Big photos and stretchy goodness have come to Journal style. Instead of medium-sized images staggered
back and forth with captions alternating left and right, we made room for bigness by placing the photos
centered with captions on the bottom. Example.

If you have a big monitor and widen your browser, the size of those photos Should. Make. A. Statement.
There are some photos you just need to see big, like this one from Andres Stapff at Reuters (used by permission):



Whatever the width of your visitor's browser, it will do the right thing and select resolutions that don't
require horizontal scrolling.

It should work with all themes, but not all themes stretch to the full width of the browser on big
monitors. We recommend picking stretchy themes.

You can still force the old Journal style from Customize Gallery if you've used it to make pricelists, etc.

Slideshow style also got a big makeover. It's cleaner and now fills as much of the screen as we can.
Just go to any gallery that doesn't have its style forced, like this one, then pick slideshow
from the style button. Customizers can give their fans a full-browser slideshow
with their awesome design: Example on Andy's site.

Critique and filmstrip styles have been pulled from the style button, but you can still force them in
Customize Gallery.

Release notes.

Gotcha: If you're a power or pro, you have to enable "stretchy" on your customize page...

Nice improvements to journal and slideshow.

I noticed that the style button has finally been YUI-fied and looks like it fits on the page properly now with the rest of the controls - that's good. Folks who had implemented the YUI style button customization will have to remove it now (because they now have two style buttons).

That really looks great!!! Nice job to the team.

Now I just need to get rid of this small 23" monitor and get a pair of 30" monitors!

Keep Shooting!
John

Very nice!

And thank you for leaving the old journal style as a selection - I use that in two galleries as a point of direction to my travel journals. Without the old journal-style I would need to build html-only galleries.

--- Denise

Originally Posted by denisegoldberg Very nice! And thank you for leaving the old journal style as a selection - I use that in two galleries as a point of direction to my travel journals. Without the old journal-style I would need to build html-only galleries. --- Denise

Yeah Denise - we wanted to intro the new style w/out ruining AboutMe galleries, Guestbooks, etc. We'll build in a Guestbook / About Me feature, and I'd hope, an update to Old Journal style, that allows for creative uses that folks are doing now with Journal. We're gathering input, here. You'll probaly want to build those HTML galleries at some point, or, use our new journal Can't say more, because I don't know more at this point...

The only problem with the new slideshow style are the captions cover the slide
the same as with FSSS. Especially if the caption is large, it can cover most of
the slide and looks like trash. We need a way to turn off captions for the
style and FSSS. Perhaps a way to set the font and size would help, the
current font and size is terrible. Not everyone is running large shows.

Take a look on a smaller monitor and not a 30" one and you'll see how terrible it looks.

Originally Posted by Andy Yeah Denise - we wanted to intro the new style w/out ruining AboutMe galleries, Guestbooks, etc. We'll nuke the olde one altogether someday, can't say when, but we definitely plan to phase it out... and we'll build in a Guestbook / About Me feature. You'll probaly want to build those HTML galleries at some point, or, use our new journal Can't say more, because I don't know more at this point...

Thanks Andy - I was just doing a little playing to see if the new journal style will work for my travel stories galleries. It's interesting, because I want to highlight my newest travel story plus have links to all of the stories. Certainly making the photo larger highlights it. I didn't switch the gallery to the new journal style yet, but I suspect I will over the weekend.

I've already added the code to make the journal caption background a lighter shade of gray - the darker gray that defaulted for me (with a white background) made it uncomfortable for my old eyes to read the text.

My About page is already an html-only gallery, but my guestbooks aren't. And while I like the "in your face" look of the new journal style, that doesn't work well (for me) as the top of a guestbook. So I'll probably convert those to html-only galleries.

--- Denise

Way cool! Any chance you'd consider implementing keyboard shortcuts? Boston.com's Big Picture uses "J" and "K" for image-hopping, which can be superior to scrolling and stopping.

Originally Posted by Allen The only problem with the new slideshow style are the captions cover the slide the same as with FSSS. Especially if the caption is large, it can cover most of the slide and looks like trash. We need a way to turn off captions for the style and FSSS. Perhaps a way to set the font and size would help, the current font and size is terrible. Not everyone is running large shows. Take a look on a smaller monitor and not a 30" one and you'll see how terrible it looks.

Thanks Allen - I've made sure our team has seen this.

Originally Posted by wellman Way cool! Any chance you'd consider implementing keyboard shortcuts? Boston.com's Big Picture uses "J" and "K" for image-hopping, which can be superior to scrolling and stopping.

DO NOT ADD ANY MORE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS!! It's a pita now trying the
cntl-a to select all in page and it jumps to lightbox. And try to search for
something in the page by typing in a letter like a.

Originally Posted by Allen DO NOT ADD ANY MORE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS!! It's a pita now trying the cntl-a to select all in page and it jumps to lightbox. And try to search for something in the page by typing in a letter like a.

Perhaps, just smarter handling of keyboard shortcuts? They're wonderful for mouse-o-phobes or laptop browsing.

[QUOTE=Allen]..
2. Searching by typing is not a standard option. What browser is that?..[/url]

Oh, and lest you think I'm in a good mood today or something...

Slide show still has no option to disable that super-annoying floating thumbnail bar. I *HATE* that bar.

I want keyboard shortcuts to advance/go back, and barring that, I want to be able to click on the forward/back arrow keys and *NOT* have every image marred by that stupid thumbnail bar.

There. Back to my normal curmudgeonly self. That feels great. :-}

Originally Posted by darryl 2. Searching by typing is not a standard option. What browser is that?..[/url]

OOps, sorry Darryl, hit edit instead of reply and lost of your post.

Have you not seen that option with Firefox? Been there forever.
Sure help searching quickly in a page.

Slideshow style looks like a piece of (flash) with the background color that
comes up and no way to change it. CAPTIONS SHOULD NOT BE ON TOP OF
SLIDES HIDING THE PHOTO. You can see here how bad it looks.

From today's Popular photos, caption covers 48.32% of photo. This is terrible.
With a really big caption the whole photo would probably be covered.
Slideshow style

Originally Posted by Allen From today's Popular photos, caption covers 45% of photo. This is terrible. With a really big caption the whole photo would probably be covered.

Hey Allen, we get it - but you can turn captions off, too.

The problem is, we don't really have a way of knowing how much room for the caption and for the photo. But Shizam continues to ponder creative ways to deal with this.

Thanks for telling us like it is, Allen.

Originally Posted by Andy Hey Allen, we get it - but you can turn captions off, too. The problem is, we don't really have a way of knowing how much room for the caption and for the photo. But Shizam continues to ponder creative ways to deal with this. Thanks for telling us like it is, Allen.

Oh, there is a caption toggle?

It's so small I bet 90% of viewers never see it. And if my Dad did he's not a
precision surgeon to be able to click on it. Most times it hides too quick to
notice before they can read what it says.

We need a parameter that can be put in js to hide the thumbs and captions.

Holy cow, the new journal just rocks. I got goosebumps viewing my OWN stuff, in this gallery which has quotes as captions. Congrats and thanks to the team! http://lynnesite.smugmug.com/gallery/6797869_NJrEz

Anyone notice that when you view a slide show on a really wide monitor (24" imac for instance...) that the bottom of the images gets cut off if the browser is set to that really wide level? I've been looking at the example slideshows and thinking I wasn't sure why someone would pick this image or that, cuz there just didn't seem to be much of interest in it and all the good stuff seemed too closely cropped.
Then I shrunk the width a bit and got the point... :)
For example: (i'll try to get an image in here, but try it with a wide, not too tall, browser window to fit 16x9) (OK, it's an attachment)
This image is screen shot from Andy's page (hope it's OK, Andy!) with a caption of Oban to Criagnure Ferry (2nd image after the IR clouds).

Original image (screen shot of whole desktop): 1920 x 1200
Firefox window set to max-wide.