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Updates to the documentation

I've made some improvements to the documentation page which covers the process of importing images. This is to clarify what some of the limitations are on this at the moment and bring it up to date with the current user interface for importing images.

For those of you who find that a technical run through is helpful, I've also included a basic state diagram to show what happens behind the scenes during each stage of the process of importing images.

Check out the updated import documentation in the wiki.

Pixaria 2.0 to feature improved searching

When Pixaria 2.0 is released later this year, it will feature a complete overhaul of the image search user interface and functionality. The image search tools in Pixaria Gallery have been completely re-written from the ground up to make them both easier to use and more powerful.

The first thing you will see when you upgrade is that the advanced search form has been re-designed so it takes up less vertical space and makes better use of wider screen displays. Also new is a colour search utility which will allow users to quickly search images you have tagged with colour information.

Behind the scenes, a re-written search engine does away with the need for separate keyword fields and allows you to input complex search queries using 'and', 'or' and 'not' operators as well as parentheses to group search clauses together. For the first time in Pixaria, the keywords index also supports native three letter and numeric keywords as well as improved support for searching for exact phrases even if they are three or four words long.

Viewing search results will be a more pleasurable experience for your users in Pixaria 2.0 thanks to the ability to browse results exactly as you would a gallery. This means that you can quickly flip through searches using 'previous' and 'next' links as well as a customisable thumbnail view next to each comping image.

Pixaria 2.0 will be released in the fourth quarter of 2007. Users purchasing on or after the 1st of June 2007 are entitled to a free upgrade while earlier users, can upgrade for $30.

Ten Days with Adobe Lightroom

Rui Carmo spends ten days comparing iPhoto '08 and Lightroom. It's not exactly a fair comparison but is, nonetheless, an interesting one given that Adobe Lightroom will set you back (US) $299 and iPhoto '08 is just $79 and comes with all the other iLife apps too...

Pixaria 2.0 Screenshots

For everyone following the development of Pixaria 2, make sure you check out the screenshot gallery in the Pixaria Central forums. I'll be posting new images every couple of days and have kicked off with some shots of the gallery interface and news editor in the admin area!

Being an indie PHP software developer

Over at Daring Fireball, John Gruber has an enlightening article discussing what it means to be an independent software developer building applications for the Mac. While reading his summary of the event, it occurred to me that there are some interesting parallels between the indie Mac scene and the 'packaged web application' community of which Pixaria is a member.

The aim of the recently concluded C4[1] conference was to bring together developers from the small software shops that are so important to the Mac scene and give them a forum to share ideas and learn from some of the best in the business. Luminaries such as Wil Shipley, founder of OmniGroup, and more recently Delicious Monster, put forward their perspectives on marketing, design, press and publicity - all of which must be taken into account if a product is going to be worth the effort put into building it.

The fruits of this approach can be seen in what's (sometimes annoyingly) been dubbed the 'Delicious Generation', a group of developers who don't really fit into the old-school Mac community and instead are part of a new wave of Mac developers who are pushing the boundaries of user interface, application functionality and design.

Coming from a Mac background, it's interesting to look around the web at packaged PHP applications and take stock of how lessons from the desktop scene are generally being ignored. As an example, I recently spent some time looking for an off the shelf customer management, user administration and subscription system for use on the Divestock website and was surprised to see how shoddy and unprofessional most of the products I looked at were, from the website right down to the actual software itself.

Now I'm (hopefully) not so arrogant as to think that I'm the best person at design and programming in the world but I do sometimes wish I was working as part of a programming community that had a bit more respect for itself and its customers.

An example of a group of developers that seems to be thinking about this in the right way is the Ruby on Rails gang. Somehow these guys and gals seem to have come through the dot-com collapse having learnt that good design, accessibility, adherence to standards and above all professionalism is more important than a good idea and a quick posting on HotScripts.

The question for me is: Is this a problem specific to the PHP developer community..? I suspect it might just be. PHP is now relatively long in the tooth (13 years) and many of its developers have been using it since well before the whole Web 2.0 bandwagon got rolling. Maybe because of this, they've fallen into bad habits or simply got lazy and we're now seeing the consequences of this in quickly thrown together and badly presented scripts.

In the Ruby on Rails and Mac scenes, those developers leading the pack are truly quite visionary in their approach, applying business logic, good design and marketing in a way that I've never really seen before. If PHP developers don't start to think in the same, 'joined-up' way, I don't think it will be long before PHP falls into disuse and that would truly be a pity...

Upgrade subscriptions are now available

If you're an existing Pixaria Gallery user who purchased before June 1st 2007 and are interested in upgrading to version 2.0 when it's released, you can now purchase upgrade subscriptions via PayPal from Pixaria.com.

An upgrade subscription costs US $30 per six months ($5 per month) and ensures that you continue to have access to the most recent version of Pixaria Gallery for your website.

Pixaria Gallery 2.0 will be available later this year boasting a wealth of new features and enhancements designed to make it even easier to sell your images online. Stay tuned for more details coming throughout August..!