I don't care really care.  Just the act of doing this is enough.

I agree with Tamago, that sounds like a good idea.

Gio, you really are quite amazing to make this gallery. Honestly, really incredible.

Tamago wrote:

Maybe when you hit the gallery button, there should be a feature that allows the choice of how many thumbnails you wanna see at a time.

If someone has already mentioned this then, I will second the motion.

I agree with this too.

It's still good design netiquette to consider those unfortunate souls without high speed. ;)  Though it doesn't seem there are many in this crowd.

I also favor saving clicks whenever possible; that's why I recommend deciding on a default # of thumbnails per page, but allowing someone to 'view all' or 'view 100 per page' if they'd like.  I personally do feel strongly that preview-sized images are good (and shouldn't be larger than 800x600, they do still exist...)--but don't force someone to see the preview first if they want to see the full image.

Again, if this gallery is in PHP, I can probably aid with customizations.  It could be a matter of wading through someone else's code for certain changes... (which does suck, but shouldn't be impossible)

But as for creating a custom search form that will automatically create the boolean string for the search... I don't know what system you're using, but that should be cake.  It should go directly to the results, because anything else is a bit counter-intuitive, I think.  (If there's a search box at the top of the page of results, though, placing that string there so that further changes can be made manually sounds like a good idea.)

I dont know much about codes or anything of that nature but I will help to the best of my ability.

1. I really like how Coppermine galleries work,where they have the thumbnail and you can click on the picture (if you really want a larger size) and use the arrows to move through the images.
2. I like the image quality of the images they are great to work with in editing and whatnot, if I don't feel like dloading the full image I always just use a screenshot of it anyway.
3. Not too sure of a search engine, I mean if you're using tags like "Anthy" or "Groupshot" but as someone was saying that could twerked and be "Anshi" and other variants. Possibly having all the images grouped like all Anthy pictures one section and so on .

not sure if it helped, but wanted to help out as much as I could

rhyaniwyn wrote:

But as for creating a custom search form that will automatically create the boolean string for the search... I don't know what system you're using, but that should be cake.  It should go directly to the results, because anything else is a bit counter-intuitive, I think.  (If there's a search box at the top of the page of results, though, placing that string there so that further changes can be made manually sounds like a good idea.)

I'd really like to do this, and I'm going to poke around today and see if I can see how. At the very least, I've looked at the EasyBBC code and I should definitely be able to have a search page where you can click different buttons on the page to add the appropriate code to the search box. Basically the same thing as sticking in the emoticons by clicking, but for the search. This will alleviate the biggest problem I had here, and if it's all I can manage, I'll be satisfied. No matter what I do, the search function will never be quite as shiny and pretty as Google or whatever else. You are probably going to have to go to the search page whenever you want to search (without a search box on every page). There are limitations to the software and my ability to code it, I'm afraid. While it does have the search feature, it's pretty new and not feature-heavy, so I'm having to beat it into submission as it is.  This weekend I'll start figuring out how to code this, since my success will dictate the keywords I use.

Concerning customizing the number of thumbnails per page, I can't find that feature in the software, but it might be a plugin. I'll look. I am, of course, keeping the slowpoke connections in mind. I used to be a miserable Nazi about catering to them, even used to design layouts to be viewable in 640x480! I am going to slightly favor high-speed connections here, almost out of necessity given the gallery's size, but there will be a happy medium, I promise.

Had an interesting idea for search keywords.

Spoilers.

If the first four or so screencaps in an episode are going to be spoilers for those that see it, tag them as such so people who want the spoilers can search for these images more easily. A lot of people don't like spoilers, and there are a few out there that like to know exactly what's going to happen before they get a real chance to see it.

It's just a thought I had.

Usagi wrote:

But then I'm the only one on dialup anymore.

Not quite. I'm also on dial up. But, I also avoid the gallery like the plague unless I'm on a high-speed computer lab computer.

I'm the sort that will go through the new improved gallery and DL all the pictures onto a disc so I never have to worry about needing a picture while I'm at home, because the gallery is evil on my dial up AS IT IS. So really, my vote doesn't matter.

BIG IMAGES = . I'm a graphical sort of girl and I'd love huge images of which I can make wallpapers and layouts any way I desire.

rhyaniwyn wrote:

what gallery system are you using?  As I mentioned, I do some PHP/MySQL programming.  I suck at OOP, because I'm not actually a programmer , but I do think it's probable that I can contribute to customizations.

Menalto's Gallery 2     Aside from modding the search function, I don't actually plan on doing much in the way of code changes aside from aesthetic stuff. Like the albums are all listed as 'Album: Whatever', and I'll probably root out and delete the 'Album:' part, since it's not necessary. If I do any other pain in the butt customization, I'll remember that.

I just throw up a preliminary list of the search parameters that I'm going to make clickable instead of making people write them in:



I'm figuring that's going to be enough to narrow it down for most people, probably without even using the manual entry except for maybe specific episode numbers. The manual entry will be for very specific stuff, like 'ring', 'cow', 'egg', 'golf ()'. Instead of having a whole separate button for, say, Touga and Nanami's house, I figure you all would know that 'Outside School' and 'Touga/Nanami' and 'Indoor' or 'Architecture' will give you pics of their house. If you're searching the movie caps, 'Wakaba' and manually entering '+car' or '+jeep' will get you those. A lot of the parameters for searching the movie caps will be the same, and where they're not, they're pretty straightforward. But I think I'll add 'Dance' to the miscellaneous parameters at the bottom.

Can anyone else think of ones that absolutely should be up there? (BTW, I am going to add a few gag keywords like 'poptart', but I won't say so on the gallery.

BTW, for shits and giggles, this is the folder distribution, which will ultimately be how the albums are sorted. They'll probably change slightly, but this is a good idea of what you guys can expect as far as what's up there.

Except for the episode cap folders, it's actually a lot fewer than are in the gallery now, since they're sorted by subject, thus avoiding duplicates.

And you're right, an 'other' would be a good idea, although they're all going to be searchable by their proper names as well, or at least as far as you get them. You can sort through the 'other' results or search '+music +teacher', or just browse through the albums to episode 15.

Would Tatsuya earn his own folder too? He's a two episode (or one?) semi-important character like Ruka.

But besides that, I think that about covers all the best tags, for me at least. More 's and 's for Gio!

Usagi wrote:

I so want the whole of Akio's car jump. Each and every frame.  Then I could print them all out and flip the pages and watch over and over.

http://ohtori.nu/forumstuff/Jump.zip

Preliminary testing is very promising for me being able to code this just the way I want to.