Tim Kamppinen
Oct-23-2009, 08:02 PM
Ok, there are huge problems with the slideshow gallery style, and they mostly all center around the obnoxious thumbnail bar. The problem is that it pops up and obscures the photos! And the only way to get it to disappear is to not touch the mouse for FOUR SECONDS. That might as well be an eternity.
See, what I would like to do is set up slideshow style galleries as portfolios. However, this just doesn't work as currently implemented. First, I want people to be able to navigate around the portfolio, not just watch a passive slideshow. However, if you use the thumbs to navigate around, they're constantly popping in over the image and you have to wait forever for them to disappear just to see the photo. It's totally obtrusive and very annoying.
Of course, I could disable the thumbs. That creates new problems, however. Now if people actually want to watch the slideshow passively, they have no way to control the speed, and since the default is quite slow, it ends up being boring. Second, there's no visual indicator to people of how many images might actually be in the gallery, so they just have to wait around and see, which is even worse since the default speed is so slow as previously mentioned (another issue--no way to set custom speeds for the slideshow. Even "fast" is slow for me...). At least with the thumb bar you can see that there are more images coming up. It's also easier to get back to an image you saw previously without having to scroll through every other image to get there with the buttons.
So, can't the slideshow gallery style be modified so that it displays the thumbs in a position that doesn't obscure the image? It would make the slideshow style actually worth using. Right now it's just a bad joke. I honestly don't know how it ever got released like that. It's just terribly frustrating and ugly to have the big thumb bar always covering up your images, and the only way to avoid it is to take your hand off the mouse and just sit there and wait for the painfully slow march of the slides. OR to forgoe all the advantages of the thumb bar and only display buttons, which is just as bad for different reasons.
I really want to have portfolio galleries on my site that look like portfolios, not exactly like the client galleries, but currently there is not a gallery style that will allow me to do this with any sort of elegance. If this one small change was made to the slideshow gallery style, it would be perfect for this. As it is I'm stuck with smugmug style for everything.
See, what I would like to do is set up slideshow style galleries as portfolios. However, this just doesn't work as currently implemented. First, I want people to be able to navigate around the portfolio, not just watch a passive slideshow. However, if you use the thumbs to navigate around, they're constantly popping in over the image and you have to wait forever for them to disappear just to see the photo. It's totally obtrusive and very annoying.
Of course, I could disable the thumbs. That creates new problems, however. Now if people actually want to watch the slideshow passively, they have no way to control the speed, and since the default is quite slow, it ends up being boring. Second, there's no visual indicator to people of how many images might actually be in the gallery, so they just have to wait around and see, which is even worse since the default speed is so slow as previously mentioned (another issue--no way to set custom speeds for the slideshow. Even "fast" is slow for me...). At least with the thumb bar you can see that there are more images coming up. It's also easier to get back to an image you saw previously without having to scroll through every other image to get there with the buttons.
So, can't the slideshow gallery style be modified so that it displays the thumbs in a position that doesn't obscure the image? It would make the slideshow style actually worth using. Right now it's just a bad joke. I honestly don't know how it ever got released like that. It's just terribly frustrating and ugly to have the big thumb bar always covering up your images, and the only way to avoid it is to take your hand off the mouse and just sit there and wait for the painfully slow march of the slides. OR to forgoe all the advantages of the thumb bar and only display buttons, which is just as bad for different reasons.
I really want to have portfolio galleries on my site that look like portfolios, not exactly like the client galleries, but currently there is not a gallery style that will allow me to do this with any sort of elegance. If this one small change was made to the slideshow gallery style, it would be perfect for this. As it is I'm stuck with smugmug style for everything.