TinyWebGallery Blog

Hi,

I currently don’t have to time to make a full release so I made my current local version of TWG 1.8.1 available in the forum.

It fixes a few small things and does already include TFU 2.11 .

Get all details here:

http://www.tinywebgallery.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=14

Have fun using TWG,

Michael

TWG 1.8 is now using css sprites for most of the icons and buttons.

Sprites is a technique that only one big image is loaded which contains all the other images. The position of the images inside the big image are defined in a css. This saves a lot of requests (e.g. in TWG only one language flag is now loaded instead of 29)  and bandwith (1 language image = 5kb; 29 language images = 28 kb).

There are a lot of different tutorials out there and I have read quite a
lot to find the best way which should be used if you have an existing
application and you want to introduce sprites.

I have tried different implementation methods and this are the 3 main ways
you will find in the web:

1. with ul/li like explained in http://www.alistapart.com/articles/sprites
2. with divs like you can see at http://css-sprit.es/
3. and with using a img tag as explained here: http://cssglobe.com/post/3028/creating-easy-and-useful-css-sprites

And unfortunately the first ones you find with google if you search for “css sprites” are not the easiest and best way in my opinion! Most of the time they use the ul/li solution.
This works fine if you don’t have a complex layout where each pixel counts and should look
exacly the same. I have started with this in the TWGXplorer but was not able to get the exact same positions as before.
Then I tried using divs. This works quite nice at a lot of places but at the end I also had problems to adjust the divs exacly the way I needed it.
So I finally ended up by using the img tag solution. And for an existing application this is the way to go. You simply replace all images with a transparent 1px image and apply the class for the big image and the class for the sprite. That’s really simple and worked for me in all browsers without any modifications.

I was using the sprite generator you find at http://css-sprit.es/. It has the advantage that the size of each image is specified in the css too and not only the position. The disadvantage is that if you run the generator twice with the same images a different sprite can be created because it does not sort the images. I have contacted the author about this and maybe this is already fixed when you read this post.

I hope I have saved someone a little bit time because for me it took quite a while to compare them.

Have fun using sprites,
Michael

Hi,

I have finished the last tests and everything seems very good.

Therefore I uploaded the final of TWG 1.8 to the forum

http://www.tinywebgallery.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2321

Please note that the additional language files are not included in the download anymore. You can always download the latest versions from the website. You find a link in the forum thread.

When the new website will be online there will be a direct link in the menu.

Have fun using TWG,

Michael

The RC4 of TWG 1.8 is now available in the forum:

http://www.tinywebgallery.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2321

• New: The left/right buttons of the non-scolling dhtml navigation are now using Javascript as well and not html links as before
• Fix: Non-scolling dhtml navigation + a dynamic background image was not working together – now it is.

Seems pretty close to the final .

Best,

Michael

The RC1 of TWG 1.8 is now available in the forum:

http://www.tinywebgallery.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2321

This version of TWG will use sprites to improve loading times (I have already removed 315 images without loosing any functionality!), has an impoved administration (e.g. I added the config parameters for sorting) and I added the new language strings for the new features of TWG 1.8.x
Please check your language file if it is fully translated AND the file language/language_default.php.

Translate it to your language and sent it back to me. The backend has some new translations as well – please check the folder admin/_languages if you can help to finish the translations there.

Have fun using TWG,

Michael

Hi,

TWG has a new logo. A friend of mine was designing a new logo for TWG that works for an image gallery as well as for an uploader.
If you go to www.tinywebgallery.com you already can see the favicon in the address bar.
I’m currently preparing the new pages with the new logo and I will release this together with TWG 1.8

So stay tuned…

- Michael

Hi,

TWG 1.8 is almost ready. The sprites work better than expected (315 images less!!!! in the TWG download).

I will post the new version in the forum most likely on Saturday. Just go there and look in the Release candidate section for it !

You will find a nice howto use sprites here in the forum soon. I have tried all ways I have found in the net and at the end most them are simly not good. Stay tuned for how this was done in TWG and not in a 2 line example!

- Michael

Hi,

I updated TWG 1.7.8.1 again because I added TFU 2.10.4 there. Additionally I lowered the restrictions for passwords you can use in the private.txt. now special characters like öäü! can be used as well.

Download it as usual from the TWG website.

- Michael

Hi,

I have updated TWG to version 1.7.8.1. This version has the following enhancements:

• New: Added $video_flv_buffer to video.php for videos that you can specify the buffer fors flv’s before a video starts
• New: Update TFU to 2.10.2
• New: Detection of not readable xml files. I try to delete the file and debugging this problem
• New: flush() after the header. The increases TWG because css and js files can already be loaded.
• Fix: FLV part was rewritten because it was still using code which was needed for older players. Now the code is up to date again.

This is only a minor update and therefore the download and the official version is still 1.7.8. You see that you have the new version in version.txt.

Have fun using TWG,

Michael

Hi,

TWG had the problem that when your where renaming or moving folders you had to manually rename the xml files. now this is solved :

New: $autocreate_folder_id added. Since 1.7.7 you can use a folder.id file which is the prefix for all xml files – You can now create this file automatically with the current directory in it. This enables you to move folders without loosing any xml data like comments or tags.

http://www.tinywebgallery.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1653

Have fun,

Michael