It's been quite a while since I've message "Mr. Tucker" years ago but here is the scenario. I have a large collection of family photographs dating from 1894 to present. By "large", I am talking just under 9,000 and counting. Up until 2 weeks ago, these were easily handled by the old Matrix skin and jAlbum 13 something (yeah, I did say "years ago"). I finally updated to the latest jAlbum and attempted to use the Saturn skin because it was said to be the closest to Matrix.

It quickly became evident to me that the new skin(s) don't utilize the concept of multiple pages within a specific folder. Under the olde Matrix I had set thumbnail limits of 5 columns and usually no more than 30 or 40 rows. Using the new Saturn skin, I realized that it was going to be a major challenge to create a single HTML page displaying 9,000 thumbnails. The download time alone would be a turnoff to any new site visitor but I also now see another problem in that such a page seems to choke to browser and/or JS into subsmission with error messages about the page being unresponsive. If I wait several minutes, the page will load but the layout of the thumbnails is changed with the thumbnail box being greatly lengthened..

Yes, I have split the photos amongst 9 folders for the Saturn skin but it chokes at 2 or 3 of them that have about 2-3 thousand images. A few folders with only 100-300 images load in an acceptable time (less than 1500 ms) and perform as expected. To break the entire collection into multiple folders that would hold no more than 300 images would require about 30-40 folders on the main index page. That just ain't gonna work.

Any ideas? Or should I go back to jAlbum 13.x and the old Matrix skin which I never really noticed any problems with responsiveness.

A few somewhat unrelated things, in no particular order, since there are various factors at work, here.

First, I just tried Matrix 57, the last release, in the current version of jAlbum, and it works without any complaint. Didn't see any browser issues, either, except for a non-working link in the "credits" line at the bottom of the page, since the skin no longer has a home/demo page. Other than that, it actually validates, which is a bit of a miracle. So, one option is to reinstall Matrix. It's lousy on a phone, but then again, an album with 9000 images isn't suitable for a phone, anyway.

Turning to Saturn, I have a suspicion about why it might choke with a huge index page. Hard to explain, but it does some JS "noodling" upon page load, to make the layout neater. That's probably what's choking it - I need to do some experimenting. But that routine may not be needed, depending upon some things. So, three questions. First, are you using fixed-shape thumbnails, or showing each one in its actual aspect ratio? Second, are you displaying captions below the thumbnails? Third, if you are showing thumbnail captions, are any of them long, multi-line beasties?

Last, the question of "folder-izing" the pages. I have a family photo album with over 6000 images and videos. For the older material, of which there's a lot less, I have folders for entire decades - the 1930's, the 1940's, and so on. When I hit the digital era, with more stuff, I first go to half-decade folders, and finally to separate folders for each year.

The top level has a lot of folder thumbnails, but I don't see what's wrong with that. Is an index page with 40 folder thumbnails somehow worse than an index page with 100 image thumbnails? And I'm not sure how user-friendly it is to present an index page with 30 rows of thumbnails, a "next" link to another such page, then a "next" link to yet another. How does the visitor know where to go? How does he find what he's looking for? Which page of thumbnails does he need to go to?

My own travel album is a simpler case, but it certainly has a bunch of folders (57)!

https://jefftucker.net/travels/

Hmmm...continued. I had left an earlier response with 2 screenshots of the changed thumbnail layout as well as a link to the actual web page. Apparently that response somehow went to the bit bucket. But here is some other info recently gained after some discussions with other Window techs on our daily Zoom meetings (which runs 24/7).

There is a definite difference in how different browers are handling index files with a large number of thumbnails. The worst performer seems to be chromium engine based browers (Edge and Chrome). Brave brower was significantly faster but still took its time and brought up the same "Page not responding...wait or exit" error as the chromium browers. At first we thought Firefox was having the same problem until one tech tried Firefox on Win10 which immediately displayed 3220 thumbnails on one index page without loss of the original layout design. Now does that mean the browers under Win11 are handling JS differently than under Win10?

Here's the link: "https://the-lightfoots.com/photos/Brian%20and%20Carol%20Lightfoot/album/index.html"

Yeah, I know I've got to eliminate the spaces (%20) but these albums right now exist in what I would call a beta version of my designs.

And don't be so critical of any photography here; most of the images are "rescue photos" taken from many shoeboxes. Besides, there were no digital cameras back in 1894

Two attachments:
Screenshot 640 shows the changed enlarged thumbnail box after waiting the obligatory 2-3 minutes for JS "noodling"
Screenshot 642 shows the same album created using Matrix 9.8 under jAlbum 13.x using only 3 main folders (plus the index pagination)

Is there a d/l location for Matrix 57?

Thanks Jeff. I'll give the Folder-->Sub-folder concept a try.
None of us have any control over which browser viewer choose.

I came, I saw, I conquered. And I have just about tamed the beast. Thanks to the "Divide and Conquer" methodology.

"Go big or go home". Would you believe almost 12,000 photos and videos now in the album. Probably the largest jAlbum???

https://the-lightfoots.com/photos/Lightfoot%20Family%20Photo%20Album/album/index.html

Following your suggestion(s), and because all the images are titled chronologically, I divided the largest sections into decades, and then further divided into years.

Everything works as expected except for the one year that has 831 photos. Other years with over 600 images work OK. It seems that somewhere around 700-800 images will cause the thumbnail boxes on the index page to unexpectedly change size. This can be seen at this location: https://the-lightfoots.com/photos/Lightfoot%20Family%20Photo%20Album/album/Brian%20and%20Carol%20Lightfoot/2000s/2008/index.html Also a Screenshot is attached showing the problem.

There's not much I can do about that one folder with 831 images as its all from the same year, 2008. My Zoom group jokingly suggested further subdividing into the 4 seasons, Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall. I'm just going to have to live with one folder not looking quite right until the culprit in the code is eventually fixed. Notice I was kind and didn't call it "stupid" like you did.

Once again, thanks. I'll be talking with you in another 15 years.

I saw that at the time of the uploads and realized something was unusual about that file which is why I stopped the remaining uploads (which explains the 404s). The remaining files have now been uploaded so the album is 100% complete.

But my attention returns to that one file and why Saturn is displaying the comment there instead of the specified "title/name". I've examined all of the metadata using Exiftool and there is one thing unique about this photo, it uses Big-endian byte order instead of Little-endian like all the others, even those taken with the same camera at the same time. How this became Big-endian is beyond me but regardless Saturn should handle that properly.

Just as a test, I used Exiftool to change "Exif Byte Order" to Little-endian on that one image and created a test album in jAlbum but the created album still shows the comments there instead of the filename. (see attached screenshot)

I double-checked within the folder in jAlbum to see if somehow the comment was appearing there but no, it shows the filename just like all the other images. Something must be very different in the metadata that I'm not seeing.

I probably have just the easiest choice to delete all existing EXIF data on that image and then manually re-enter just the basics. Either that or delete the whole darn image.

Unfortunately, setting the Title source to "No IPTC" made no difference. The t'nail caption for that one image continues to display the comments instead of the filename. I stumped as to what the JA core is reading as metadata that causes that hiccup.

The only way that I can beat that image into submission is to turn off XMP entirely (Advanced > Metadata > Sources > no XMP. But of course, that turns off all comments for all images.

I've tried re-writing multiple tags of the EXIF metadata using Exiftool but still no joy. I know when to throw in the towel so I took the path of least resistance and deleted all metadata from the image. Then I used Adobe Bridge to add just the basics based on the previous info. And that works.

In a strange twist of fate, I've gotten to liking the comment appearing on the t'nail caption instead of my previous use of the filename. Viewers could care less about a filename; they just want to see the pictures. I would consider changing that setting but right now the downside is that some comments are lengthier than others and Saturn 123 sizes all thumbnail boxes based on the size needed for the longest caption instead of just making that one row different than the others. I understand that Saturn 124 makes some changes in that area. When could we expect to see Saturn 124 released?

Saturn 124 has now been released. Be the first kid on your block!

Now I have to summon up the energy to do the same with Jupiter, which, when it comes to thumbnail page layout, is a real "everything but the kitchen sink* skin. I wonder if anyone is actually using beveled borders? They look really neat. Screenshot.