I just revamped the gallery on my site

William Petruzzo · May 22, 2009

I just revamped the gallery on my site to use ThickBox and SimpleViewer. I was previously using a combination of Wordpress and ZenPhoto, but I've done away with ZenPhoto (although she served me well). If I get a good response from the new gallery, I'm going to purchase SimpleViewer Pro. I'd love to hear what you guys think.

Petruzzo Photography

NateS · May 22, 2009

It looks really nice. One problem that you need to fix. Once you click into a gallery...there is no way out of it. The back button won't work and there is no link to the main page so the only way out is to go to the address bar and reclick the webpage address. You need some method of getting out of a slideshow once you're in it.

The main page is very nice and very professional looking so big thumbs up on that from me.

manaheim · May 22, 2009

Looks nice. I'm using simpleviewer too. Thing rocks. I gotta go purchase it, though. Just have to actually remember to do it.

William Petruzzo · May 22, 2009

NateS said:
It looks really nice. One problem that you need to fix. Once you click into a gallery...there is no way out of it. The back button won't work and there is no link to the main page so the only way out is to go to the address bar and reclick the webpage address. You need some method of getting out of a slideshow once you're in it.

The main page is very nice and very professional looking so big thumbs up on that from me.

Thanks for the compliments guys. On the top right corner of the galleries there ought to be a "close" link that closes the gallery. What browser are you using? Perhaps its not showing up for you for some reason.

William Petruzzo · May 25, 2009

I figured out the problem. I had designed for too big a screen resolution. The problem should be fixed now. Well, with any luck.

Rere · May 25, 2009

Hi,

I like your gallery. The images load pretty fast and look good.

I'm also going to redo my galleries, and have been looking into Lightshow Magic by PVII. I want to add PayPal buttons and in some galleries you can and some you can't. I'll also take a peak at the one you are using.

William Petruzzo · May 25, 2009

I was originally using something like that. It was ZenPhoto for managing the galleries and a modified Slimbox for displaying the images. Lightshow is definitely a bit sleeker than Slimbox, or at least right out of the box it is.

But I think you might find yourself running into the same frustrations my visitors were. The ability to jump very quickly from one thumbnail to another seems to be very important to a lot viewers. While lightbox software usually offers some pretty nice navigation from photo to photo, browsing thumbnails becomes cumbersome and frustrating. Especially since most viewers aren't used to a lightbox and have a tendency to want to press the "back" button. Which of course doesn't work.

I liked that the lightbox would load things within the page without users having to reload the whole thing or recall all the header information. But I didn't like the lack of thumbnail browsing (and apparently neither did my visitors). So I landed on using Thickbox to load SimpleViewer galleries. I think I'm pretty happy with the result. And I've been getting great feedback from past clients and users that I know were annoyed with the old method.

Looking at your site, I think you should stick with the method you're using now, but maybe rethinking the way users interact with it. There's lots of cool gallery software out there. In fact, the people who make SimpleViewer make some other really cool gallery software too. You should check it out.

AIRTIGHT - Viewers

NateS · May 25, 2009

bpetruzzo said:
NateS said:

It looks really nice. One problem that you need to fix. Once you click into a gallery...there is no way out of it. The back button won't work and there is no link to the main page so the only way out is to go to the address bar and reclick the webpage address. You need some method of getting out of a slideshow once you're in it.

The main page is very nice and very professional looking so big thumbs up on that from me.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the compliments guys. On the top right corner of the galleries there ought to be a "close" link that closes the gallery. What browser are you using? Perhaps its not showing up for you for some reason.

bpetruzzo said:
I figured out the problem. I had designed for too big a screen resolution. The problem should be fixed now. Well, with any luck.

I'm using firefox which is a pretty popular browser. It still shows me nothing to click out of a gallery once into it....however I found a small black box on the left of the screen....I by chance clicked it and it took me back to your main page. It was just a strike of luck that I did that though and most users probably wouldn't figure that out. Maybe it's just me for some reason that doesn't see the "close" link.

William Petruzzo · May 25, 2009

Hmm. That's bizarre. Are you able to see that the page is loading in a lightbox? Or are parts of the lightbox being cut off by the browser? Also, what screen resolution are you running? That also might be helpful. I've done all the cross-browser testing and it should at least load correctly in everything.

Thanks for the help and feedback!

lifepointphoto · May 25, 2009

Great Website!

I like how the galleries are organized, cool pricing sections by the way

Life Point Photo

NateS · May 26, 2009

bpetruzzo said:
Hmm. That's bizarre. Are you able to see that the page is loading in a lightbox? Or are parts of the lightbox being cut off by the browser? Also, what screen resolution are you running? That also might be helpful. I've done all the cross-browser testing and it should at least load correctly in everything.

Thanks for the help and feedback!

Yeah, I just realized that there are some words at the bottom of the gallery that are cut off so I'm not getting the whole page. When I try to scroll, it doesn't do anything. I'm at 1024x768 screen resolution on my laptop so I guess that must be the problem.

Rere · May 26, 2009

bpetruzzo said:
I was originally using something like that. It was ZenPhoto for managing the galleries and a modified Slimbox for displaying the images. Lightshow is definitely a bit sleeker than Slimbox, or at least right out of the box it is.

But I think you might find yourself running into the same frustrations my visitors were. The ability to jump very quickly from one thumbnail to another seems to be very important to a lot viewers. While lightbox software usually offers some pretty nice navigation from photo to photo, browsing thumbnails becomes cumbersome and frustrating. Especially since most viewers aren't used to a lightbox and have a tendency to want to press the "back" button. Which of course doesn't work.

I liked that the lightbox would load things within the page without users having to reload the whole thing or recall all the header information. But I didn't like the lack of thumbnail browsing (and apparently neither did my visitors). So I landed on using Thickbox to load SimpleViewer galleries. I think I'm pretty happy with the result. And I've been getting great feedback from past clients and users that I know were annoyed with the old method.

Looking at your site, I think you should stick with the method you're using now, but maybe rethinking the way users interact with it. There's lots of cool gallery software out there. In fact, the people who make SimpleViewer make some other really cool gallery software too. You should check it out.

AIRTIGHT - Viewers

Thanks BP. Now that you've pointed this out I think you're right. And I like the size of the thumbnails on your site. It seems many of the Lightbox thumbs are pretty small. I'll check out the SimpleViewer. I have to use something that's compatible with Dreamweaver 8 and Paypal.

BTW, I also use a Firefox browser and have always seen the close x on the top right of your images.

Good Luck!!!!