jAlbum 38 release candidate for testing ...

davidekholm

Posts: 3,808
Registered: 18-Oct-2002

jAlbum 38 release candidate for testing
Posted: 11 Oct 25, 12:31

We're getting closer to the v38 release. Here's jAlbum 38 release candidate 1:

Changes:

New "Views" concept introduced, allowing additional ways to navigate a gallery, see below
Added Apache Commons Net's ftp library - a well maintained high quality ftp library for the protocols "ftp", "ftps" and "ftpes"
"Attachements" introduced, allowing both images and audio files to be attached to objects, just like you attach files to emails. Now any non displayable object, like a pdf file, can have a representing image attached to it.
Dumped old THM file support in favour attachments (will be imported automatically)
Estimated time left now based on last 10s (uploads, background processing)
Fix for bug excluding images with "Hide excluded" active
Fix for dialogs blocking UI when sign in dialog is showing
Fixed rendering bug for About windows (Windows Look and feel)
Bundled Split skin
No longer re-copies originals when rebuilding albums

To test the Apache Commons ftp library, set connection type to Apache Commons under "Tools->Upload/Manage. With my testing, "Sample Portfolio" uploads 10% faster with it, but the main point is to bundle a well maintained ftp library.

Views
Views implemented, providing additional ways to navigate a gallery without impacting disk size*.
The views are:

Recently added - Display objects added since last upload for instance
Alphabetical - Display objects grouped by the initial file name character
Date - Display objects grouped by year and month for instance
Place - Display objects grouped by country, region and place
Keyword - Display objects grouped by keywords

Views can be added to any place of your project, just like you add a folder. They are considered as folders and can have unique names and comments.

To add a view, see the new "New view" sub menu of the context menu of jAlbum's Explore view (right-click empty area between thumbnails). Some view types have settings and can be edited later on via jAlbum's Edit view.

Note: Disk size impact is negligible for skins that support internal linking. Currently, only the bundled "Minimal" skin supports internal linking, but most of our bundled skins will support in once this release is out.

On translations
I've machine translated all new texts. Appreciate if native speakers can verify the translations.

Installers:
Windows: https://jalbum.net/download/jAlbum-install.exe
Mac (Intel): https://jalbum.net/download/jAlbum.dmg
Mac (M-series): https://jalbum.net/download/jAlbum-M.dmg

JeffTucker

Posts: 8,014
Registered: 31-Jan-2006

Re: jAlbum 38 release candidate for testing
Posted: 11 Oct 25, 14:00

in response to: davidekholm

davidekholm wrote:
Currently, only the bundled "Minimal" skin supports internal linking, but most of our bundled skins will support in once this release is out.

The current releases of six of my skins support internal linking: Atom, Jupiter, Mercury, Neptune, Opus 16, Saturn.

JeffTucker

Posts: 8,014
Registered: 31-Jan-2006

Re: jAlbum 38 release candidate for testing
Posted: 11 Oct 25, 14:22

in response to: JeffTucker

One odd bit of behavior with attachments, but I'm not sure what I would want the core to do with it. If I attach a JPG to a JPG, but use scaled images, the representing image effectively replaces its parent. The way to get it to behave is to tag the parent "Use original."

The most common use of this kind of attachment would be to provide a "normal" thumbnail for something like an equirectangular panoramic image. In that case, using the original for the pano would make perfect sense - show the normal thumbnail in the album, but then cough up the unaltered pano for the slide display.

Just something to be aware of. We spotted this during earlier testing, but no one has proposed a better approach to it.

JeffTucker

Posts: 8,014
Registered: 31-Jan-2006

Re: jAlbum 38 release candidate for testing
Posted: 11 Oct 25, 14:40

in response to: JeffTucker

One more small thing regarding attachments.... If you attach an MP3 audio clip to an object, make the album, but then add a different MP3 to it, the first MP3 is, correctly, removed from .jalbum/attachments. But the copy of it in the output slides folder remains, along with the new one. A minor thing, but it would be nice if it cleaned up after itself a bit better.

(Attached representing images, of course, work just fine, since they get renamed to match their parent objects.)

JeffTucker

Posts: 8,014
Registered: 31-Jan-2006

Re: jAlbum 38 release candidate for testing
Posted: 11 Oct 25, 14:53

in response to: JeffTucker

Turning to internally linked (IL) objects....

I see there have been some major changes since the last round of testing. Much better, and I think it's all good - just need to mull it over a bit.

Now, if you attach a file (audio clip, representing image) to an object, then make an IL from it, it brings its attachment with it. The same is true of any image editing that was done prior to the creation of the IL. That's much better than earlier betas.

The other piece of it is that if you then change the attachment on the IL object, or do any image editing, those changes "bubble up" to the parent object. In other words, it's behaving much more like a symlink. I think this is a good thing, but I haven't had my breakfast yet.

There are some minor "refresh" issues in the Explore view when you start messing around with this, but nothing serious. For example, do some image editing on the IL, then return to the parent object. You need to do an F5 to see the effect of the editing on the object.

davidekholm

Posts: 3,808
Registered: 18-Oct-2002

Re: jAlbum 38 release candidate for testing
Posted: 11 Oct 25, 16:42

in response to: JeffTucker

Thanks for your reflections Jeff. I think along the same lines: An internally linked object should, in all regards but the file name, refer to its target. That's probably the most intuitive approach. As for refreshing states, I'll work a bit on that.

davidekholm

Posts: 3,808
Registered: 18-Oct-2002

Re: jAlbum 38 release candidate for testing
Posted: 11 Oct 25, 16:43

in response to: davidekholm

Found a freeze bug, so rc2 is now available as a beta core file, fixing that

davidekholm

Posts: 3,808
Registered: 18-Oct-2002

Re: jAlbum 38 release candidate for testing
Posted: 11 Oct 25, 16:44

in response to: JeffTucker

JeffTucker wrote:
One more small thing regarding attachments.... If you attach an MP3 audio clip to an object, make the album, but then add a different MP3 to it, the first MP3 is, correctly, removed from .jalbum/attachments. But the copy of it in the output slides folder remains, along with the new one. A minor thing, but it would be nice if it cleaned up after itself a bit better.

(Attached representing images, of course, work just fine, since they get renamed to match their parent objects.)

I add this to the todo

RobM

Posts: 3,878
Registered: 4-Aug-2006

Re: jAlbum 38 release candidate for testing
Posted: 11 Oct 25, 20:32

in response to: davidekholm

With Missive skin and the test project I get an error processing this line

Edited by: RobM on 12 Oct 2025, 18:30
Error corrected by re-installing the beta and updating to current version.

RobM

Posts: 3,878
Registered: 4-Aug-2006

Re: jAlbum 38 release candidate for testing
Posted: 11 Oct 25, 21:01

in response to: davidekholm

If I attach an image, a png. as the representing image and make the album I get a missing image (Journal skin, table of contents/index of entries). The reason is the thumbnail png has been converted to a jpg image.

The problem happens when using the 'thumbPath'

<img style="max-width:${thumbWidth}px;" src="${thumbPath}" width="${thumbWidth}" alt="${fileTitle}/thumbs/${label}">

Should the png be used or should it be converted? An animated gif/png file could reasonably be used as a thumbnail, so I'm thinking it should stay as a png/gif etc.

JeffTucker

Posts: 8,014
Registered: 31-Jan-2006

Re: jAlbum 38 release candidate for testing
Posted: 11 Oct 25, 21:57

in response to: RobM

I'm not having any problems with using a PNG as the RI. It does get converted to a JPG, but the thumbPath is pointing to it correctly.

The problem with using animated files as thumbnails is that, at least in the case of animated GIF's, the file sizes are huge, often larger than any slide image. A page full of them would be very slow to load. I'm not sure about animated PNG's, but those are exceedingly rare beasts.

RobM

Posts: 3,878
Registered: 4-Aug-2006

Re: jAlbum 38 release candidate for testing
Posted: 11 Oct 25, 22:48

in response to: JeffTucker

With Journal, the code I'm using is

<div class="thumb" style="width:${thumbWidth}px; height:${thumbHeight}px">
<div class="item">
    <a class="tocLink" href="${closeupPath}">
      <img style="max-width:${thumbWidth}px;" 
      src="${thumbPath}" 
      width="${thumbWidth}" 
      alt="${fileTitle}/thumbs/${label}">
    </a>
</div>
</div>

And I get this

<div class="thumb" style="width:128px; height:128px;">
<div class="item">
    <a class="tocLink" href="Nature/index.html">
      <img style="max-width:128px;" src="Nature/thumbs/BetaFeature.png" width="128"
      alt="Nature/thumbs/Nature">
      </a>
</div>
</div>

As said above, this is on the table of contents (Skin>Includes>top.inc). On the Mac if it makes a difference?

Sample page uploaded at https://robm.jalbum.net/Same%20image%20multiple%20folders/toc.html
Journal is not playing well with internal links

Edited by: RobM on 11 Oct 2025, 22:50
Add if I set the object to 'Include original' the correct image (the actual object) is shown on the Nature index.html page but the size is that of the png file, not the original i.e thumbWidth is also not right in Journal skin.

RobM

Posts: 3,878
Registered: 4-Aug-2006

Re: jAlbum 38 release candidate for testing
Posted: 12 Oct 25, 00:03

in response to: RobM

Just a thought, but should the 'Attachment' menu, or the menu items like Audio clip' be able to be disabled by a skin? If not I can add a note to the wiki saying some skins might not support attachments.

JeffTucker

Posts: 8,014
Registered: 31-Jan-2006

Re: jAlbum 38 release candidate for testing
Posted: 12 Oct 25, 00:12

in response to: RobM

Not sure what's happening with your Journal tests. But I just created a little test album, with two folders, F1 and F2, and a third folder, IL folder, that has a couple of internally-linked objects. Default settings, and I get no broken images.

The only glitch appears to be with the top navigation. Entering F1, I get links to Index and F2. Entering F2, I get links to F1, Index, and IL folder. Entering IL folder, I get links to F2 and Index. But I have a suspicion that this might not be related to internal linking.

RobM

Posts: 3,878
Registered: 4-Aug-2006

Re: jAlbum 38 release candidate for testing
Posted: 12 Oct 25, 09:21

in response to: JeffTucker

Thanks for checking. I need to double check, but I think when jAlbum launches it shows 38rc3. I’ll have another look later today.