Initial User Question from a very new user

You can do all on the Photo Albums -> Settings admin page.

• Untick Table II-A4.3 to remove the page title from the breadcrumb display.
• You may wish to also remove ‘Home’: Untick Table II-A4.1.
• Increase thumbnail size: Table I-C1. Also increase Table I-C3 !
• Increase minimal spacing in Table I-C5
• Set Table I-D1 to approx 50 larger than Table I-C1
• Set Table IV-D6 ( Cover type ) to Image Factory mcr
• Set Table VI-B2a ( Link Type ) to lightbox

This should help you for 90% i guess.
Play around with the settings indicated and supply me a live link to a page with an issue if you have one or more.

Thanks for the reply. Much quicker than I’ve found in most other plugins!

I’ve been fiddling! I spent last evening trying changing one setting at a time so I could see how it affected things. I THINK I’ve mostly got the galleries looking reasonably good. And I accidentally got into the Lightbox I think, ’cause I have larger images…

My only really big hangup at this point (I think) is the album layout. I think that vertical stack of galleries is really going to be difficult for my users to handle. But, I’ll try playing a while longer to see if I can bring my questions down to a reasonable level.

OK, things look MUCH better after another evening of playing with settings…. I found fonts, settings, and sizes. Unfortunately, there’s no link since I’m doing the development on a local PC.

On the Lightbox, how do I keep the left and right arrows, and the square with the circle around it (exit from lightbox?) from fading out? I’d like them to stay visible.

And on the thumbnails, the line above says “Various albums”. Is there a way to have this contain the page title instead of having the title display above this?

When you hoover over the buttons they reappear. The visitor wants to see the image without ugly buttons on it, is my opinion.

“Various albums”.

The album indication depends on how the page is initiated. I need a real link to say more.

Is there a way to have this contain the page title

I thought your initial question was how to remove the page title from the breadcrumb???

Hi Jacob,

Although it’s taken me some time to gain much skill with your gallery (mostly due to my own inexperience), I’m finding it really powerful and configurable. I’ve spent a number of hours changing one or two settings than looking to see how that affects my display. Very nice gallery and I congratulate you on your work!

I agree with you about the buttons on the detail image, but I’m not building this for me. I always use my wife, who is an older typical user, to test my user interfaces. She, and I suspect more than a few of the older people who are hopefully going to be using the site, aren’t necessarily as computer-savvy as others. She has already gotten “stuck” in the detail views because once the buttons disappear she has trouble finding them to turn them back on (difficult to find the spot), and she can’t remember the round thing with the square in it that gets her OUT of the details back to the thumbnails. Thus, although I’d prefer not to have a visible “exit” button, it would be nice to make it as easy as possible for visitors to navigate through large images, and exit with minimal confusion. If there is no way to have at least the exit remain visible all the time I’ll survive – it’s purely a convenience to some of the future site users.

As for the page title – ignore that one. I was trying to figure out how to navigate BACK from details, to thumbnails, to album cover page, to parent page. I realized last night that I hadn’t CONNECTED the pages, so there WAS no navigating back. Once I got that corrected, I now have back links in the line above the thumbnails, so it works really nicely.

I’ve got a bit of content on the actual web page at this point, so I’ve now had two people try it. First was my wife, who couldn’t get out of the detail images. And didn’t remember where the exit button was even after I pointed it out.

The second was a friend who’s pretty computer literate. Just got her email evaluation: “I went to the candids and clicked on a thumbnail, which enlarged the image. From that point, I could only go forwards or backwards one image at a time. I may have missed something, but I couldn’t figure out how to exit from the enlargements.”

It may not be a problem for other users, but I have the feeling having the arrows and “exit from the detail images” button disappear will be a source of ongoing angst for visitors… Is there a way for me to go into the php or css and make a change to keep at least the exit button on so you don’t have to change the plugin?

It is not a big thing to make the fading out an option. This will keep your plugin update safe.
I will be pleased to implement it. I just want you to answer a few questions:

– What about the arrow in the center of the image to start/stop the lightbox slideshow? Should it also stay visible?
– On hovering the mouse, the images re- and dis-appear. Do you want this to be switch off-able also?

Hi Jacob,

Once again I may be doing this wrong. I don’t have an arrow in the middle of the lightbox. And when I hover the mouse, my arrows and exit box don’t re-appear. Maybe I just need to turn on whatever it is that’ll make things reappear when I hover – that would likely resolve the problem of having the users get confused by not seeing the arrows or exit… I’ll go rummage through the settings, but can you tell me which one(s) I should set to make things reappear when hovering on the lightbox?

Since I’ve got a bit of content on the website now, is there a way for me to send you a link so you can see what I’m seeing?

Please mail me direct at: opajaap at opajaap dot nl ( it is spelled out to prevent robots seeing the email adress )

On the Photo Albums -> Settings admin page, Table II-K ( Navigation symbols for slideshows and lighbox ) lines 1 to 3 read:

1 Start symbol url Supply the url of an image for the start symbol [https://…..(some url…]
2 Pause symbol url Supply the url of an image for the pause symbol [https://…..(some url…]
3 Stop symbol url Supply the url of an image for the stop symbol [https://…..(some url…]

These urls are wrong, because you have set up the site on local host.
You can fix these urls as follows:
Press the [?] ( or [!] ) button on the right. This opens an alert box showing you what the default value is. Copy – past this into the edit fields, for all three lines they are different.
The urls at lines 4 and 5 are correct; do not touch them.

Thanks Jacob,

I changed the three urls… I was in the right place, and even looked at the .png files, but NEVER NOTICED they were set to “localhost”…

In any case, my detail images still behave the same way. First image opens with arrows and an exit box, then they fade. Navigating to another image doesn’t re-display the arrows and exit box. They never reappear as near as I can tell.

Is there some setting I’ve missed or set wrong that tells the Lightbox to re-display the arrows and exit box whenever I go to a new image? Or to re-display when I hover over the Lightbox?

They never reappear as near as I can tell.

They re-appear when you hover the mouse over it.

The exit button is in the upper right corner of the image, the navigation buttons are in the middle of the height at the right and left edges.

Clicing left or right from the image also navigates to previous or next image, pressing the esc key exits… How difficult can it be???

Do you really want every image to be covered with ugly buttons all the time?

Unfortunately, no they don’t reappear. ONE will reappear if you hover over the SPOT where it was, but users don’t KNOW where they were and thus DON’T HOVER OVER WHERE THE EXIT BUTTON WAS. If I KNEW exactly where the arrows were and/or the exit button I wouldn’t have a problem FINDING the arrows or the exit button. As it is, once they’re gone I can move the mouse all over the image and NOTHING reappears unless I accidentally stumble onto the spot where it was. And even then, only the arrow or button I stumble on reappears…

If they’re supposed to all reappear when I hover anywhere in the image, they aren’t working on the URL I sent you.

As for “Clicing left or right from the image also navigates to previous or next image, pressing the esc key exits… How difficult can it be???”, it can apparently be pretty darn difficult for people that don’t KNOW the ESC key exits. There are a LOT of people out there that don’t KNOW clicking OUTSIDE the image will navigate, don’t KNOW the keyboard arrows navigate, and for SURE don’t know they have to hit ESC to get out when they’re stuck. So far, of the first three people that have tried my site, only ONE hit ESC in desperation to get out.

So, if the arrows and exit should all reappear when I hover ANYWHERE in the image, can you tell me what I need to set to turn them on ’cause they AREN’T doing that. And if not, then YES it would be a big help to have an option to have the ugly navigation arrows and exit buttons stay on all the time.

So, if the arrows and exit should all reappear when I hover ANYWHERE in the image

I will make a modification in the next version to do so.

Understood. Thanks for your efforts.