The documentation is located below the gallery. Make sure to try the Advanced Options button.
Documentation
I originally created the Gallery Control as a re-write of my site's existing gallery system. I wanted it's presentation to be CSS controlled, and I wanted it to validate. Futhermore, I wanted it to be easily insertable into an existing website. When I was done, I ended up with the Gallery Control.
This gallery includes some features that I think are pretty unique.
- You can catalog a master (large) copy of an image, to future-proof your gallery.
- The scripts detect the user's resolution, and send a custom-sized version of the images to fit the screen.
- Lots of user-definable and usable options (down the side of the page)
- Ability to read EXIF's from images, to save you time when catalogging.
- Automatic thumbnail creation.
- The whole thing is designed to flow nicely; so screen size doesn't matter. It's flexible.
You're looking at it.
At some point, you'll want to see the administration features of the gallery. Click here for the login page. Use username admin and password password.
The Gallery Control is an ASP.Net user control written in Visual Basic.Net. It was written under the framework v. 2.0, using Visual Web Developer Express 2005. It generates XHTML 1.1 compliant code.
Users are presented with a thumbnail page, with optional navigation elements (controlled by the user's preferences).
You can insert them into any page, just like any other ASP.Net control:
<UserGallery:GalleryControl runat="server" ID="GalleryControl" PageSize="25" Owner="Admin" DatabasePath="~/App_Data/Photos.mdb" FilePath="~/Images/Gallery" PopupPage="~/GalleryPopup.aspx" ItemCSSClasses="PhotoItemHidden,PhotoItem" IncludeCategories="true" IncludeSort="true" IncludeSearch="true" IncludePageSize="true" />
The Gallery Control has a fair number of options, but they all make sense. Further detail on the options below.
Also, make sure to register it, within your web.config:
<add tagPrefix="UserGallery" tagName="GalleryControl" src="~/App_Controls/GalleryControl.ascx"/>
The Gallery Control allows you to upload photos though the Admin interface; but don't forget, you can also FTP files for bulk-loading. I usually FTP.
Since images are automatically sized to the user's screen size, I recommend storing images in the highest quality possible. I store the huge images from my DSLR at maximum resolution, just so I don't degrade the content. Remember, in 1997, a 640 x 480 image was considered large...
- It needs write permissions wherever you allow users to upload images.
- It uses an Access MDB database for storing metadata about the pictures. It's located in the ~/App_Data directory.
The Gallery Control has several properties available. Here's the list:
SortOrder, Use this to specify which posts come first, oldest or newest. I tend to always use newest.
PageSize, Use this to specify how many posts are visible per page (default).
DatabasePath, Use these to specify the path to your database (for metadata about pictures). Note: You can store multiple galleries per database, via the Owner property.
FilePath, Use this to specify which folder you store your images. It will automatically have a subdirectory for uploads.
Owner, Use this to specify the owner of the gallery. This will allow you to have multiple galleries per site, with different owners.
IncludeCategories, Do you want a list of categories available? If so, how many? They are sorted starting with the most popular.
IncludeSearch, Do you want a full-text search available to visitors?
IncludeSort, Do you visitors to be able to change the sorting order?
IncludePageSize, Do you visitors to be able to change the page size?
ItemCSSClasses, This is a comma-delimited list of CSS classes to use for the items in the gallery. The first item should be the "hidden" class (used so that the admin can see what photos are hidden. The rest of the classes (2-N) are used for formatting the thumbnail items. You can specify more than once to make the galllery more interesting. This example only contains two classes, the hidden and the standard.
PopupPage, The path to your popup page (used for displaying photos at large size).
ThumbnailSize, The maximum pixel dimensions for your generated thumbnails.
The gallery's presentation is totally controlled by CSS, so you can radically alter the look of it without too much effort.
Furthermore, since you have all the source to the control, you can modify any aspect about how it works.
I've built a small command-line program to optionally integrate your gallery with Flickr. You can download a copy of it here (source included). It allows you to sync your entire gallery, or only the parts that you choose.
The Gallery Control is totally localized. Currently, it includes
translations in English and Dutch. Additional translations can easily
be added using the .resx files as templates. If you make any new
translations, be sure to contact me so I can include them in future
releases.