It is extremely frustrating that this option silently turns off without any notification. And also without any obvious reason.

Please fix this bug.

When you start a new project, jAlbum uses your default settings. You have probably not saved any default settings, so every time you start a new project, it reverts to the system defaults.

https://jalbum.net/help/en/JAlbum/Menus#Save_as_default

Thank you very much for this discover.

When I switch to different project, Jalbum asks me to save options. Then I have restarted Jalbum and option is still set.

And the option after something unknown reverts without any warning.

PS: I have posted PM to AndreWolf

Edited by: jafojtik on 6 Aug 2026, 14:29

I have experimented with both styles and it explains why this option gets unexpectedly reverted.

An interesting exercise. In my own skins, there were still a bunch of "layout hints" settings that are now just anachronisms - no longer needed, ineffective, or simply annoying. A bunch of skin updates coming....

A lot of these haven't been examined in years, because once you've saved some defaults, those override the skin's "hints." At the same time, skins now take more control over the settings that are truly required. Forbidden settings are disabled, and when the album build is kicked off, the internal engine settings are forcibly changed by the skin.

The hints.jap file probably shouldn't contain anything more than things like a default style (rather than the alphabetically first), and recommended image bounds. Using the same bounds, especially for thumbnails, in one skin as in another can often produce very unpleasing results.

That's the simple solution, and it works. The "inclusion" options will then stay at whatever you set them to. Loading another skin might do the same thing again, however. That preset should probably be removed from every active skin - I'll take care of getting it out of mine. I haven't checked them all, but it looks like Laza has already gotten rid of that setting his skins.

Only if the skin developer refuses to fix it.

But in truth, the reason none of us noticed this is that, once you've settled on a favorite skin or two, and saved your settings as the default, and once you've made and saved your albums with your preferred settings, this ceases to be an issue. If you have defaults set, the hints.jap settings have no effect. And when you reopen a saved project, it doesn't have any effect, either. It's a problem only when you're in "tinker" mode.

There are only three active developers - Laza, André, and me. RobM does some occasional development. In short, there isn't anyone who is now unaware of this.