jAlbum/Welcome
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Overview
This is the view mode jAlbum starts in. It shows whenever you don't have any project open. Let's go through each part of jAlbum's main user interface:
View modes
Here you can add, rearrange and delete the items (images, videos and folders) that makes up your album.
View and edit individual images, videos and their corresponding properties here.
Select this view mode to preview the final album in an embedded web browser.
Let others know about your album.
This full screen mode allows you to present the images in your project’s currently displayed folder in such a way as to approve (rate and exclude) and compare the images of the folder.
Sign in
Allows you to sign in using your jAlbum account username. If you have purchased a license for jAlbum, the license will automatically be activated when you sign in. Once you are signed in, this button changes to a sign out button. You can sign out if you have your own website hosting and do not want your albums listed on your jAlbum profie pages. If your albums are hosted with jAlbum and you sign out then your albums won't be added properly to your jalbum profile, but the server will eventually discover them and add them as hidden albums. In addition. signing out will stop the application from removing albums that have been deleted using any of the various delete album methods, you will need to manually remove the album(s) from your profile/albums page.
Notification center
Notifies you when there is a new jAlbum update, skin update, when the account is about to expire and a lot of other things. When a message is about a skin update and you opt to update it the skin will not be loaded loaded to the current project unless it is already being used.
Warning for Windows users: Windows locks open files, so updates may fail if the skin is currently selected. To prevent problems save the project and select another project that uses a different skin (or select the 'new' project and another skin). Then click the Notification icon and then update the skin, once the update has been completed you can reselect your project and continue.
Recent projects
A list of all your recent projects, the default is 50 but you can control the number of projects in this list in Preferences/General. The list can be sorted as recent, a-z or z-a by clicking on the 'sort arrows'. Click on a project to open it. You can remove all recent projects from the list by selecting the first item in the list, <<Clear list>>.
See Explore Mode for further details.
Skin and style
Skin
The Skin selector is a drop down menu that allows you to select any of the installed skins (templates/themes) or, at the end of the list, install more skins from jAlbum.net. Skins bundled with jAlbum appear in regular weight font and skins installed by the user appear in bold. A bundled skin however will appear in bold once it has been updated, as updates go in to the user's skins directory, not the program directory.
If you want to revert to an earlier version of a bundled skin then you will need to remove the bundled skin before you can select the older version. To delete the bundled skin select it and then click on the skin info button, confirm it is the bundled version by checking its location and then click the delete button, see 'Skin info' below for details.
From jAlbum 15.1 you can also save the skin's current settings as a default .jap file, to be used for future projects. If you want to use the skin's suggested defaults for a particular project load the skin with the ALT/Opt key held down.
Note, if you ‘reload’ the same skin as already selected in a project all of the skin settings will revert to their defaults.
Changing skins
If you have made an album with one skin and then decide to use another one you will need to ensure that Process subdirectories and Include subdirectories in index pages are selected and Process only updated subdirectories and Exclude new images by default are not selected in Advanced settings. This is because each skin has its own resources that control the look of the web pages, so every page within the album needs to be processed to ensure they all point to the correct resources. When rebuilding the album just click 'Make album' and then upload all of your album.
Before experimenting with other skins/settings you can save the project settings using ‘Save as…’, then you can recover your original settings by loading the newly created project settings file.
Skin settings
If you click the gearwheel the skin settings will open. Some skins have their own help pages for settings specific to them, see Skin Manuals for a list of skins with user manuals.
Skin info
If you click on the info symbol the skin information window will open. This will give you information on the skin such as the installed and current version and if a newer version is available an update option; the support page, home page and its location on your computer; The features the skin supports; the option of deleting the skin if the current skin if it is no longer used. From jAlbum 15.1 you can also save skin settings as a default .jap file, to be used when the skin is loaded, the 'reset defaults' button will delete the saved settings file resulting in the skin's suggested defaults being used.
Warning for Windows users: Windows locks open files, so updates may fail if the skin is currently selected. See the note in the Notification centre above.
There is also a link to jAlbum's skins page, handy if you want to explore skins that are not currently installed.
Skin's can also be deleted from Menu/Tools/Skin Developer/Delete Skin, or by using SHIFT + Cmd/Ctrl + S to open the skin's directory in your computer's file system.
Style
The style selector is a drop down menu that lets you change and preview the style of your album, if supported by the selected skin. The current style is indicated by a tick, the highlighted style is the target. The popup image, if one is supplied by the skin, is an example of how the target style looks.
Opens jAlbum settings. These settings are applied to the project you are working with and are independent of the skin you use.
Make Album
Click Make Album if you want jAlbum to build your album. The first time you hit Make Album, jalbum will build the whole album, depending on the album size this can take some time. But when you hit Make Album after you have just made some changes to the album, jAlbum will only make changes needed and that can save a lot of time. By default jAlbum always tries to only make any needed changes, and by just clicking on Make Album jAlbum will decide if the whole album needs to be built or just the changes.
Force Remake and Make Test
If you click on the small arrow to the right on the button you will see two options 'Force Remake and Make Test'. Use these options only if you want to force jAlbum to rebuild the entire album or make an intermediate build. When you press Force Remake jAlbum will rebuild the whole album and rescale all images. Make Test means that all HTML pages are remade, new images, new comments and new skin settings will be seen but other changes such as image bounds will not. Images are only reprocessed if they are missing in the output directory or if individual images have been updated. Make Test can thus leave your album needing a further ‘Make’ to ensure all pages and images are built with the current settings.
The originals are not touched in any of the methods.
Web-safe file names
JAlbum will convert any non-web-safe characters in file names to URL valid characters. For example, an ampersand ‘&’ character will be replaced with a dash ‘-’. Note: inside jAlbum, unsafe characters are prevented from being used by a preference setting, Preferences/Album/Illegal characters. Files and folders created outside of jAlbum will be flagged with a small warning triangle if their names contain unsafe characters.
Upload
If it's the first time you upload an album with the desktop application you will be asked to enter your jAlbum account or other account profile information. If this album never have been uploaded it will automatically point the upload to the account profile that was last used.
For albums already published clicking the upload button will automatically start uploading the album to the location where the album was last uploaded to.
By clicking on the small arrow to the right on the button you will get some more upload options. Upload/Manage will take you to the upload/manage window.
Read more about uploading albums here.
Preview
There are two preview buttons here. The one with the filled magnifying glass will take you to the local preview and the one below will show you the published album. You will see the album in jAlbum's embedded browser if it has been enabled in Preferences/General, otherwise it will open in your default browser.
Read more about previewing albums here.
Files and folders made by jAlbum
JAlbum creates projects, albums, settings, defaults and other files, See where are my files to find out what and where your files are.
Context sensitive help
Press F1 or click on the white ‘?’ Inside the blue circle (top right of the window) to access help on the currently displayed/active area.
Oops!
jAlbum is continuously being improved and enhanced, but things can go wrong from time to time. Errors might be caused by bugs in the core program, third party libraries or add on skins. Whatever the cause jAlbum will provide information that will help track down the root cause of the error and provide a way of getting details of the bug to the developers.
When an error occurs, most likely during a 'Make' or an 'Upload' process, a dialogue window will open up and a small warning (black triangle) icon will show at the bottom right of the main window.
If you want to find the cause of the error - it might be due to a file in your project, or narrow it down to help get the bug resolved, then read this forum sticky note by jGromit on how best to debug errors. However, if you just want to report the error click on the 'Report error' button and another window will pop-up saying 'The error details have been copied to your clipboard. Please include them in your report.' When you click 'OK' you will be taken to the appropriate skin forum and you can post your bug report there.
Skin developers, or those technically minded, can examine the error details and/or try to correct skin errors by clicking the 'Edit skin' button, you will be taken to the file containing the error with the cursor at the start of the line with the error. After correcting the code save the changes and try making the album again. Note, clicking 'Edit skin' will close both the error dialogue and progress windows for you :)
Note, having corrected the cause of a problem there might be further abnormal results but without further warnings. Mostly these oddities are likely to affect skin developers, but in any event if things don’t seem ‘right’ quit and restart jAlbum.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License