Thoughts on Exhibeo-2

Freeway
1

Well done on the update to Exhibeo-2. It’s very smooth and does a good job … up to a point.

Unfortunately, even though I’ve bought it, I can’t use it.

I’d like to use the new Photoswipe template, but;

1- Most of the thumbnails are way too small. In the end it’s just not attractive. Scaling beyond 100% does nothing.

2- It doesn’t do pass-through images (greyed out)

3- The click to zoom 100% thing is really confusing … how to close the image? (OK, I’ve worked it out … but visitors will probably just give up and leave)

4- Landscape images are always cropped. (Huh? WTF?) I would guess that this ‘feature’ precludes Photoswipe for pretty much every professional photographer. Certainly, it makes it a non-starter for me.

5- It’s a bit buggy/inconsistant

Bloxx has a really nice thumbnail layout and animation, but it is doesn’t work for menu-driven sites like mine. (You can’t disable the stacks thing and the thumbnails are always full-screen, so you can’t have any page design/menus or anything else around them, i.e., they can’t be put in an inline box and be a part of a page design).

Thumblie … maybe, but lacks even the simple viewer controls of Photoswipe and … for goodness sake, what were you thinking placing the only two controls there are, diametrically opposed to each other, top-left, bottom right?

I think these three templates which open images over the thumbnails should have ‘click to open - click to close’ and they need navigation buttons/arrows for those that don’t realise they can use the keyboard. Photoswipe’s arrows are nice and unobtrusive.

It’s all very well wanting to do something simple, but if it’s simple it has to be very clever and as they stand these templates fail in the details, which is a shame because otherwise it works well.

(I would like to have seen the random sort, with chosen fixed images feature I suggested).

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2

So I have a better idea of how Photoswipe works now.

This test shows how the thumbnails don’t work (aesthetically) on my site. Can this be changed or is it set in stone?

http://www.grantsymon.com/test/testphotoswipe.html

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3

You pretty much sum up the concerns I mentioned not too long ago on this new Exhibeo. It fails at so many levels. I bought it only in order to add my few bucks and hope that the jar will be filled enough to at least invest in one app to be seriously developed. This release exactly points out every single concern I had, or worse … it didn’t even ‘catch up’ witch the competition, it just changed its looks. For me it’s one big disappointment.

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4

This test shows how the thumbnails don’t work (aesthetically) on my site. Can this be changed or is it set in stone?

http://www.grantsymon.com/test/testphotoswipe.html

Looking at your example, Grant, I have to wonder if the quantity of images is what’s not working, aesthetically that is. I’m not trying to be derisive, but what would a good presentation of the work look like? Would any image gallery satisfy this criteria?

Even the author’s example is using just a few images. For a photographer I would imagine the question would be how many images does it take to convince someone to hire you… then finding a gallery solution that works for that amount. Seventy-some images might just be overloading the capabilities of whatever the presentation mechanism may be.

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5

Hi Ernie,

you make a salient point. Back in the day when I was starting out in this business photographers in London, where I began my career, would have 15-20 images in their portfolios. More was considered too much. I started out with 11. :slight_smile:

What I have wanted for years in an image gallery and finally have since just a few months in Juicebox, is a random sort-order (on load) with the ability to ‘fix’ some images so that they always appear, not matter what the random sort produces. For return visits, which I get quite a lot of (often when people are thinking of booking me) it keeps it fresh.

But these days, why limit the number? If people want to keep looking, why not let them? To this end, the usual ‘line’ of thumbnails is no longer up to it. It’s slow. People go faster these days.

The Tumblie thumbnails work fairly well in this respect, although I’d like to have more control over the layout. Once zoomed in to an image, the layout of buttons is baffling at best and limited in its options. The new Photoswipe is nice in this respect. You can see my Thumblie test here:

http://www.grantsymon.com/test/testthumblie.html

The really big deal for me with Exhibeo-2, was bringing everything into FW. I wanted a modern responsive gallery, which is easy for me to implement and maintain and all from within FW.

I would have thought that Exhibeo would be a really obvious thing for Softpress to build and sell, almost as a ‘loss leader’ because it would be a teaser that could persuade a lot of people using image galleries to use FW to build their sites, since the whole thing could be easy for them to do.

If Softpress were to offer a few really nice photography driven FW templates + Exhibeo … boom, the most practised hobby in the world is a huge market. Gigantic. Which is why there are so many companies offering these template driven sites. It’s a big money market, which Softpress have simply never entered and yet it would be a great fit for them, because FW can be endlessly customised, unlike 99 percent of these template sites. There’s a tipping point of ease-of-use for these things and at the moment, FW is only for the brave in the context of this market and currently, not even on the radar. Offering a few templates + Exhibeo could be very compelling for the tens of thousands of photographers looking for web-site-gallery solutions. This isn’t a passing ‘fad’ of a market. It’s long-term.

Having understood that Softpress aren’t actually making the Exhibeo templates, but instead finding some rights-free ones they can use, it all falls into place. (What have they been doing for the last 6 months?!). What a missed opportunity!

Of course this explains why these templates are only ‘adequate’ and have so little versatility and have so few features. The penny drops. How can you sell a great product if you’re just repackaging someone else’s? I have now discovered that I can use JAlbum to build a Photoswipe gallery … and guess what … it has ‘click to open - click to close’. :frowning:

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6

I would also suggest once again, that if Softpress wants to keep Exhibeo simple, as Joe has stated, then why not offer some more advanced templates that can be added for a few bucks a throw, similar to the FW templates, or even a Pro version at a higher price?

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7

I just wanted to point out to anyone else reading Richard’s comment that what he hasn’t mentioned is that he’s specifically looking for a lot more control over his work. We have specifically designed Exhibeo to keep the amount of control to a minimum, while at the same time providing clear output to allow power users to make tweaks if they wish.

If there are settings that are commonly requested then we always consider putting them into the application (a number of them have gone into Exhibeo 2!), but what we really don’t want to start doing is putting every available CSS option in the UI in case a small percentage of users want to try something out.

As for Photoswipe and the thumb layout, we have plans to add an option to make the mosaic more random and we’ll also look into what we can do at smaller sizes. I like what you’ve done Ernie (thanks!) but I’d like to explore other options to try and keep the mosaic effect where possible.

Grant, We’ll have a think about whether to add a more traditional grid to the existing theme or create a new theme altogether. Re “click to close”, you can currently click the space around an image to close it or, if an image isn’t large enough to zoom into, click the image itself.

Cheers,
Joe

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8

Hi guys,

am aware that workarounds are not part of this list - maybe unwanted, however allow me to share the following thoughts:

Creating an Exhibeo Gallery is massively cool and incredible quick - congrats guys. So “amount of work” isn’t a factor.

Now I did the following:

Created a gallery for desktop using Photoswipe - quick switched the theme to Thumblie adjusting the theme to mobile-friendly. So I have a gallery-desktop.xbExport and a gallery-mobile.xbExport.

In Freeway - two DIVs each for host one gallery - setting them to visible/hidden related to each breakpoint.

The downsides:

Am not aware if “hidden” content executes, forcing mobile-browser downloading ALL resources (which I suppose). But if not (or stopped by JS somehow) - such a thing even opens the option to share a “light-gallery” on mobile and a “heavy-weighted” for desktop.

Thumb or Dumb?

Cheers

Thomas

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9

Hey all I have made a bunch of Photswipe galleries in the last few days and I am quite happy, and I have the same issue about the mosaic control on the layout thumbs. I contacted softpress and they are looking into this, so that is great… but the photo swipe works best with under 20 images per gallery… Once there are even a few more, the mosaic turns into more of a nice tight thumblie gallery…
its even more beautiful with 12 -14 images.

so that is where the issue lies…

other than than it works really well and quick, so take that into account… Thx for all the hard work Joe and crew! I will always buy new gallery apps from you. thx

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10

… in addition to my post above - this is an (raw and un-styled) example of what I meant:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8231701/cdn-digitalmedia-themes/theGridMaterialz/exhibeo-test.html

I’ve been chosen 24 images ( for covering Carla’s concerns). Thumblie on the Mobile-world.

Cheers

Thomas

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11

Hi Thomas! looks good but I am not so sure you will have control over to choose square and landscape, or vertical thumbs… I think its either one or the other from what I gather

the simplicity conversation

what I am more concerned with is control over the variety of thumb sizes…on mosaic…

xo

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12

This -in a nutshell- is what’s wrong with ‘the simple’ Exhibeo 2 …

876×1038 208 KB

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13

On 11 May 2016, 10:42 am, Joe Billings wrote:

As for Photoswipe and the thumb layout, we have plans to add an option to make the mosaic more random and we’ll also look into what we can do at smaller sizes. I like what you’ve done Ernie (thanks!) but I’d like to explore other options to try and keep the mosaic effect where possible.

Grant, We’ll have a think about whether to add a more traditional grid to the existing theme or create a new theme altogether. Re “click to close”, you can currently click the space around an image to close it or, if an image isn’t large enough to zoom into, click the image itself.

Cheers,
Joe

Good news Joe.

I hope I wasn’t coming over negative about Exhibeo-2, because I think you’ve done a very good job … it’s just that it doesn’t fit my needs due to just a few small details, which is frustrating. As I said though, I would guess that there is considerable market potential, so it’s worth going that extra mile IMO.

I would say that adding, perhaps a -resizable/ square thumbnail to Photoswipe + the option to turn OFF the zoom to 100percent feature would be really good.

(As a photographer I love the zoom feature, because photographers always want to see all the detail and texture at its best. But I fear that it is too confusing in its current implementation to be anything other than an annoyance to the average user).

Building a new template ‘in-house’ would be fantastic and perhaps offers the opportunity for it to be an add-on ‘pro’ version for a few bucks more, for which you would be certain to make at least 2 sales. Richard + me. :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile: Seriously though … I do believe it could open up a hitherto unexploited market for you. Just as everything starts to look the same … template sites … that’s when people want to look different. Now is that time on the web and FW can offer that to photographers.

As for random/fixed sorting … icing.

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14

On 12 May 2016, 12:55 pm, Richard van Heukelum wrote:

This -in a nutshell- is what’s wrong with ‘the simple’ Exhibeo 2 …

Indeed Richard. That is no good to anybody and needs to be addressed too.

However, it doesn’t appear to be a problem inherent to the Photoswipe template, since this one sold on JAlbum site doesn’t suffer from the same problem. (You may need to avert your gaze from the ‘design’ for fear of feeling ill):

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15

But your example is surely more like the Thumblie theme, which is fully responsive, and would seem to be better if you have a lot of images.

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16

I should also point out that both Bloxx and Thumblie thumbnails reposition very well responsively. Bloxx handles it beautifully … just wish it could work inside an html element (with a few more controls too ;).

http://www.grantsymon.com/test/testbloxx.html

http://www.grantsymon.com/test/testthumblie.html

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17

On 12 May 2016, 1:34 pm, Noel Sergeant wrote:

Het Reestdal

But your example is surely more like the Thumblie theme, which is fully responsive, and would seem to be better if you have a lot of images.

Noel, I’m showing this example, because it is a variant of the same Photoswipe theme, produced by someone else on JAlbum.

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18

On 12 May 2016, 1:05 pm, grantsymon wrote:

On 12 May 2016, 12:55 pm, Richard van Heukelum wrote:

This -in a nutshell- is what’s wrong with ‘the simple’ Exhibeo 2 …

Indeed Richard. That is no good to anybody and needs to be addressed too.

However, it doesn’t appear to be a problem inherent to the Photoswipe template, since this one sold on JAlbum site doesn’t suffer from the same problem. (You may need to avert your gaze from the ‘design’ for fear of feeling ill):

Het Reestdal

I’d expect a behaviour like here: http://tympanus.net/Development/ImageGridEffects/

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19

On 12 May 2016, 1:52 pm, Richard van Heukelum wrote:

I’d expect a behaviour like here: http://tympanus.net/Development/ImageGridEffects/

100% agree. Very very nice.

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20

Re the jAlbum one - that zooms images in exactly the same way. The only difference I can see is that there isn’t the scale animation when clicking thumbs and thumb layout is in a regular grid.

Also, if you use an iFrame you can make sure a Bloxx gallery fits inside a container.

Joe

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