From index directly to Gallery Browser

[c_by_sinus]

Hi,
I tried really to search the forum for these two main-questions, what arised for me, but I found nothing. Sorry, if I have overseen it.

I try to look EE from the sight of my clients and friends. They do not have experience with EE and hence it must be easy and inntuitive. I discussed these two points with some friends, 1 computer-freak and 4 NOT computer-freaks.

When a user first comes to EE, he will see the index, what looks fine for me. Second, usually he clicks on an image. And here arises the first question:

1) Is it possible (I guess yes), to come from this index directly into the gallery browser? The reason is, that a user should have a quick overview on all images. I had in the past also some people, who did not found the gallery browser-button (or did now know what this is) and thought "ah, nice, these 7 photos" and have never seen the other 50 images.
Then from the gallery browser it is most likely that he clicks on an image again, and now he is in the "photo page" and knows that in fact he has three different views from EE (index, photo page, browser).

2) How is it possible to make this button "Gallery browser" bigger?

3) Is it possible to place the "select image size" - button in the "photo page" on another place, like over the image or under the header or so? Because when you have a smaller monitor there is the danger, that a user does not see this button, because he does not scroll down.

Sorry to ask a bit basic stuff, but unfortunately I am not a php-freak :cry:
... but I will lern more and more to use and change some things in EE, it is a really great program!
Markus

[c_by_sinus]

Ah, I see now. I created some groups and we have two possibilities:

1) When I click on the title, then the Photo Browser (overview) appears
2) When I click on a photo, then the Photo Page appears
I uploaded in the last few days about 150 images (football). Then I gave all 20 members the link.
Three of them came to me next time and said something like this "great, thanks! You made five super-photos!"

When I explained then, that there are 150 images, they were baffled and asked where.

Like me, they have trouble to distinguish between the 3 main-pages:

a) the index page
b) the Photo Page (where the photo is big)
c) the Photo Browser (with the overview)

The index is simple, because usually we start there. Butn then, usually, a user will click on an image and NOT on a title and he will see the big photo. When users are not that familiar with the internet, they simply do not check, that there is a browser. Would it not be better, if the user sees, when he comes to the index-page, cleary, ahhh, here I can see the image bigger and here I can have an overview?

Hence my questions:

-What about your experience with this theme?
-How could I make these "three" parts better visible in the index page?(in a first step I made the title bigger)
-How could I do it, that the user could junmp in every stage (index, page, browser) to the other two stages?

My only wish here is, that the "user interface" is very clear to the user, that he sees instantly, "ah, I have an index page, a photo page and a overview-page (broswer)".

First I thought, that it is only me, what has this problem, but when I spoke with the 3 football-colleagues, I realized, that this is not easy to see.
All these 3 guys (of 20) came individually to me and instead they saw 150 images, they saw only 5!!
I was a bit embarrassed :oops:

I guess, I could do it much better, but how?
I guess, I would link both, the title and the images, in the index page to the browser, then they see first the index, then the browser.
Or I could create a button in the index page with something like "Overview" or so.

Do I have here a big knot in my brain or what do you think?
Thanks for tips!!
Markus

[mwpmo]

c_by_sinus,

I think we are facing the same problem

Please read my post

## Link to the Gallery Index - New Feature request !
http://www.photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=35058

Can my suggusted modification can solve the problem?

I hope Pekka can help us to the modification!


mwpmo

[Pekka]

No I won't be doing phpBB style chained structure strings for EE now, but there are many other ways to improve link visibility and make them very clear to visitors, and alter page layouts.

For example, every item in user-interface that can be translated, can be an image. This lets you do design graphics and use colors and images for ew.g. next, previous and gallery browser links. The translation system also allows you to change every text, e.g. gallery browser could be THUMBNAIL VIEW or anything else.

Also, page layout can be quite freely altered, there is a template system in 1.5 which is fully done for list and photo pages. Each item, text and link on page can be put enywhere you like, or removed alltogether (although they are affected in this respect by how you set up things in misc settings editor).

Tomorrow I'll try to make one template with extremely visual graphical links for demostration, and few different layouts, too.

[mwpmo]

Pekka,

Thanks a lot for your quick response!

Looking forward to see the new template and layout demostration.

By the way, now the main difference between difference template is the color combination. (Correct me if I am wrong)

Is it better to have difference layout style?

For the phpBB style, can we do it by editing the template only?
or we need to edit the list.php and photo.php ?

If we need to edit these two files, can you give us some hints so I can try it myself?

MWPMO

[c_by_sinus]

Tomorrow I'll try to make one template with extremely visual graphical links for demostration, and few different layouts, too.
Hi Pekka,
Thanks for your answer. That is great, and it would be super if you could find the time to show us such a template!
Markus

[okapi]

the link to your gallery browser in EE 1.5 is always: http://yourdomain/yoursite/list.php.
this will show the first page (or last page - depending on list page sort order, set in misc settings) of your gallery browser.
you can put it anywhere you want it of course.