Is there any roadmap / plan for Gallery 3 development?

87 views
Skip to first unread message

A D

unread,
Dec 21, 2020, 11:04:15 AM12/21/20
to Gallery 3 Users

I cannot see anything here in the 300 or so topics - just on https://galleryrevival.com/

This is an attempt to breathe some life back into the Gallery 3 project. The Gallery project has been in hibernation for 5+ years and it needs some attention to keep running on current versions of PHP and Mysql.


I wondered if the main plugins would be updated (message about one site being hacked and avoid downloading them). I know some do not work.
And the theme not being responsive will stop a lot from using it.

Is there any intention to develop it or just keep it working , as it is.
I guess some people here might be updating plugins etc on an adhoc basis.

Andy


Brad Dutton

unread,
Dec 21, 2020, 4:10:42 PM12/21/20
to Gallery 3 Users
Hi,

Sorry, but there isn't much of a roadmap. I agree creating a responsive decision would really bring Gallery up to date but between may day job and family I don't have the time to do this. Additionally creating a responsive design would probably break a lot of modules. Since many people have moved on from Gallery these modules would probably stay broken for some time.

As it is now my current goal is to simply keep what we have running. I have made updates to Gallery itself along with some of the modules and themes. As I make updates to these modules/themes I bring them in to a shared contribution repository so we have a central place to find them:
https://github.com/bwdutton/gallery3-contrib/tree/master/3.0/modules
If you have module that isn't working, provide me a link to the module and I'll see if I can update it to work.

As some people start to realize the project isn't totally dead some life is coming back, people are reporting bugs, new features are being added, the exif_gps module for example now has OpenStreetMap support:
https://github.com/bwdutton/gallery3-contrib/pull/1

TLDR: status quo for now, hopefully as interest comes back and/or I have more time maybe we can make bigger changes in the future.

Thanks,
Brad

A D

unread,
Dec 21, 2020, 5:04:28 PM12/21/20
to Gallery 3 Users
That's what I was expecting. It is a lot to take on if just yourself. Would be nice if there were a couple more who could help out.
I can manage with what I have at the moment (modules) and I switched back to G3 after using Piwigo and Zenphoto. G3 was such a great piece of software.
I think the theme is probably the most important for smaller devices in use now.

Thanks for the work... I'm still happy I switched back. It is the easiest for club members to use.

G Dan Mitchell

unread,
Dec 21, 2020, 5:30:05 PM12/21/20
to gallery...@googlegroups.com
I’ve been sort of watching quietly from the sidelines for a while. I want to thank you and others for your work on moving Gallery forward so that it can continue to work. (My previous Gallery 3 installation — the last official version — is still working well enough that I have not yet updated, but it is in the cards.)

I get your concern about breaking older installations. One way to address that without too much trouble might be to declare the next version to have a significantly different versions number — lets’ say Gallery 3.5 — and announce that there could be changes that break older installations. Those who don’t want to go there could continue to use the existing version, while you’d be freed up from having to worry too much about marinating backwards compatibility with what is now a pretty old (in software years) version of the program. 

On one hand, breaking some existing installations (or locking them in at their current version) has some negative implications. But it is also true that locking in compatibility to the extent that it starts to make the environment work less well (for example, not supporting responsive designs) has some serious downsides, too, and they may affect an even larger group.

I do understand that this is entirely a “labor of love,” so please just take this as thinking out loud and not as a demand or a complaint! ;-)

Thanks.

-- 
WHEN USING AN EMAIL PROGRAM to reply to this message, click REPLY TO LIST or REPLY TO ALL so your reply goes out to everyone in the group. If you click REPLY or REPLY TO SENDER Google will *only* send your reply to the original author (not recommended).
 
To post a NEW MESSAGE to the group, send an new email to:
gallery...@googlegroups.com
 
To view or sign in to this group on the web, use this URL:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/gallery-3-users
--- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Gallery 3 Users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to gallery-3-use...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/gallery-3-users/642ddc02-eee3-4644-a9b2-5147dd048013n%40googlegroups.com.

JR

unread,
Dec 21, 2020, 6:14:46 PM12/21/20
to gallery...@googlegroups.com
Andy,

You guess correctly as far as how the current work on Gallery 3 is being done.

 I have never heard of a Gallery 3 website being hacked, but of course *any* website can be hacked -- just ask anyone in our military, the FBI or CIA or any branch of our Federal Government. Still, I have been running several Gallery 3 websites for over 8 years and never had a problem. Of course, I do not let anyone but myself and one trusted collaborator to "Log-In" to the administrative and Editing functions.

There are literally dozens of other Image Gallery applications out there, so free and others cost money. I've tried most and still find Gallery to be my favorite. Your mileage may vary.

-- J.R.
--
WHEN USING AN EMAIL PROGRAM to reply to this message, click REPLY TO LIST or REPLY TO ALL so your reply goes out to everyone in the group. If you click REPLY or REPLY TO SENDER Google will *only* send your reply to the original author (not recommended).
 
To post a NEW MESSAGE to the group, send an new email to:
gallery...@googlegroups.com
 
To view or sign in to this group on the web, use this URL:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/gallery-3-users
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Gallery 3 Users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to gallery-3-use...@googlegroups.com.

JR

unread,
Dec 22, 2020, 6:42:31 PM12/22/20
to gallery...@googlegroups.com
Quite a few people have tried creating a responsive template to G3 -- there are some very flawed experimental templates still in the Codex Modules Listing -- but the big problem comes from the fact that Gallery 1, 2 and eventually 3 were designed to use a "fixed page" where all the elements are placed in a fairly rigid matrix with hard-coded widths and heights. This is not just in the templates, it is also embedded in various places in the Gallery code as well. It does not look that a template alone will be able to do the job. This hard-coding of width and height applies not just in the user interface, but the uploading, storing and handling of all images as well. For instance, a thumbnail size must be chosen before Gallery change automatically make thumbnails from uploaded images. In today's "responsive" coding technique, that would not be mandated or required. That previous "fixed page" design philosophy was pretty much common until about 10 to 15 years ago, when an ever-increasing number of people with very small screens began demanding that websites originally designed for viewing on a full-size computer monitor should also display "properly" on their itty-bitty smart phone.

That was a complex issue to solve... several techniques were tried and eventually got merged into the now-standard common implementation of "responsive coding". But the original Gallery Development Team decided to retire before the final agreements on how to handle resizing of images and text "on demand" were standardized and adopted by all modern browsers.

Bottom Line: To make a truly "responsive" Galley 3 page display requires going to a whole bunch of the original fixed-design code and removing all references to fixed width and height and replacing them with the current "relativistic" parameters necessary to auto-adjust to various screen sizes on demand. It's a big job. Some people have reporting achieving this with Gallery 3, but I have yet to see anymore offer a truly responsive template (or tweaked version of the Gallery 3 software) available to the rest of us.

I'm working on one myself. If I succeed I'll be sure to make it available to all. Fingers crossed.

-- J.R.
--
WHEN USING AN EMAIL PROGRAM to reply to this message, click REPLY TO LIST or REPLY TO ALL so your reply goes out to everyone in the group. If you click REPLY or REPLY TO SENDER Google will *only* send your reply to the original author (not recommended).
 
To post a NEW MESSAGE to the group, send an new email to:
gallery...@googlegroups.com
 
To view or sign in to this group on the web, use this URL:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/gallery-3-users
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Gallery 3 Users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to gallery-3-use...@googlegroups.com.

A D

unread,
Dec 22, 2020, 8:06:03 PM12/22/20
to Gallery 3 Users
Would be nice if it just became fluid and organized the columns to fit the screen. As long as it looked respectable. As you say, going the whole hog sounds like it will never get done.

A D

unread,
Dec 22, 2020, 8:07:07 PM12/22/20
to Gallery 3 Users
And a standard responsive menu - 3 bars.

Chris Wallace

unread,
Dec 23, 2020, 11:25:15 AM12/23/20
to gallery...@googlegroups.com

OhSoHumorous.com

 

Then all the other sites linked on that dropdown menu.

That is the primary domain…it is NOT fully upgraded due to how critical it is and I didn’t want to break it.

 

The others, however, are fully installed from scratch with the new version AND the responsive theme that was provided nearly two years ago on here.

 

I have only made a few slight modifications to it for banner advertising.

 

I hope to be back on it actively in the coming months.

JR

unread,
Dec 23, 2020, 4:33:38 PM12/23/20
to gallery...@googlegroups.com

I guess I didn't make it clear: in order for a Gallery 3 page to display "fluid" and have columns fit the screen automatically depending on what size the screen is -- and covert to a "responsive" 3-bar navigation *will* actually require going the whole hog and revising the core code. No way to do it partially.

-- J.R.

JR

unread,
Dec 23, 2020, 4:54:41 PM12/23/20
to gallery...@googlegroups.com

Chris,

This is working well, but I see a significant problem with this implementation: You are only displaying 4 images per page -- or 4 "category" albums"  per page -- whether I am viewing on a full size computer screen or a 300 pixel-wide smartphone. This may be fine for people using an really old small smartphone, but for those with larger screens (not to mention those with full-size laptop and computer screens having to click through 10 pages to view the first 40 images isn't a great user experience. A truly responsive implementation makes the most use of available screen real estate -- at any size screen. Difficult to achieve, but the trend even among mobile devices is toward larger screens.

-- J.R.

Adrian London

unread,
Dec 23, 2020, 7:51:17 PM12/23/20
to gallery...@googlegroups.com
I don’t understand all these terms, as I’m not a developer, but my gallery will add columns as I increase the browser window size.


It was ages ago that I last played with it, but the theme had places (I think in the css) where you could specify min and max window sizes.  As I shrink my window, once it gets down to 3 columns it doesn’t shrink any more and instead I get a horizontal scrollbar.  I remember playing with changing the numbers in various css files and refreshing my screen until I worked out what changes did what :). I’m sure someone who knows css and web development will suss it really quickly.

Adrian London

unread,
Dec 23, 2020, 8:00:26 PM12/23/20
to gallery...@googlegroups.com
Forgot to add, there’s also a theme called “Gallery iMobile v3” which has some issues (can’t upload/download photos) but looks quite nice on a phone or iPad; even a laptop. It’s the only theme I know that can do a slideshow. I’ve edited it quite a lot to show photo descriptions and an album hierarchy menu. You click on a photo and it starts a slideshow. I forget how it’s programmed (i.e. where you can change the speed or transition) so you’ll need to go through the theme code.

I spent a while trying to work out how the slideshow bit works, so I could extract that and put it into the clean canvas theme I use, but I couldn’t find a way (as I say, not a developer). So instead, I installed the “theme dispatcher” module and edited that so it would pick a theme depending on which user was logged in. By default it works by detecting devices. So now I have a user called “slideshow” and I log in with that when I want to run a slideshow. The theme actually looks quite nice and simple, so is a good one to give people who don’t need to upload pics, or see much data (no EXIF, no maps, no photo description sidebar etc).

JR

unread,
Dec 24, 2020, 3:01:40 PM12/24/20
to gallery...@googlegroups.com

Adrian,

Thanks for mentioning the clean canvas wide theme... I've always used GreyDragon, but have been meaning to give CCwide a look.

But here's the thing: One of the "religious beliefs" of "responsive" design -- which I do not agree with -- is that the *only* scrolling a viewer should have to do is up and down vertical scrolling. Horizontal scrolling is blasphemy in the "mobile friendly" world. This is because mobile phone users are lazy and only want to have to swipe up or down (unless they're looking  through their selfie photo collection, of course). Still, that's the design mantra which entire internet industry bought into and for now we're stuck with it. Another religious belief is that a user should never have to turn their smartphone sideways to see a wider page with more information on it unless they feel like it. Even though all smartphones for the past 10 years have had the ability automatically resize web pages depending on if the viewer was holding the phone vertically or horizontally.

In my humble opinion as a paid published graphic designer in print, video and web pages for the past 3 decades, the mandate issued about 4 years ago by Google that all websites have to be "mobile friendly" if they want to get good search engine placement has set web site design and functionality back 20 years.

-- J.R.

Chris Wallace

unread,
Dec 25, 2020, 11:54:42 AM12/25/20
to gallery...@googlegroups.com

I only display the 4 images because I am going for click-throughs…not display. Let me change it to a larger number on one of the domains real quick…(logs in…paused while he does this…)…back…

 

Ok…I changed RandomDailyMemes.com to a 12 images/album per page. Ran it in simulation for Iphone and Ipad Pro…moves and mixes with the device…scales nicely…

 

Actually looks quite nice. I might kick like 3 of the 6 over and watch the traffic variances…with new adsense methods via google I can do a little less custom and let their placement algorithms work their magic…

Gallery is working out very good for this so far…glad I never abandoned it…
J

 

Please let me know what you see.

 

Thanks!!

 

Chris

JR

unread,
Dec 26, 2020, 2:46:13 AM12/26/20
to gallery...@googlegroups.com

Chris,

Oh yeah, not only does it now look better on a large computer monitor, but I can now see that it does in fact "scale elegantly" as I resize my window from 300-pixel-wide small smartphone up through various size screens to full size computer. Nice job.

Your customization does seem to be what so many gallery users have been asking for. Any chance of you making the theme available to others -- or does it involve some heavy tweaking to the Gallery code itself?

-- J.R.

Adrian London

unread,
Dec 26, 2020, 7:58:33 AM12/26/20
to gallery...@googlegroups.com
Chris, that scrolls and resizes very nicely on my laptop.

Mike Wickham

unread,
Dec 26, 2020, 12:19:16 PM12/26/20
to gallery...@googlegroups.com
Chris,

Nice! It looks and scales well on my computer.

Mike

Chris Wallace

unread,
Dec 26, 2020, 3:26:32 PM12/26/20
to gallery...@googlegroups.com

Yeah…I have been pretty impressed with the results from my end for my purposes.

 

I am always looking to improve though….:)

 

Chris

 

From: gallery...@googlegroups.com [mailto:gallery...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Adrian London


Sent: Saturday, December 26, 2020 7:59 AM
To: gallery...@googlegroups.com

--

WHEN USING AN EMAIL PROGRAM to reply to this message, click REPLY TO LIST or REPLY TO ALL so your reply goes out to everyone in the group. If you click REPLY or REPLY TO SENDER Google will *only* send your reply to the original author (not recommended).
 
To post a NEW MESSAGE to the group, send an new email to:
gallery...@googlegroups.com
 
To view or sign in to this group on the web, use this URL:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/gallery-3-users
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Gallery 3 Users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to gallery-3-use...@googlegroups.com.

Chris Wallace

unread,
Dec 26, 2020, 3:26:33 PM12/26/20
to gallery...@googlegroups.com

That is the one that was provided by the one guy last year…or wow…maybe two years now…lol…

 

There are a few bugs that he never helped me work out for my purposes, but I will get a list of my changes together.

 

I can also note that with that change and no others the three domains that I have changed to the 12 oer page are performing better in traffic…slight uptick, but actualy revenue increase on RandomDailyMemes.com in the last 24 hours.

 

Spikes are a good thing in my game…J

JR

unread,
Dec 27, 2020, 12:34:08 PM12/27/20
to gallery...@googlegroups.com

Chris,

Both Google bots and Users like content. By having so many sub-albums (places to click thru to) now displaying on your Main Album "Home Page" you are immediately showing that there is a lot of content in your site -- and that not only makes the bots happy, but also encourages more people to think  "Hey... looks like there's lot of stuff here... I think I'll click on a couple of things and see what's up..."

-- J.R.

JR

unread,
Dec 27, 2020, 3:02:28 PM12/27/20
to gallery...@googlegroups.com

Adrian,

That sounds very interesting -- I would really love to see your version of the iMobile theme if possible.

-- J.r.

Adrian London

unread,
Dec 28, 2020, 5:05:37 PM12/28/20
to gallery...@googlegroups.com
I’ll email it to you.  Assuming it works (my installation has customised core code and also database changes, although I’m 98% sure iMobile uses none of them) feel free to put it somewhere to share.

I’ll also email over my Theme Dispatcher module.  The default for this module is to automatically switch to a theme (in this case iMobile) when certain browser attributes are detected.  I edited it to make sure it works on my parents’ iPhone and iPad.  I also hacked the code so it checks the logged-on user-ID too, so that even on a laptop if you log in with a certain user it’ll automatically use that theme. It’s all configured in Admin / Settings / Theme Dispatcher, and my changes can be ignored by leaving “Configured Users” empty.

Feel free to install them, check they work, share them here somehow etc.


--
WHEN USING AN EMAIL PROGRAM to reply to this message, click REPLY TO LIST or REPLY TO ALL so your reply goes out to everyone in the group. If you click REPLY or REPLY TO SENDER Google will *only* send your reply to the original author (not recommended).
 
To post a NEW MESSAGE to the group, send an new email to:
gallery...@googlegroups.com
 
To view or sign in to this group on the web, use this URL:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/gallery-3-users
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Gallery 3 Users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to gallery-3-use...@googlegroups.com.
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages