Website Development & Design | Information Architecture

Website Galleries

Website Galleries

Website development always involves a strategic, even delicate balance between language (so-called 'content') and images (including graphic motifs and elements). While my front-page places the emphasis on content, this section delves into the deployment of images on the web, and specifically photo galleries. As examples I am using galleries from some of my websites to demonstrate options within and outside of a Joomla environment or other CMS platform such as Wordpress. I have a fair amount of experience with these different kinds of galleries. Like most everything else in web technologies, selecting a gallery package or software involves trade-offs. The following summaries will hopefully help you navigate the different choices at hand:

Joomla Galleries

In Joomla, there are a host of 'free' (open source) and commercial galleries (you can check out the official list here). The differences between the two are not as yet significant, although some of the commercial packages offer advantages for file management, that is, how you upload, organize, and keep track of pictures. Here are some of the leading candidates:

Smoothgallery: This free package, basically a snippet of php and javascript (called a "mambot" in Joomlasprach), is one of the most popular extensions in Joomla's history. When you see it in action,* it's easy to appreciate why. When a user clicks on the image, it opens up a semi-transparent viewing box (called Lightbox) that creates a beautiful, dramatic way to frame and present your images. Furthermore, it allows you to add individual titles and captions to every image, which is a very useful feature. For those who are willing to root around in the developers' fairly chaotic website, you can learn some fairly simple parameters that allow you to show/hide various features, vary the width/height of images or thumbnails, and so forth. For the really adventurous, you can also customize transparency and other settings by tinkering with the css file. I have not explored these settings in depth, perhaps because there are only 24 hours in the day...

Sounds pretty good, doesn't it - unfortunately, there are some caveats:

Even with optimized images (shrunken file sizes), large galleries take a while to pre-load.
Because Smoothgallery uses javascript (the source file goes by the elegant name of mootools), other extensions that also use the same source file will cause the gallery to mis-function or fail altogether.
The developers have embedded backlinks in the code to their site so that unsuspecting web developers or other end-users provide free SEO 'advertising' of sorts. You cannot blame them for doing this - after all they are giving away a high performance extension for free. But the underhanded method does not exactly foster a sense of trust.

Simple Image Gallery (free) and Simple Image Gallery Pro (commercial): this is another mambot that also uses a Lightbox presentation. Although the look is not quite as nice, it is a good choice when Smoothgallery chokes due to competition for javascript functions. The documentation for SIG is almost nil because it has almost no options. The Pro version allows you to do things like include captions and use different styles.

Drawbacks? A few...

Adding captions is laborious: you have to create a .txt file (called "labels") with the file name followed by a pipe "|" symbol, followed by your caption. By the way, DO NOT USE spaces or special characters in any file names in these mambots or they will hang up your entire site.
The other style options from the pulldown menu (in the admin backend) are less than stellar. So if you are thinking of ponying up the modest fee for the mambot to have that flexibility, I cannot recommend it. However, the price is absurdly cheap (less than 20 Euros, last I checked), so if Smoothgallery is not feasible, this is a good alternative.

Other Types of Web Galleries

I could scarcely do justice to this preposterous heading since there are probably scores if not hundreds of packages that enable end-users to upload and display images. The major OS (Mac, Windows and Linux) have all integrated this kind of function to one degree or other into their desktops. There is a plethora of sites where you can post your images for a modest charge or even for free (you can visit my account at flickr here). What I am presenting here are merely three examples of galleries that I use and that are not 'integrated' into Joomla, although they can be easily set up that way, provided you don't mind taking care of navigation.*

Spry/XML Gallery: This gallery - which you can visit here (opens a new window), combines an Adobe javascript framework called Spry that draws on data stored in an xml file. In layman's terms, this means the information about the gallery (images, sizes, titles, captions, etc.) are fairly accessible for modification, and (this is one of my current projects), can be integrated into a web application so that end-users can upload images and customize gallery parameters.

Flash Gallery: The advantage of this gallery is that it uses Flash - meaning it runs beautifully and has neat features. The disadvantage of this gallery is that it uses Flash - meaning end-users who do not run Flash Player are cut out of the action. Flash is also somewhat notorious for hiding content from search engines. This means that it would be a poor choice if you were really going to make SEO the raison d'etre for your website. It's something to think about. The gallery is also difficult to modify once it's up.

SPRY/xhtml Gallery: This gallery is a variation on the first type - data is also stored in an xml file, but the layout is more flexible - I find it's easier to add things like navigation bars. Modification of the image order and similar parameters is not quite as easy as the first type, but the overall look is more neutral.

So much for a very brief introduction to some gallery options. Look for more material in the near future. If you use or know about a gallery that strikes your fancy, I'd love to hear about it!

*Note: links to these galleries open into a new browser window.

[ Back ]