While giving support for Turtle skin some of the questions pop up from time to time. I gathered here some of the most frequently asked ones.
Where can I change this or that?
I’m aware finding the Settings window isn’t obvious sometimes. You can go to settings either by clicking the “gears icon” below the project on the left hand side or clicking the “skin icon” next to the selected skin or choose the “Album » Settings” menu. The skin’s proprietary settings are gathered on the skin tab (called “Turtle” for example).
How do I change the Theme image?
In jAlbum you can pick an image to represent a folder, called “Folder thumbnail“. This image will be used as the thumbnail in an upper level folder, you can click on to navigate to the folder. At the top level this image represents the album itself. This image will be used as album thumbnail when you upload the album to jalbum.net – otherwise it is usually not used in the album itself. However, in Turtle this image doubles as “Theme image” – you know, the big one on the thumbnail page. It is also used as thumbnail when sharing over social sites. You can select it by Right click » Use as folder thumbnail. You can even select a folder. As album thumbnail (at the top level) you can pick one that’s buried deep in the subalbums too, just go to the Settings » General » Album thumbnail and scroll through using the little triangles. If you want this image only as theme image but don’t want to include in the album, you can exlude it at the same time – jAlbum will take care of this situation. I know there is some ambiguity with jAlbum’s terminology of “folder thumbnail” and Turtle’s “theme image”, but this is a kind of recycling of an already existing jAlbum feature for a similar purpose. Just remember – the “Theme image” in Turtle is the same as the “Folder thumbnail” you choose with jAlbum’s right click menu.
Vertically split thumbnail page layout…
This one was not asked frequently, but I guess most of you don’t even know this feature exists, did you? If you want to have a portrait oriented theme image on the left hand side with the thumbnails right to it, just use portrait image bounds in the Settings » Turtle » Design » Theme image size box, e.g. 400×500.
The album won’t start, only load animations show up instead of thumbnails. What shall I do?
This must be a javaScript error. The most common source of this error is using quotes or apostrophes in file- or foldernames. I know it’s tempting to give folders plain english titles with apostrophes, but web servers, web technologies (Javascript, Flash, …) and external libraries (Google Maps, Paypal, Facebook) might fail on these. Those who author websites know it well, but you should think of it too. When you create an album, you are creating a website. So keep with the plain ol’ web-safe characters ( a-z A-Z 0-9 . – _ ) as folder and file names. You can give them descriptive titles in Edit mode » bottom right corner » Title, and use any character you like. Also you might want to check if the Settings » Advanced » Naming » URL encode links setting is on, which might help with file and folder names containing non-websafe characters.
How can I add description to a folder?
Do you see the other red arrow above? Yes, that’s where you can add descriptions to a folder. These desriptions will appear below the page title, and in the list of the sub-albums. But how to get to this page? If you are using double click to swap between Thumbnail and Edit mode, you might find it hard to get to the edit mode of a folder, because if you double click it, it will simply take you to the images in the folder.
So first select the folder’s thumbnail, then either use the Edit mode button on the top right corner or click the Edit link over the thumbnail or use the context menu (right click) + Properties. You can even use HTML formatting in the folder descriptions. For the top level page just go to the Settings » General » Album description. It’s the same as a folder description but for the album itself.
How visitors can download the originals?
As a first step, obviously you need to include the originals in your album. You can do this by a global switch on Settings » Pages » Link to (originals | hi res images) via scaled images. Or just select those images where you want the originals attached, Right click » Include original. The album will show a link (a button with a down arrow) to the original on the Info panel. When the visitor clicks it, the image will open in a new browser window. This is how browsers handle links to images. If you want to download it, just save from the new window (right click » Save as… or by drag and drop). You can also save it directly from the album by right clicking the download button, and selecting “Save link as…“.
How to stop visitors from downloading your photos?
While you can take steps to stop saving your images, there’s no absolute protection on the web. One can easily take a screenshot for example, you can’t stop it. Also the real source of the images can be easily revealed with debugging tools. Remember, an image visible on the web is also suspect to copying. If you are concerned about stealing your images do the following:
- Never upload the high resolution images along with your albums
- Apply watermark
- Use Turtle’s Right click protection feature (Advanced tab)
- Add a copyright notice to the album header or footer, you can even add one to the image caption (Caption templates)
How can I use the same settings in several albums?
If you want all your new albums to start with the same settings just make an album with the desired settings, then choose: File » Save as default… This way all your new albums will start with the saved set of settings. If you only want one album to use the settings from another, just use the File » Import » Settings from jAlbum project menu.
How can I add my logo in the header or footer?
First save your logo as PNG or GIF (8 bit with transparency) or 32 bit PNG in the final size (shouldn’t be too big, e.g. over 200px wide). Place this image in the skin folder’s (Ctrl-Alt-S from jAlbum) ‘res’ subfolder. You might need to have administrator privileges. Please don’t overwrite the skin’s own logo.png file. Now you can refer to this logo in the header or footer as: ${resPath}/mylogo.png. Here is an example:
<div class="center">
<p><a href="http://mysite.com/"><img src="${resPath}/mylogo.png"></a></p>
<p>Please visit my site!</p>
</div>
Please note, if you make any modification to a skin, it will be lost after a skin update. So please keep track of what you’ve modified, and save the necessary files in another location (e.g. a pendrive), to be able to re-apply the changes to the new skin version.
How can I translate a skin?
It is now pretty straightforward with jAlbum’s built-in translation tool. Pick you language in the Tools » Preferences » Language and use Tools » Translate » Translate selected skin if you want to do it from scratch or select Update to translate only the missing keys. If you have finished with it, please send me the translation file (Tools » Translate » Find skin translation » texts_XX.properties) to be attached with the next skin update. Thanks in the name of your fellow citizens.
How to optimize Turtle albums for less capable devices?
Turtle 2.x is using many advanced visual effects, like transitions, zoom effect, drop shadows, etc., which might consume too much of computation power on less capable devices. Here are my recommendatons to make the least resource-heavy albums:
- Use small image sizes, e.g. 600×480 (Settings » Images » Image bounds)
- Use smaller theme image e.g. 600×200 (Settings » Turtle » Design » Theme image size)
- Disable some of the transition effects, a simple Cross-fade should do (Advanced » Transition type)
- Disable the drop shadows (Design » Use 3D effects)
- Select a style with no graphic backgound, Black, Gray, White or Yellow
Plase write me if you are still missing something.
I plan to cover more topics like shopping cart integration, geotagging and video embedding in the upcoming posts. Stay tuned!
/Laza