Pixaria Gallery has been updated to version 1.4.2. This is another release aimed at squashing bugs so it's a recommended update for all current users. You are, as always, strongly advised to check the version history to see what's new and please make sure you also consult the file change log before applying the update!
This version of Pixaria will be the last one where you have to apply the database patch file yourself because I'm moving to an upgrade helper script which will be able to manage the database upgrading process for you.
All users are advised that the next release of Pixaria will require you to have this version (1.4.2) installed and running before you can upgrade any further. For technical reasons, the facility to upgrade from earlier versions than 1.4.2 will not be available in future. Please bear this in mind if you decide to skip this version.
PermalinkAnother week goes by and more bugs are squashed. I've done a fair bit of work on Pixaria this week and I will be spending what is forecast to be a wet and windy Sunday in London busy working on fixing yet more issues and adding a few nice little features for the next update.
This week, I've been looking at problems with Firefox and Internet Explorer not liking some URLs generated by Pixaria and dealing with some odd image importing problems that are affecting two users.
One of the most frustrating things about doing any kind of bug fixing in Pixaria is dealing with the idiosyncrasies of the users' own workflow which can vary widely depending on what Pixaria is being used for in each case. I've spent a huge amount of time over the last seven days banging my head against problems with character set encoding issues in IPTC metadata and supporting issues importing images that contain corrupt metadata. Each of these problems is an issue which is unique to the individual user and in particular their web server set-up and workflow which can make diagnosing and fixing the problem quite difficult.
As an example, images containing IPTC metadata encoded in western Latin but with accented characters will often not import correctly into Pixaria because PHP can't interpret the data properly until it knows what the text encoding is meant to be. This can be compounded in circumstances where the metadata is corrupt, inserted twice or present in more than one text encoding all of which are issues I've come across.
Notwithstanding a busy week, I hope to have a minor update out sometime early next week if not a little sooner.
PermalinkCurrent users of Pixaria may be aware that the upgrade process for moving to newer versions of the script involves importing SQL scripts into your database using a tool such as phpMyAdmin.
Recent changes to Pixaria to improve the internationalisation of the script and add support for UTF8 text encoding to allow Hebrew, Japanese and other non-Latin text in image and gallery data require separate SQL updater scripts depending on which version of MySQL your server is running.
From the next update of Pixaria, all SQL database upgrades will be done using a special updater script written in PHP and accessed through a web interface. Hopefully this will not only allow me to build more customised SQL scripts which depend on the version of MySQL installed but will also make the upgrade process simpler and more reliable.
If you have any thoughts on how this should work or other suggestions, please e-mail me at info@pixaria.com.
PermalinkSince 1.4.1 came out, I've found and fixed a couple more bugs in Pixaria which will be welcome news to users who run Pixaria on Windows or wish to use non-Latin character sets like Cyrillic, Hellenic or Hebrew in Pixaria.
The latest bugs fixed are a second issue with the menus for selecting the number of thumbnails on a page and an issue that prevents users setting the temporary items path on Windows.
I've also made changes to the way IPTC importing works for images which have text stored in UTF8 encoding. This means that Pixaria can now import IPTC metadata from images where non-Latin metadata was added with UTF8 compatible image processing tools like Adobe Photoshop, iView MediaPro and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.
If you have bugs to report, please e-mail info@pixaria.com with full details and I'll look into them for you.
PermalinkAs Pixaria Gallery is powered by PHP I thought it would be worth bringing to everyone's attention, the latest in the 'Month of Bugs' series which began the year with Apple bugs and has now moved on to look at PHP. The idea is that for every day in March a new security flaw in PHP will be published with sample code for a working exploit provided where available.
Already highlighted are a number of critical bugs and if you have control over your server then you should definitely be looking out for updates to your current version of PHP.
You can read more about the PHP bugs discovered so far here and this especially bad one here.
This should be a gentle reminder to everyone that it's important to keep your server and all its software as up to date as possible.
PermalinkPixaria Gallery 4.0.5
Friday, May 10, 2013
Pixaria Gallery 4.0.4
Monday, April 29, 2013
Pix Update
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Pixaria Gallery 4.0.2
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Important Update!
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Website Comment
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Pixaria Gallery 4.0 Demo
Friday, September 28, 2012
50% Discount
Friday, September 28, 2012
Pixaria Support
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Support Tickets
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
