Gallery2:Usability Issues:Survey:themes - Gallery Codex
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Gallery2:Usability Issues:Survey:themes

From Gallery Codex

What do you not like in Gallery 2?

I don't like how hard it was to make gallery look like it was part of my CMS (Nucleus). I had to make a copy of the relevant bits of the nucleus theme I'd chosen and create a new Gallery 2 theme from it. Really, I just wanted to add some content around the gallery theme, treating gallery itself almost like an iframe'd app. Maybe you could have a wrapper theme, separate from

the actual theme?

It is difficult and confusing to create a custom

theme. There are too many files to have to modify.
too static... we need more themes with ajax or flash

Making my own custom theme required me to make

changes deep in the code which makes it harder to upgrade

- can't easily synchronize albums with Picasa - none of the themes are clean and simple enough for me like the G1 themes were. - i actually don't particularly like the fact that it uses a DB.

The lack of variety of themes. Plus customizing themes requires advanced programming knowledge. If you can make

customizing a them easier, you will get more users!

Smarty as a templating/themeing system. I'd much rather have a PHPTemplate engine like Drupal's. It's very slow without a PHP accelerator (running on older hardware). Even with the accelerator, the performance is marginal. UI for setting

permissions is complex and requires a lot of page refreshes.

the lack of themes, a better way to see the next image that would come, instead of having only a very small "last" and "next" link, a small version of these images would keep more visitors on my website for a longer periode of time the gallery remote applet stopped working after updating of the debian

server :(

None of the themes grab me. I'm looking for something less geeky, more focused on making my pictures

available. Lightbox is close, but it's so slow as to be unusable.

1. Performance: Slow! Sometimes I get mysterious "error occurred" messages (timeout?) with no further info. 2. URL rewrite issues, namely causing conflict with the WordPress WP-G2 plugin. 3. Album Quick Links DHTML: the URLs are in JS rather than human-readable, even with URL Rewrite turned ON. Could that be fixed? 4. The CSS for the Matrix theme, if not the others, does not validate. For built-in themes, I'd hope that both

the XHTML and CSS would validate, at least with default settings.

Not a lot of flexibility with the available themes

for customization.

I'm looking for customization that is even easier than what Gallery2 presents now. I love the PG Theme and would love it if each and every option was turned on and off as easily

as it is in PG.

Some of the usability issues. In most themes (incl carbon) Links to previous and next are small, icons not clear. Default gallery theme is not pretty. More themes with good

usability would help.

The backend(admin) use the same theme as frontend

(like Drupal). I prefer seperate them, like Wordpress.

Not enough theme options. The ones that exist are ugly or boring. More modern and up to date styles are needed. The current ones feel old. Also it's not that user friendly. A bit

confusing at times.

Too many language files in the disribution: huge amounts of data and number of files I never need. Customization of

the Themes could be easier.

1. Control of some items seems to be in the wrong "level" or at the wrong "scope." Example: "Square Thumbnails" and in particular the background color used should be a theme or album setting, not a Gallery setting. Another: Hiding the top level breadcrumb would seem to belong in a permission setting, not an album, theme or Gallery setting 2. Often many ways to accomplish the same task, but no way to disable the redundancy. Example: navigation. Click on the image, click on an icon, click in the sidebar, click in the breadcrumbs. 3. Difficult to correctly guess where a setting might be controlled -- is it a Site setting? a Theme setting, an Album setting? I can sometimes see a logic to the distribution, but usually not. 4. Difficult to "quiet down" the interface. I've spent quite a while trying to figure out where all the extra decorations are so I can SUPPRESS them. If someone wants a "minimalist" Gallery, it's difficult to do. 5. MUCH too slow. In a test gallery, a main page has a link to a gallery with 4 albums. It routinely takes TWENTY SECONDS for the Gallery page

to load.

the default theme (probably matter of taste) the

slideshow feature (feels a bit clumsy)

1) I preferred the two-thumbnail method of Gallery 1, i.e. I found the mid-size thumbnail to be much more attractive/useful than just resizing the full image to fit the screen. 2) As a not-so-hardcore-coder I find the themes to be uninspiring, and I wish there was a lot more variety to choose from, while still maintaining full functionality of all the themes. 3) I'd like to see comments more visible for some of the standard skins, not unlike deviant art. 4) Although I've been using linux for a while now, I feel that upgrades and installs are much too complex/confusing to be handled easily by your average internet user. It's not that the documentation isn't there, the steps are simply too advanced for users who aren't experts at

network administration.

I found the filmstrip theme limited. I wanted something similar to JAlbum's Banana Album Flash theme (which is

excellent)

Too much need to modify theme files in order to make

minor changes. A generic HTML block for the sidebar may help.

module/themeing. After using drupal, i feel more documentation and an easier system would increase the number of

modules and themes that are created.

User interface customization is not as easy as I would like it to be. I wanted to simply change my interface from light colours to dark colours (to make it easier on my eyes). This apparently requires finding and installing a theme. I'm currently using a dark version of floatrix, but it's icons are not designed for a black background, so they look ugly around the edges. Ideally, I'd like to be able to choose a colour theme that works with all Gallery's graphics without finding a theme which gives me

this functionality.

The themeing is somehow less clear than Wordpress for example. (how the content is built, what's included, what's not, how to be able to show the sidebar in themes where it's not

default. How to show different options on theme admin page.)
Themes are not easy to apply and use.

Default theme is ugly. Other medias than pictures do not really well handled.

I would love to see many more themes! Also, the search is too advanced, most people look at it and just move on as

the results are not intuitive unless you are used to Gallery2

Organization orientated on User Albums. It's not senseful for a community with common interests. I'd never needed the User Album feature. Available themes - old school (using of

tables) or/and too overloaded with buttons. I always wrote my own.

Obsure (first album) as a means of the parent album. Confusing at first. Unable to set default theme, to prevent subalbumbs altering the "parent with default" album

settings.
Needs better themes

The exagerate possibility of personalization, that in reality obligates me to click a thousand checkboxes for every single task. The themes are, on the other hand, too less flexible. I would like to write title and description of a photo at the time of uploading, as at the moment I have to upload and then edit both. I don't mind about summary, it could be the first 100

characters of the description.

Good themes are lacking. The combination of the sidebar and drop down list for administration is annoying. One central place for navigation and administration based on if you're

logged in or not would be nice

* in the default or matrix theme, there's no difference in picture thumbnails and movie thumbnails. I differentiated album and photo thumbnails by a different frame, but saw no suitable movie thumbnail frame. * user/group management is not really streamlined nor powerful. * "rearrange items" and "reorder items" have the same meaning to me. not really descriptive.

no boolean searches. cannot select the results of a

query for zip download. lack of themes. no blog plug in.
need more themes

Theme and flash support is not enough.

Lack of themes, upgrades do not clean up afterthemselves very well, needs some sort of an ajax overhaul on

interacting with content.

I do think that all the flexibility makes things a bit "clumsy" with most of the default themes.

To small available themes
Processing time is slow. Limited theme selections.

Theme customisation, i know it's powerfull, but i would love a simplified mode that allows user to customise a theme

using keywords such as in pixelpost.

How difficult it is to customize themes, limited

user privileges etc

Lag in slideshow after populating an album (1&1 host lags to HTTP 400); slideshow somehow manages to work within the following 48 hours. Slideshow in IE 6 shows missing images (red-X-box) for photos that display perfectly in Firefox 2. No embed option for RSS feeds or RSS icon in any released theme. Dependence on third-party binaries that may drift out of sync with

hosting capability. Problems running Java embeds in IE.

Some of the themes can be a little klunky, and the display options aren't as configurable from within the Admin

interface as I would like.

speed seems slow at times No universal design of themes. Wordpress allows the designing of themes to be easy. Then you plug them in.

The thing that I don't like much is to go into the source and make changes to themes of plugins. It needs a guide for

novice on how to use the gallery (first time users kinda thing)

You keep changing the way the themes work with each

release.

Themes do not have user defined banners. I would like to have that customized on a few albums. Then maybe even a bunch of themed gallery logos (Birthday, New Years Eve, Music/Concert, etc) I made a Mardi Gras one, with a purple, green, and gold jester hat. But since I need to make a custom theme

module, and rebuild it every release I gave up on it.

SPAM. ;) The captcha module doesn't seem to work for custom themes. Modifying a theme, ever so slightly seems to be a

bit more intrusive than it should be.

- Themes are hard to customize. - The look of the themes are as modern as themes found on other photo gallery web

sites (Zenfolio, Smugmug, etc).
The themes are not very professional looking.

The lack of available themes, and the difficulty of

having to create those themes.

That a theme developer can not modify standard

blocks.
crappy complicated themes

Default themes are too cluttered, don't focus on the images!

Too complex to administer and customize. I spent many hours before I got it just right. Built-in color packs are

dog ugly :) Lack of dynamic themes (using DHTML/Ajax)

We desperately need feature parity with Gallery 1.x. Additional themes would be nice, but not critical. A quick and easy way to replace the gallery 2 logo in the themes would be nice (replacing it with your own logo, scaled automatically to fit if

needed).

Not enough well designed themes.

Not many themes

themes, they are ugly.

that gallery2 have not good themes with AJAX

Administration and site viewing. I hate the fact, that I can't use different themes for viewing and administration.

The both should be completely separated.
themes - they are too complex

The theme system is almost impossible to customize in certain ways due to the way the sidebar operates

The theme

No theme that I do really like, either they look good or they are easy to use for the visitor but didn't find one

that suits both needs.

not enough themes, and not enough customization

tools (colors in the theme, etc)