way faster and better behaving zoom control installed in both Edit and Review mode
• Better integration with Review mode and Explorer and Edit mode (hit Space to review selected image(s))
• Reads EXIF metadata from video files as well (MP4 and MOV)
• Supports camera date/creation date for mp4 and mov videos too
• Has new "Disable color subsampling" option under Settings-Images-Advanced. Will produce even better looking JPEGs when checked. Currently only applies to images with compression quality >= 90. Disabling chroma/color subsampling increases file size about 17% but doubles the horizontal and vertical color resolution of images. See this article
• Explore mode adjusted for lower CPU usage = better performance
• Now runs on Open Java 11 on all platforms. Earlier, the Mac version was using Oracle's Java 8 and Windows version using Java 9. With Java 11, Oracle's Java is under a commercial license. We therefore moved to the open source "Open JDK 11", which should be working as well by now.
• Remembers width of folder property panel if "Remember last window position and size" is checked under Preferences
• All versions has reduced footprint due to removal of unneeded Java code
• Default video resolution for generated videos bumped from 480p to 720p
• Now capable of correctly importing incorrectly written Windows comments and titles
• Rewritten Mac file chooser integration (runs on Java 9+)
• Embedded browser now accepts all certificates (avoids certificate related errors)
• Moved "Clear project list" to top and added confirmation dialog
• Updated bundled Tiger, Zigzag and Minimal skins

Bug fixes

• Fixed Location editor (updated to newer Google Map APIs
• Projects zipped on Windows could only be unzipped on Windows
• Improved rendering of cropped images in Edit mode
• Fixed problem when skin hints were ignored when switching to same-family skins when no project is open
• The crop focus plugin didn't respect custom theme image ratios
• Explore view would incorrectly scroll to the top then objects were added via file selector
• Fixed bug in project importer. Wouldn't handle albums with more than 2 folder levels
• Various bug fixes
• Would throw IOException when generating albums made purely of non re-encoded videos
• Hopefully fixed issue where recent project list could get cleared accidentally

Released: August 23, 2018

16.2

News and Updates

• New "Adjust camera date" function to correct the camera date (EXIF date) of images (available by right clicking items). Select multiple items to batch-adjust dates.
• File duplicate support: Select an item or items (image, video, folder) and select "Copy" followed by "Paste" to have the selected items duplicated
• Updated bundled skins Tiger and Photoblogger
• Developers: API adjustment to allow plugins to invalidate the metadata cache of album objects
• Refactored-out old code

Bug fixes

• "Smart upload" could sometimes turn into "Upload all"
• Videos could not be rotated
• .thm files (thumbnail image files) weren't addable through the user interface

Released: June 29, 2018

16.1

News and Updates

• New "Mirror content" linking behaviour allowing complete separation of jAlbum project files and your images without having to duplicate files.
• Updated bundled PhotoBlogger and Zigzag skins
• Improved error diagnostics
• Updated translations. Thank you dear translators!

Bug fixes

• Fixed rare crash condition triggered when connecting to remote servers
• The location editor wouldn't work for some v16 users
• Fix for nullpointer exception thrown when clicking project root node while editing sub folder name
• jAlbum could hang when closing certain album projects that relies on the theme image selector
• The embedded editor could hang if the printing system of the computer wasn't configured right
• Fixes for compatibility with skins using the JSONMaker API

Released: June 11, 2018

16

News and Updates

• New cleaner project file format. jAlbum's project control files are no longer scattered among your images but neatly tucked under hidden ".jalbum" folders. jAlbum will upgrade projects to new format automatically. (Use this conversion tool if you ever need to open projects in older versions of jAlbum)
• Now allows any image file, (not just album objects) to be dropped onto the selectors of the folder property panel.
• More robust image reading. Now handles for instance broken Samsung Galaxy S7 panoramic images too
• More informative error messages if connecting to ftp servers fails
• Displays camera date in info tool-tip when hovering mouse over objects
• jAlbum now provide much faster search in Tiger skin, especially for large albums by using one centralized JSON database instead of one database per folder.
• jAlbum's theme image selector now allows cropping. Currently supported by Zigzag skin
• New tool to zip project files (Tools->External tools->Zip project file)
• Users can now control video quality and scaling while being in advanced mode
• Advanced video settings now allows multiple parameters with same name. This simplifies applying logos on top of videos for instance
• Developers: Now produces pretty printed JSON data files if logging level is set to FINE or higher
• Developers: New IO.zip API
• Developers: New SmartProgressMonitor API
• Developers: Updated JSON library to json-simple3.0.2
• Swedish, English, German, French, Dutch, Korean, Hungarian and Turkish translations updated. Thank you dear translators!

Bug fixes

• Hitting preview when preview window had been iconified wouldn't de-iconify window
• Fixed occasional hang when failing to connect to servers (Mac)
• Opening embedded editor when no project is loaded would produce an error
• Improved parsing of GPS coordinates to handle oddly formatted coordinates
• Albums made with flatten, alphabetical or date structure (Settings->Structure) would include excluded objects too
• Unselected nodes of folder tree collapsed when moving files between folders
• Broken folder links weren't showing in Explorer view making them hard to detect and repair
• Various bug fixes to internal APIs

Released: May 3, 2018

15.4

News and Updates

• The preview browser now runs in a separate window. (One can optionally switch it back to integrated/embedded mode). The advantages of using a separate window is that you can use a larger window for previews without having to expand the jAlbum window. You can also easily play with various screen sizes to better adapt galleries for various devices (see new "Responsive" button in preview browser's toolbar when running in windowed mode). The "Windowed" preview mode is more like using an external browser for previews, but with the advantages of responding better to skin, style and settings changes within jAlbum.
• Main user interface updated to be more streamlined and intuitive: View mode buttons now left-aligned and community related buttons moved to the top-right corner.
• New project button ("+") added next to project list.
• Made JSON metadata generator more flexible by allowing callback hooks
• Bundled the new Zigzag skin
• Updated bundled Tiger and Turtle skins
• Made browser action buttons translatable

Bug fixes

• jAlbum sharing wouldn't save share settings (since 14.1)
• Used cached thumbnail within jAlbum even if target image was updated
• Made metadata parsing more robust
• Fixed bug in iterator element causing incorrect object inclusion in certain situations (since 15.3)
• Fixed incorrect thumbWidth and thumbHeight variables for representing folder thumbnails when image has been cropped
• Fixed pricing link not showing when license missing and signed in
• Fix for missing characters in some asian languages

Released: April 4, 2018

15.3.4

News and Updates

• New user interface setting to generate JSON files no matter what skin is used (Settings-Advanced-Metadata). This setting has been added to support a new Wordpress integration we're about to release
• jAlbum now has an improved "expression language" syntax enabling skin developers to use expressions like ${first|second|third} causing the first non-empty variable to be picked. This syntax also accepts default strings: ${aperture:"Missing aperture"}
• Usability improvement: Added the default smart "Make Album" as the 1:st menu item of jAlbum's Make album context menu.
• Updated bundled skins Tiger and PhotoBlogger
• Updated Slovenian translation

Bug fixes

• Fixed an issue with the representing thumbnail for folders having wrong "thumbWith" and "thumbHeight" variables if the target image is cropped in jAlbum, thereby distorting the aspect ratio of such thumbnails.

Released: March 16, 2018

15.3.2

News and Updates

• Developers: the ja:if category test tag now accepts a comma separated list of categories, for instance <ja:if category="webPage, folder">...</ja:if>
• Updated bundled Tiger skin to v1.8.1

Bug fixes

• Developers: Fixed incorrect line number references and error messages for many script related errors (BeanShell scripting)
• Some images generated from Nexus tablets caused errors (unable to interpret shutter speed)

Released: March 7, 2018

15.3

News and Updates

• jAlbum's Explore view now allows ratings and flags to be set via context menu
• Developers: new ja:iterator element that also iterates over hidden objects and custom pages, otherwise same behavior as ja:fileiterator
• Folders may now have description text (set under folder properties) that differ from the folder comment. Skins can specify separateDescription=true in skin.properties to activate this
• Engine now produces slide images for representing folder images as well and not just thumbnails
• Updated Turkish and Finnish translations. Thank you dear translators.

Bug fixes

• imagePath on index.htt would point to thumbnails instead of slide images
• Fixed bug in print support (printing.inc)

Released: February 13, 2018

15.2

News and Updates

• Introducing a new notion: Web directory. The Web directory is a global preference which can point out the root of a local web structure where to put album folders by default. jAlbum can now be instructed to either put new projects in an "album" sub folder of the project folder (still the default) or in a folder under the new web directory.
• jAlbum's recent project list now finally displays the name of the project file instead of the containing folder's name if the project name isn't the default name (jalbum-settings.jap). This allows project files to be located under the same folder without ending up in a long list of the same folder name printed. Renaming an entry under "Recent projects" will rename the project file instead of renaming the project/image folder in case the project name isn't the default (jalbum-settings.jap). Use "File->Save project settings as" or Explorer/Finder to make the initial project name change.
• Web locations may now use relative as well as absolute URLs
• Slight performance enhancement to album making
• No longer switches to newly installed skin (may cause unwanted changes to open projects)
• Bundled with updated Java 9.0.4 (Windows + Linux)
• Installed size reduced with 70MB (pruned unneeded code from bundled Java)
• Developers: The StateMonitor can now monitor changes to the music play list component too

Bug fixes

• Fixed bug causing blank full screen review view mode under OS X High Sierra
• Fix to unwanted regeneration of images
• Wouldn't properly show license expired message
• User variables weren't picked up from folders
• If copying files where source file was missing, would delete destination file instead of signalling an error (since introduction of hard links)
• Fixed rare nullpointer bug during album build

Released: December 19, 2017

15.1

News and Updates

• Support for MPEG-4 audio file added (.m4a extension).
• Internal music player updated to play both m4a, wav and mp3 files.
• Defaults can now be stored and applied on a per-skin basis. See "File->Save as Skin Default"
• Cut+Paste support added. This mimics the Cut+Paste behavior in Windows Explorer and facilitates moving album objects around. Just select some album objects to move, hit CMD/CTRL+X, go to the destination folder and location and hit CMD/CTRL+V to paste the objects. The objects will be pasted close to the mouse pointer location. This feature will probably be appreciated by those who organize huge albums and feel uneasy with dragging and dropping and the scrolling it usually involves.
• Updated bundled Minimal and Tiger skins

Bug fixes

• Fix to "directory already exists" error during ftp upload
• IPTC keywords weren't imported properly if they were semicolon separated

Released: November 18, 2017

15

News and Updates

• New 30 trial days for everyone! Free update for anyone having a current support and update plan or active Premium or Power subscription. Discounted updates for users with older licenses. (See status under Help->"About jAlbum" inside software or on your jalbum.net profile page.)
• Windows users: Please uninstall your earlier version before installing jAlbum 15 and ensure that no "jAlbum" folder is left under "Program Files". Don't worry, your existing albums and settings won't be affected by this. If you later wish to revert to older versions, they can be found here.
• Supports 360° images (Tiger skin + new property panel under Edit while editing 360° images).
• Supports hard links! Drastically (20 times) reduces size of album folders by using hard links for original images and resource files (Toggle under Preferences->Album)
• New JPEG reading code capable of properly handling several odd JPEG variants and color profiles. (TwelveMonkeys)
• Now offering four new extra high quality image scaling algorithms: "Blackman-Bessel", "Blackman-Sinc", "Lanczos" and "Mitchell". jAlbum's image scaling should now match the best alternatives in the industry. See Settings->Images. Credit to TwelveMonkeys for these.
• Faster startup. Fonts are loaded on demand instead of preloaded during startup. This cuts startup time significantly on systems with many fonts installed.
• New folder property panel allowing quick and intuitive selection of folder specific titles, descriptions thumbnail images and theme images as well as allowing easy selection of theme image crop focus.
• Theme images may now be selected separately from representing folder images. (Updated Tiger skin demonstrates this, and more skins will follow)
• The whole code base, including all extensions, refactored to use Java 8 features and more performant constructs. The result should be slight performance enhancements, including somewhat lower startup time
• Easier to use backups: Now generates "lifeboat" file to album folder during Make album instead of during publishing (toggle under Preferences->Album). This enables users to retrieve backups from published albums even if they were uploaded with 3:rd party ftp tools.
• Removed ability to include hi-res images (doesn't seem to be used)
• Smoother looking splash screen :-)
• Bundled with updated Tiger skin supporting separate theme images, among other improvements
• Allows adding web locations requiring basic http authentication too
• Windows and Linux versions bundled with latest Java 9.0.1
• Mac version bundled with updated Java 8u152
• Updated languages. Thank you dear translators. Missing your language? Contact us!
• Developers: JDraggableList now supports static lists too
• Developers. New APIs for adding theme images to your skins.
• Developers: New "projectionType" variable available (in json format too) to identify 360° images
• Old code solutions factored out
• Note: v15 will unfortunately need to initially reprocess all images when making album projects made with earlier jAlbum versions. From now on, further reprocessing should not be needed. We're sorry for the inconvenience.

Bug fixes

• Fixed user interface scaling issue for hidpi screens causing too small user interface controls (Windows).
• Videos larger than screen size couldn't be edited (Windows only)
• The preview didn't always render the full web page on initial display
• Web root verification failed for servers that redirects between protocols
• Fix to "IllegalStateException" being thrown on occasion when using the clipboard
• Clearing xmp coordinates now properly imports backing GPS coordinates again
• Didn't handle xmp based GPS coordinates expressed in deg,min,sec format
• "Verify web root" didn't work for ftp servers that redirected between protocols
• Various minor robustness fixes

Released: August 4, 2017

14.1

News and Updates

• jAlbum's uploader now allows multiple file selection. Facilitates batch deletion greatly
• jAlbum's text editor improved with better character encoding detection and support for loading and saving with explicitly stated encodings
• jAlbum's database import tool now supports importing from xml based image metadata databases as well as csv files
• Bundled Tiger skin updated to v1.3
• New "Cache image ordering" external tool that greatly speeds up album builds on albums ordered by camera date
• Robustness improvements to database import tool.
• Bundled Java updated to v1.8.0_144
• Updated Slovak translation
• Developers: New JFormattedComboBox component that allows presentation of combo box data in various formatted ways, for instance percentage format.

Bug fixes

• Fixed startup crash caused by Windows 10 Creators Update (affected Windows look and feel only)
• Fixed broken error window if jAlbum fails to start
• Fix issue preventing jAlbum from starting if clipboard was in an illegal state (caused by some 3:rd party clipboard management software)
• Developers: JComboBoxes having numbers as model wouldn't update correctly when loading projects
• Developers: The thumb.path variable for the current folder of JSON files incorrectly included the current folder itself

Released: July 5, 2017

14.0.5

News and Updates

• Dutch and Hungarian translations updated
• Bundled Tiger skin updated

Bug fixes

• File dialog on Windows wouldn't remember the initial path causing tedious folder tree walking
• Web locations not working when making albums offline
• Fixed broken "Import database file" tool
• Fixed rare ArrayIndexOutOfBounds exception in 3:rd party Apache-Sanselan library (responsible for updating xmp metadata in JPEG images)
• jAlbum wouldn't allow two web locations with the same target html page title in the same folder (file name generation clash)
• jAlbum would halt on broken GPS coordinates (relates to images processed by PaintShopPro)
• Missing Edit icon
• Missing closeup image for Web Locations if "makeWebLocationSlides" is set to false (affects Tiger skin)
• The alternative lauch .cmd files for Windows required Java 9
• Improved error recovery when failing to update xmp metadata (now same robust behavior as in jAlbum 13)
• Fixed nullpointer exception when processing album.rss file for images lacking camera model specification

Released: June 22, 2017

14

News and Updates

• Introducing the new and fully responsive "Tiger" skin that's intended to replace Turtle
• New stylish dark user interface look - Darcula. (If you prefer the old look, change back under Preferences)
• New album object type: "Web locations". Web locations are objects that can refer to any web page, not just local ones. This opens for some really interesting new applications for jAlbum. See for example this album collecting popular TED talks on YouTube.
  
  To add a "Web location" to your album, drop the web page onto jAlbum or select New page->Web location. Why not use this feature to make a master album out of existing albums?
• Bundled skins "Minimal", "Base", "PhotoBlogger", "Turtle" and the new "Tiger" skin now supports Web Locations.
• jAlbum now has integrated GoogleMaps location tagging, see Edit->Location
• jAlbum can now automatically embed xmp based copyright notices on all images (Settings->Images)
• Better integration with external editors, for instance PhotoShop (alt-double click to export to chosen editor)
• jAlbum's Text effect (Settings->Effects->Text) now supports background color
• New importer to import metadata from various database backed photo management systems (see Add->From database file)
• Batch rename now supports regular expressions (select several album objects and select rename to launch batch rename tool)
• Adapted for Java 9
• "Skin family" mechanism allowing skins belonging to the same family to share the same project settings. This simplifies moving from one skin to another without having to re-enter the same settings. This applies when moving from Turtle to the new Tiger skin for instance. Just open an existing Turtle project and switch to Tiger, then make the album again. ("Skin family" is a skin property)
• Developers: New "include" and "exclude" attribute to ja:fileiterator element allowing a comma separated list of categories to be included or excluded, for instance <ja:fileiterator exclude="folder, webLocation">
• Developers: New "category" attribute for ja:if element, simplifying testing on categories, for instance: <ja:if category="webLocation">. Please replace <ja:if exists="folder"> with <ja:if category="folder"> for better future compatibility.
• Bundled with updated Java 8u131
• Developers: new JDraggableList component allowing skin user interfaces to allow end user to arrange objects by drag and drop
• Reverted to again presenting "extensions" directly under jAlbum's context menu. (Deleted rotate items for sake of space - available in the toolbar)
• Translations for major languages updated. Thank you dear translators!

Bug fixes

• jAlbum wouldn't start up properly on some recently updated Windows 10 systems
• Fixed error importing settings from albums published on https: URLs
• Improved handling of some malformatted JPEG images
• Native Mac file chooser didn't respect initial directory
• Fixed missing lock icon for password protected albums for accounts having more than 10 albums
• Fixed line number calculation error if line number info is missing
• Group by place now also respects xmp based GPS coordinates
• Fix for WOFF font rendering for internal web browser (Mac)
• Polished UI for Darcula
• Fixed color error on Nimbus look & feel

Released: January 30, 2017

13.10

News and Updates

• jAlbum can now link straight from thumbnails to the original version of an image file for individual images. This is convenient when mixing ordinary JPEG images and animated GIF images for instance.
• Bundled with updated Turtle skin 5.5.15

Bug fixes

• If closed in iconified state, jAlbum would open in iconified state, sometimes not permitting its main window to open. jAlbum now either opens in normal, maximized or full screen state
• The Arty effects wouldn't process some JPEG images and other file formats
• On rare occasions, the embedded web browser wouldn't respond, causing jAlbum's user interface to freeze. Now, jAlbum releases the user interface after a 10 second timeout if this browser unresponsiveness occurs again.
• jAlbum's embedded text editor would sometimes not open files correctly, instead generating error messages to the system console

Released: January 12, 2017

13.9

News and Updates

• jAlbum's organizer can now also group files by keywords
• New "price" variable and data entry field (under Edit->Description) to simplify setting price-per-item
• Bundled Turtle skin updated to v5.5.13
• Now automatically closes skin update notifications when downloading skin updates

Bug fixes

• Fixed skin installation bug causing some newly installed skins to fail loading (manifests only on 1:st skin loading when going from bundled to installed skin and for skins having compiled code)
• Fixed missing error cause, hiding errors occurring in compiled code
• Fixed concurrency issue causing various errors in ssh library
• Aborting ftp/sftp connection attempts is now more solid
• Local preview on Linux didn't respect the default browser if the path contained characters that needed to be URL encoded
• Fix to https based rss feeds (broken "absoluteURL")
• Fix to disabling of make album button during skin loading (wasn't disabling from UI thread)
• The logo and text effects wouldn't respect HiDPI if applied to thumbnails

Released: December 21, 2016

13.8

News and Updates

• Updated editor with code folding and several bug fixes
• Updated 3:rd party ftp and sftp upload libraries to improve upload compatibility and stability
• Better integration between jAlbum and editor. Hit the "Edit" button when skin errors occur to be taken to the relevant file and line and see the error highlighted
• Improved error reporting. Line number reporting improved
• Polished Darcula look and feel for Windows (Toolbar buttons and slider knob)
• Closes progress dialog prior to opening error dialog on make album error
• Closes skin error dialogue when clicking edit
• Editor also respects Darcula look and feel
• Includes updated Turtle and PhotoBlogger skins. (Earlier Turtle skin could cause jAlbum to crash on Windows)
• Added warning icons for too small source images (with HiDPI images selected)
• Polished notifications for Darcula look and feel
• Developers: Added file extension filter support to JFileSelector component
• Minor improvements to HiDPI support for Text-, Logo- and XBorderFilter
• Embedded editor now uses the OS native file choosers

Bug fixes

• Current HiDPI project settings would be inherited when loading old album projects
• jAlbum could incorrectly warn about saving changes when closing album projects even if no changes had been made
• Chained directories logic fixed (could produce some truly confusing linking earlier)
• Fixed broken Facebook importer and bad looking Facebook icon (for Darcula look)
• Fix for remembering maximized and full screen state
• "Upload all" was only uploading changes
• Fix for full screen bug (Went full screen sometimes even when it shouldn't)
• The superimposed play icon for video thumbnails got smaller with HiDPI mode
• Mac file chooser causing nullpointer exception for null directories
• The Preview view mode didn't get activated when setting Image directory for an empty project

Released: November 24, 2016

13.7

News and Updates

• jAlbum's user interface is now also available in a stylish dark theme ("Darcula" look and feel"). Select it from jAlbum Preferences. Note, only available for Pro and Power users.
• Added support for HiDPI images in generated albums (see Settings->Images). This makes images look sharper on HiDPI screens such as modern mobile devices. Compare these normal-dpi and HiDPI albums
• Album objects may now be copied and pasted. Even works between album projects
• Updated user interface icons
• Updated embedded Turtle skin

Bug fixes

• Fixed issue preventing using symbolic links as album folder

Released: October 27, 2016

13.6

News and Updates

• You can now drag and drop images and folders FROM jAlbum to other programs, just like you've been able to drag and drop TO jAlbum. This facilitates working with supporting programs like image editors and book making software.
• New "batch make album tool" to facilitate the remaking of several album projects in one go
• jAlbum's file organizing tools moved from View->Organize to the top menu bar (really not view options as they relocate files and folders)
• Developers: jAlbum's template parser is now more strict, catching more syntactical errors
• Developers: jAlbum's template parser now reports file and line number for errors to assist in debugging
• jAlbum's Print plugin improved and embedded into jAlbum. It's thereby available under File->Print as well as on the context menu. The Print feature can now also print image dimensions.
• Slight performance enhancement to template parser
• Bundled skins Turtle and Photoblogger updated
• Developers: You can now use Icons.get() to read SVG icons for your skins
• Updated English, Swedish, Finnish, Polish, Slovak, Slovenian and Korean translations. Thank you dear translators!
• Removed outdated "Alloy" look and feel

Bug fixes

• The color picker for web based skin user interfaces didn't respond to clicks (Java bug, fixed in u112 release)
• Developers: jAlbum's generated JSON data contained duplicates of inherited user variables. New JSON data is now more compact

Released: September 30, 2016

13.5

News and Updates

• The thumbnails in jAlbum's Explore view are now zoomable. Zoom out to any extent to gain overview while arranging objects, zoom in to see details.
• The thumbnails in jAlbum's Explore view are now rendered in high resolution on HiDPI (Retina) screens
• Now automatically pops up upload/manage dialog on authentication errors while uploading.
• Developers: Added "clipLength" variable to conveniently present video length
• Now using HiDPI (retina) icons for the buttons of the video player user interface too
• Updated translations. Thank you dear translators
• Developers: JSON data now includes "thumb" node for root folder too, making finding the representing thumbnail for an album easier.

Bug fixes

• jAlbum would not always suggest a sub folder to upload to when uploading to one's own ftp server

Released: August 26, 2016

13.4

News and Updates

• Skins can now be developed using web technologies only (html+css+javascript). See MinimalWeb skin. No need for any Java or BeanShell knowledge in order to create the settings user interface of a skin. Just add a "ui.html" file to the skin's folder and jAlbum will pick up the named variables from the html form of that html file.
• Skin developers may now also use JavaFX technology to design skin user interfaces with minimum coding efforts using Scene Builder. See MinimalFX skin. The visual layout is stored in a FXML file ("ui.fxml"). The needed logic can be added in JavaScript using an "onload.js" file.
• External tools can now be written in any language supported by the underlying Java engine, for instance JavaScript. (Use ".js" file extension)
• The embedded video editor now also supports .mov containers as well as .mp4
• The ordering of files is now unaffected when adding files by drag and drop (was earlier automatically set to "custom")
• Holding down SHIFT or ALT while accessing View->Update will also cause thumbnail cache to be cleared
• Added contextual menus to caption editor for jAlbum's Explore view
• Updated French and German languages. Thank you dear translators
• Bundled with updated Java 8 (1.8.0_102)

Bug fixes

• Fixed bug in the Publish window causing the parent folder of a deleted child object to not be selected
• The percentage indicator when processing clipped/truncated videos was incorrect

Released: July 5, 2016

13.3

News and Updates

• New embedded video player and improved video editor, just double click .mp4 videos to launch it.
• Added "digitizedDate" variable
• One can now use the right mouse button while editing captions, titles and filenames to get a popup context menu
• Supports JavaFX based skin user interfaces too
• Supports the current version of the ffmpeg video processor
• Updated embedded skins Turtle and Fully. Fully now supports video and larger folder structures
• "Paste filters" now avoids overwriting existing filters applied to target objects

Bug fixes

• Fixed startup error preventing start of jAlbum when certain kind of data was present on the clipboard

Released: May 18, 2016

13.2

News and Updates

• Multiple files and folders can now be renamed in one go. (Select target album objects, right click and select "Rename N items")
• Stability rewrites to upload handler
• Hovering the mouse over album objects now presents a "More" button that presents available options, instead of presenting the Edit option. Double click images to quickly edit them. (This change was made to make novice users aware of context menus)
• More operations are now made undoable
• Updated Turtle and Minimal skins
• Bundled with updated 64 bit Java engine (1.8.0_92-b14)

Bug fixes

• Fix to hanging when aborting ftp connect attempts
• jAlbum would halt on processing RAW files if "Include metadata in generated images" was checked
• "Repair link" didn't allow repairing broken folder links
• Some portrait oriented Nikon RAW images were incorrectly stretched
• Some JPEG images had their colors distorted to cyan-magenta hues. This applied to JPEG images using a RGB color space instead of a YCbCr color space (Note: Don't confuse this with color profiles)
• "Repair link" didn't position the file chooser in the nearest existing target folder
• The representing folder thumbnail wasn't updated when adding or removing files from within it
• More robust closing of IO resources after completed IO operations

Released: March 21, 2016

13.1

News and Updates

• Supports fast reading of 38 RAW file formats. See new "RAW" settings panel when editing images.
• Icons are rendered in hiDPI on retina displays (vector based instead of bitmap based)
• Mac version now plays mp4 videos from the embedded browser too
• Updated skins, and bundled with recently released Responsive skin
• Videos now have the well known "Play" icon superimposed on thumbnails to simplify locating videos among images instead of the smaller "film strip" icon.
• Improved error reporting for fatal errors
• All installers (including Linux) are now bundled with latest Java 8 (1.8.0_u74)
• The space key now serves as shortcut to open the currently selected image in full screen review mode
• Developers: Added "widgetJavaScript" variable to enable widget support in skins that rely on JavaScript instead of iframe for embedding
• The progress dialog shown during album making is now resizable

Bug fixes

• Skin loading could crash with a ClassNotFound exception
• The text filter and Text effect did not accept the $ sign (was reserved for marking variables only)
• jAlbum would freeze if trying to move a linked folder to within itself
• Changes made to variables during album making was not always respected
• Videos flagged with "Do not re-encode" would end up in the root of the album folder instead of under "slides"
• Videos marked with "Do not re-encode" were missing the videoWidth and videoHeight variables
• jAlbum would crash when previewing albums on some computers (bug in earlier embedded Java)
• Some languages did not have the "undo"/"redo" words translated

Released: October 28, 2015

13

News and Updates

• jAlbum 13 comes with a new free 30 day trial for all users! Free update for all who have an active support & update plan. (Install next to existing version to safely evaluate the improvements). Read blog post for licensing and update terms.
• The embedded browser didn't work on Windows 10
• Support for collaborative albums (albums where several people contribute with images). Have images mailed to username@jalbum.net automatically appear in collaborative album projects. Read more!
• Organize your images easily in folders based on camera date, place etc. Have duplicates deleted. See View->Organize. Read more!
• jAlbum's Explore view now has multiple level undo & redo for many operations (move, rename etc)
• Control folder structure of generated albums independent of how source images are organized (See Settings->Structure)
• New embedded browser component ("WebView" based on WebKit) for preview view mode, capable of playing mp4 videos natively. Currently available on Windows and Linux versions only
• Windows version comes as 64 bit app by default
• Native file choosers are now used everywhere
• Updated Arty filter sporting three new artistic filters and improved performance
• Developers: New JSONMaker API to significantly simplify JavaScript based skin development
• Responsive skin "PhotoBlogger" now bundled
• Processed videos now go inside "slides" sub folder
• Updated bundled Turtle, Base and Minimal skins
• Developers: New "videoPath" variable. JSpinner controls may now have Strings and Doubles too.
• Mac version now requires OS X 10.8. For older Macs, that lack support for Java 8, please download jAlbum 12.

Bug fixes

• Fixed potential UI freeze when loading broken skins
• Fixed nullpointer exception during file copying
• More robust handling of camera metadata
• Fixed bug stopping album making when errors in video processing occurred
• Fixed bug causing cursor key navigation to fail when navigating objects of different height
• Deleted objects weren't put in the recycle bin when running on 64 bit Java engine

Released: May 30, 2015

12.7

News and Updates

• Supports 3-digit hex colors too (#ABC meaning #AABBCC)
• Developers: Added setWhenAdded to jAlbum's AlbumObject API
• Native Mac file chooser now also supports filtering on file types
• Added a "Thread dump" button to jAlbum's system console window to ease debugging
• Developers: Made layoutHints property available via Config API
• Updated bundled skins Turtle, Base and Fully
• Updated German and Dutch translations. Thank you translators!
• Refactored out old code
• Updated Turtle, Base and Minimal skins

Bug fixes

• Updating some skins on Windows (Turtle for instance) caused file locked warnings
• Newly added videos couldn't be edited (clip start/stop and representing thumbnail)
• Fixed bug causing remote directory to be set to another project's remote directory setting when switching projects while upload window is still open
• Moving between images in edit mode was slow due to non functioning image cacheing
• Fixed bug causing nullpointer exception on some image tools
• "Save copy as" could generate images with inconsistent orientation information thereby causing images to be presented sideways

Released: March 1, 2014

11.6.17

Released: November 27, 2012

10.10.8

News and Updates

• Windows version packaged with an updated installer software
• Easier to correctly activate license (erroneous trailing spaces are trimmed from the activation code)
• Bundled Base skin updated

Bug fixes

• Windows version could sometimes trigger security warnings
• The "IPTC author" field of images could sometimes leak into the xmp title field of images
• Uploads could sometimes end up with an error in "Notifier" (missing album URL)
• Fix for custom image size error (image specific maxImageWidth etc variables ignored when generating variables)
• Loading album projects by dropping project files onto the dock icon on Mac could sometimes cause errors
• Fix for not being able to open folders containing double spaces in file names (Windows only)
• More robust against errors reading xml metadata from .info files
• Fix for calculation of album URL (we sometimes got "No web directory selected")
• Running the Mac version as another user than the installed user would prevent the system standard file chooser from opening
• Fix for nullpointer exception bug when painting thumbnails in the UI