Cimaise - Albums for Flarum (early access)

joanaranda

I've recently purchased this extension and, although I know it is not final, it is... awesome! Glad to have bought it.

In any case, I think that there a couple of improvement opportunities that look like easy enough to implement for the big value they can add:

selectable thumbnail size: 150x150 it is too small for some dense pictures. 300x300 would be much better for my use case, so a choice of two or three different size would be great. I know I can easily expand the size through CSS (and this is what I am doing so far), but the resolution of the 150.jpg thumbnail is too low to scale it up 2x.
album sorting criteria: I have seen that the order in the albums has changed after adding pictures. It is quite likely that the latest updated album is shown first. It may make sense to make sure that the latest content is always visible first, but I have just a few albums, so having a different order each time I update one is really confusing in my case. Having the choice to choose between latest updates first vs alphabetical order would be awesome.

I hope it helps, and it is easy to improve. Congrats for the extension!

clarkwinkelmann

joanaranda thanks for the feedback. I will definitely add more options to customize thumbnail sizes, it's already a "customizable" list in the source code but I need to make settings available for it.

I also plan to add a way to customize the default sort options. By default it's indeed the most recently updated.

I still have a lot more features planned, with some that I need myself soon but I was slowed down by personal stuff. Hoping to get back to this soon!

joanaranda

Comments on several of my previous posts:

joanaranda ...I think that there a couple of improvement opportunities that look like easy enough to implement for the big value they can add:

selectable thumbnail size: 150x150 it is too small for some dense pictures... // ...a choice of two or three different size would be great...

album sorting criteria: I have seen that the order in the albums has changed after adding pictures. It is quite likely that the latest updated album is shown first... // ... Having the choice to choose between latest updates first vs alphabetical order would be awesome.

It is no longer an issue for me. The tradeoffs I made in thumbnails through CSS are good enough for me, and I hack the sorting criteria by dealing with update dates directly in the database. I can live with it, as I don't add pictures often.

joanaranda By the way, @clarkwinkelmann, I've just noticed a bug. Not a big deal and sorry if you are already aware of it.

The background from the Hero disappears when the screen width is so small than the top menu collapses.

This issue remains, and it makes the hero almost unreadable in mobile. I hope you can find the time soon to fix it. I have not been able to identify any CSS hack to hide the issue. You can see the issue in action if you open this link from a cell phone: https://debat.s21.cat/albums/1-aplecs-i-ballades

joanaranda @clarkwinkelmann, is there any way to customize the number of pictures to be shown before the "Load More" button appears? My tests are showing that many of my users typically stick to the first block of results, as often they simply look at the pictures without realizing that there is a button below.

clarkwinkelmann joanaranda currently not, but I will add that in the future 👍️

I will probably raise the default number of pictures per page as well. On my own website I also notice it's too few.

FYI, I have mitigated somehow the impact by making the "Load more" button blink. It is a nasty hack, but it may serve you as well, @clarkwinkelmann, while you don't have time to improve Cimaise. You can see the blinking button in action here: https://debat.s21.cat/pictures

In any case, I hope you find soon the time to work on these issues/improvements. I can make a small money contribution if it helps, but I cannot afford to invest much more: all what I have in my site is free stuff.

joanaranda

clarkwinkelmann - Thank you for the prompt feedback and glad to see that you already had this and many other features in the radar. Willing to see how the extension evolves. It looks very promising.

Regarding your early warning regarding that "Not all texts can be translated. Many texts will be rewritten and/or moved for the final release.", I hope it doesn't imply that translations already made will break (the word "moved" sounds a little bit scary 😅). Although I already have seen and understand that not all texts can be translated now, I hope that at least all text already translated will be preserved. One of the first things I had to do with your extension after purchasing it was to translate it into catalan.

By the way, I am including below how your Cimaise shines into my forum after some minor CSS tweaks. One of the things I did was to grow the thumbnail size to an intermediate level that makes that the image quality don't degrade much, but provides many more details about the full picture. I'm also keeping the caption all time visible. No only on hover.

joanaranda

By the way, @clarkwinkelmann, I've just noticed a bug. Not a big deal and sorry if you are already aware of it.

The background from the Hero disappears when the screen width is so small than the top menu collapses.

With the menu expanded:

With the menu collapsed:

Indreksi

Cant purchase becaose this hcaptcha dont work in my browser 🙁

clarkwinkelmann

Indreksi which browser(s) have you tried ? From which country ? I don't control the Extiverse website, but maybe @luceos can take a look.

Indreksi

clarkwinkelmann

Google Chrome and from Estonia.

Darkle

I've been using this extension more intensively over the last few weeks, and my internal storage is definitely feeling it, hopefully, we'll see S3 support soon 🤞. Alongside some of the improvements I've previously mentioned Darkle , I've thought of a few additional enhancements that could be interesting:

Image processing algorithm: There's a significant loss of color in the image conversions, a common issue with many image processors. However, some websites manage to compress or transform images without altering the color. I'm not sure what techniques they use, but if the extension is open to changes in this area, I'm willing to help research the options and discuss them here.
Alpha channel color: The method currently used by the extension defaults to using black for the alpha channel when transforming images from PNG to JPG. Personally, I'd prefer if the converted images had a white alpha channel, as it's usually more visually pleasing and helps disguise cropping more effectively. It might be a good idea to switch the default to white, which is more commonly used, or perhaps introduce an option to select the alpha channel color based on personal preference.

Let me know what you think.

joanaranda

@clarkwinkelmann, is there any way to customize the number of pictures to be shown before the "Load More" button appears? My tests are showing that many of my users typically stick to the first block of results, as often they simply look at the pictures without realizing that there is a button below. I would like that, if they overlook the "Load More" button, they have at least a broader number of pictures to choose from.

clarkwinkelmann

joanaranda currently not, but I will add that in the future 👍️

I will probably raise the default number of pictures per page as well. On my own website I also notice it's too few.

joanaranda

clarkwinkelmann - Oh, this is excellent news! Changing the default number of pictures can be a quite good short term fix as well. Please post when you implement any of the fixes, and I'll update the extension right away.

clarkwinkelmann

joanaranda absolutely, I'll post all release announcements here, as well as the changelog on my website.

I'm currently working on an update for the WordPress Integration extension. Once that's finished, I'll focus on Cimaise again.

joanaranda

Great news, @clarkwinkelmann!

Darkle

There is some hardcoded upload limit?, I get "The image must not be greater than 24000 kilobytes.", but I am using:

php_value upload_max_filesize 64M
php_value post_max_size 64M

I don't remember right now but if it was server-side the error should not specify the 24000 kilobytes part 🤔

EDIT: Forget it! Just browsing the discussion I came across this message: https://discuss.flarum.org/d/32138-cimaise-albums-for-flarum-early-access/16

Jbugy

Any update on this @clarkwinkelmann?

clarkwinkelmann

Jbugy are you referring to something in particular?

It'll be a few more weeks before I can release new features.

Jbugy

clarkwinkelmann

You mentioned previously about new features, thats all :-)

Darkle

I hope I don't sound annoying with another thing 😅. Just for the record, it seems that search engines have a hard time finding the album/photo pages. I think it would help if they were added to the site's sitemap. I’ve tried some manual submissions in the search console, and they have indexed well.

clarkwinkelmann

Darkle good point, I can add the code to integrate with FoF Sitemap in the next release 👍️

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