CRITIQUE: Please read all first - http://metagore.com/admin/gallery/

[metagore]

So this is not the average site critique. I'm actually looking for feedback on the gallery administration section of a site engine that I've been working on for the last month.

I haven't built any help files for it yet to cover everything, so I'm hoping that I've made it intuitive enough.

Here's a quick walkthrough:

Galleries

"New" creates a gallery at the same level as the selected gallery (or root level if none selected)
"New Child" creates a child
"Edit" allows you to modify the name, description and whether the gallery is a "User" (hidden) gallery.
"Delete" deletes the gallery and all children.
Galleries are always visible.
The Images and User tabs are used to manage the images in the gallery and Users associated to the galleries.

One other thing... gallery structure can be quickly rearranged by just dragging and dropping the nodes around. :D

Images

Click on thumbnails to select them, or <Ctrl>+Click (Command+Click for Mac) to select multiple images.

"Upload Image" is a drag-n-drop image upload. It is currently limited to 8MB with no error handling. So if you upload more than 8MB the images will not show in the gallery and you may or may not receive an error. (this is on my 'to-do' list) The upload applet requires Java v1.4.1 or newer. When images are uploaded they are 'hashed' and image aspect ratio recorded. They are hashed so if you upload the same image twice there will only be one instance of it on the server. If you have the same image in multiple galleries and delete it in any one of them it will remove it from all. The ratio is calculated for an 'auto-select' of products by matching ratio.

Edit Menu
"Image Details" - Edit Image title and description.
"Copy To..." - copies images to another gallery. This only builds a link between the gallery and the single instance of the image.
"Move To..." - same as Copy To except the link to the selected gallery is removed.
"Add Selected to Gallery" and "Remove Selected from Gallery" ... enough said :)

Select Menu
"All" and "None" are self explanatory.
"Matching Ratio of Selected" - select a single image in the gallery. Then when selecting this option this will select all other images with the same ratio. (for bulk product management)
"Auto-select Products" - This will automatically link products to the images based on matching ratio. (i.e. square images will automatically be linked to 10x10 and 20x20 products, etc.)

View Menu
"All Images" - will show all images on the server. Images that are in the select gallery will have a green border and be 'full color'. Images 'not' in the selected gallery will have a gray border and be 50% opaque.
"Images in Selected Gallery" - shows only the images that are in the selected gallery.
"Show Products" - shows the "Products Linked to Images". When an image is selected, this will show any linked products. Products can be added/removed by checking the checkboxes. The Products Linked to Images popup still has work to be done. You can use it to add/remove products to multiple selected images, but it will only 'accurately' display currently linked products if a single image is selected. It will also not show the results of an autoselect.
"Hide Products" - to be removed, not needed. But it closes the products menu.

"Delete" will delete the selected image(s).

Users
Use this section to add/remove/modify users. Also use this section to link users to a gallery. You must have the gallery defined as a "User Gallery" for the checkboxes to display. All menu items are pretty self-explanatory in this section.

Products

Use this section to manage the products. When creating the products, the input of the product dimension is important. This is used to calculate the product's ratio (used for auto-selection). Again, here the menu items speak for themselves.

An additional notes about Users and Products; you don't actually 'delete' these items directly. You initially 'deactivate' them. This allows you to create a product or user, then associate them to images/galleries, then when you deactivate them the links are kept so you can later reactivate them. This would be handy for a repeat customer or a 'special' product that you only want to offer during a certain time of the year.

So.....

Go out here http://metagore.com/admin/gallery/ and play around with it. Let me know what you think. Remember, I may be making this for my site, but I will make the final site engine available for free download. So if you like what you see and are looking for 'more' or the behavior of a function doesn't behave 'as-expected', just let me know and I'll see what I can do. I am trying to match the behavior of the site as much to an 'installed application' so it's functionality is more intuitive. So if something doesn't make sense... tell me... it's very important. :)

[jeffreyluce]

As a UI expert... it's what I do for a living....

- the space between your image and text is too much, like the red x and delete... almost looks like Edit is paired with the x.

- New Child ????? People don't know what this is... People understand folders and files... stick with that analogy.

- Clicking Save should close your little floaty popups.

- I deactivated a user (at what I thought was access to folder) and it completely removed the user

- there is no difference in Editing a user and Viewing them (or Product for that matter). I'd just add an view link on the row of data that would pull up the edit window.

Need to goto bed... later.

[metagore]

Thanks for the feedback, that's exactly what I'm looking for.

As to the 'floaties'. Would you think it to be more effective to have them embedded forms or popups as they are?

I was tossing around the "Save" action and thought to close them on save, but the other option I was considering is leaving them open and resetting them for the creation of another user/product. Thoughts? It does go against convention, but I find that when doing the initial setup this type of functionality may be useful. Maybe the addition of a checkbox that indicates 'keep open for another user/product'.

In any case, I greatly appreciate your feedback and will be making changes around them. I guess I need to sit down and draw out some workflows and take another long look at the UI.

[jeffreyluce]

RE: floaties - they are fine as they are.

RE: Save - Either do the check box to keep the save open (or what we do is have another button [Save & add another]) - but your floaties are probably too small for another button, so I'd say go with the check box.

[metagore]

Thanks again!

[Michelle Allmon]

Mike,
You spelled "architecture" wrong. :)

[metagore]

oh you.... :)

Spelling and grammar have never been my strong points.

BTW... It's great to see that you're doing so well with your biz! *applause* Keep up the great work.

Best wishes, Mike

[David Whatley]

So far, so good, but when you go to add an image, you need to open up windows explorer, or the C <default drive> to make it easy to select the images from. I had to close all open window, minamize the software, open my image gallery, reopen the software, resize the window, to drag and drop. For some reason the images look washed out in the gallery view.

[Bartman01]

Using Firefox 2, when it started trying to run unsigned Javascript it prompted for permission. I clicked no and Firefox crashed hard. A dialog box popped up under the active browser window and the browser froze. I finally managed to close the browser (and finally saw the dialog box), but it never full 'closed'. Had to reboot the computer to get everything sorted.

Personally, I generally don't use sites that require a lot of local side code and to work.

[metagore]

So you'd prefer a standard 'browse' type of functionality to a drag-n-drop?

I need to add one anyway as the java applet is a third party component that is not free.

[metagore]

Yeah, that's one of the problems with the Java applet, when it crashes it takes everything with it. There will be a standard 'browse' style option available in the final version. This won't require that you use the Java applet.

As to the client side code, there's less than 1000 lines of javascript used for the UI controls. This is actually very light in today's standards. The forum we're using right now actually has more client side code.

[David Whatley]

I like the DD but I dont like having to minimize all windows, so I can get to whare my photos are stored. Make sense?

[metagore]

Oh... and to the 'washed out' look, that indicates that the image is not 'in' the selected gallery. I think I covered that in my description above. I may have been a little long-winded, so most people will just skim and miss some of these details.

[metagore]

Maybe I missunderstood :) Are the windows you're referring to those that are poping up within the webpage or are you talking about other applications running on your local system?

... and thanks for the feedback.