Community @ The Turning Gate
Support community for TTG plugins and products.
NOTICE
The Turning Gate's Community has moved to a new home, at https://discourse.theturninggate.net.
This forum is now closed, and exists here as a read-only archive.
- New user registrations are disabled.
- Users cannot create new topics.
- Users cannot reply to existing topics.
You are not logged in.
- Topics: Active | Unanswered
#226 Re: General » Display Quality of pictures on different devices » 2013-06-09 05:02:30
Now I wonder if other photographers on the forum here have noticed such fairly big differences and if so, do you just leave it as is or how do you go about it?
Yes, I'm sure anyone that's been calibrating their monitors is aware of how off uncalibrated monitors are. The ones sold by Apple are pretty good out of the box, but the cheap ones typically used on Windows systems can be really out of whack. Same for the iPad/iPhone screens compared to other tablets and phones.
BTW - my iPad and even my iPhone are calibrated, using the Datacolor Spyder.
You can't help those with uncalibrated monitors. First, you can't explain how it's out or how to fix it to them. Second, they probably don't care (certainly not nearly as much as you or others who would calibrate their monitors).
You might consider showing a test image (e.g. 20 shades of gray) and letting your visitors know if they can't see this, then they should adjust their monitors. Still this will be ignored by nearly everyone that views your images. Few will bother to do the calibrated, even with the built in software of their OS.
http://w4zt.com/screen/
http://uofgts.com/PS-P2Site/Calibration.html
http://elephantav.files.wordpress.com/2 … yscale.jpg
Then even if they tried to calibrate their monitors using its hardware and the OS's software controls, it's still very likely they'll still not be able to see what you intended. Most people are not using monitors that can show the full sRGB gamut or all its shades of grey. (and again, they probably don't care and wouldn't appreciate the difference).
About the only thing you can do for uncalibrated monitors is to reduce the dynamic range of your images (less contrast) and reduce the gamut (less saturation).
But then when someone like me who has good monitors and appreciates properly tuned images would be disappointed with your duller images.
So...don't worry about other people's uncalibrated monitors. They don't know what they're missing and really don't care. You can lead a horse to gallery, but you can't make them appreciate art.
#227 Re: General » Password Protected Galleries » 2013-04-21 14:46:26
Password protection does not block access to /thumbnails/, /photos/, or other assets.
OK - that's what I noticed, and came to the conclusion this was generally good enough.
I was just thinking of using .htaccess to turn off the indexes for the assets pages. So anyone going to /photos/ wouldn't find the file names. Hmmm, couldn't this be added to Publisher? That would be even better than good enough.
Then I have a case where I want the entire directory locked down, and did so server-side and found the problem with having assets being locked out of the Auto Index.
implement .htaccess directives
I was thinking about that, so I'll read up on your reference.
So how to completely lock down a set of galleries...hmmm
I was thinking of creating a Publisher to point at a completely private folder (e.g., "privatedir"), but not have an Auto Index in there, or I could redirect it to the home page (or even an error page).
I could even turn off index listing in .htaccess for privatedir, so people can't find the names of its sub-directories.
For each gallery, I assign a server-side password. Then email people the direct URL and password info.
domain.com/privatedir
domain.com/privatedir/gallery1
domain.com/privatedir/gallery2
domain.com/privatedir/gallery3
I think this would be ultra secure for each gallery. You won't see anything without the password.
And I think the privatedir lets me publish galleries, while also having that directory locked out to users.
#228 General » Password Protected Galleries » 2013-04-21 13:19:14
- JimR
- Replies: 2
I'm getting lost trying to setup, and understand, the password functionality.
Is there a reference to point out (I couldn't find anything in the docs or wiki). Something like a "best practices" or "tip & tricks" available?
As I understand it, as the admin I should use the Master Password in the gallery template, which I then use for publishing. The Guest password is for users.
But the Publisher only allows for one password - so how does the Publisher & Gallery template interact in this case?
Then how can I test this as a user, rather than as the admin of my server using the master password. I want to clear everything, so I can be forced the password prompt.
One thing that's a mystery, after I've logged in one with my browsers they always just want to go straight to the page again. I've tried clearing the cache, passwords, cookies, etc. That confuses me because now it seems like there's no password.
Which folders are being protected by the password? Everything within that folder? That would block access to the thumb needed by the Auto Index page, right?
Another thing I've found. I can skip over the password and get the images. For example, I password protect this gallery:
mydomain.com/private
But I can still get the photos without the password (just add "photos" to the URL). I must be setting this up incorrectly.
mydomain.com/private/photos
#229 Re: General » Integrating with an existing site » 2013-04-13 04:27:09
Well, it took me much longer than I had expected but I did get it all working 
When I started this I hadn't any CSS, PHP, or JavaScript experience. I was a software engineer in my former career, but hadn't written any code in over 12 years. So I had to teach myself how to write, and debug, web server code. Plus I was out in uncharted territory.
I have successfully integrated a fully responsive WordPress framework with TTG3. I'm really happy with the result. There's a few really minor things (a pixel off here and there), but I doubt anyone will notice. Other than that, I'm perfectly content at calling it a success.
Now, on with blogging and updating my galleries. The really cool thing - I can stop being a web designer and get back to being a photographer.
PS - there was a number of things I uncovered in this process. In the interest of saving others days of frustration, and if anyone is interested, I'll write my notes on the journey.
#230 Re: General » Integrating with an existing site » 2013-03-21 23:10:49
I am sworn off of "normal drop-down" menus on any kind of touch interface.
That's understandable.
How then to solve a parent menu item that is a page, plus have navigation to the child pages?
Plus, have it work on both small screens like a smart phone and larger mobile devices like an iPad.
I may just given up on secondary navigation from within the Wordpress/theme world, and only present it while I'm within the TTG Plugins world.
#231 Re: General » Integrating with an existing site » 2013-03-21 14:17:49
The real issue here is why you're having to mess with TTG drop-down menus on an iPhone? That shouldn't be happening; you should be seeing the responsive layout.
The entire site navigation menu support should either be how it works in the Wordpress theme, or taken from TTG. I started out trying to put the TTG menus into the other world. I tried taking the nav generated by TTG output and wedging that into the WP theme (which has similar hooks as TTG Plugins). But that started to unravel the further I got into it
The WP theme I'm using is entirely responsive, though with different trigger points for screen size. The WP theme is showing "normal" desktop like menus for smallish screens, like the portrait view of an iPhone. The wider screens of tablets also have normal drop down menus.
I got 90% done pushing the Wordpress theme into the TTG Plugins.
Either way it's been a challenge. Both worlds have so much foundation assumptions built into their frameworks.
I can't seem to seam the two into a seamless experience 
#232 Re: General » Integrating with an existing site » 2013-03-21 11:11:56
Well, I've made a great deal of progress. There's a few things I can't seem to fix, but willing to live with. I plan to make a list of my notes of things I discovered along the way in the hopes it will help others.
Here's something I can't figure out. It's had me stumped for days. My site's menu bar has "Photography" as the last item, pointing as all the TTG generated stuff (Auto Index and Gallery pages). I have a dropdown menu for the gallery sub-pages, and it looks like this:
Photography >
Gallery A
Gallery B
Gallery C
[and so on]
My Wordpress theme is using Superfish.js for this drop down menu. When things are running from a desktop, it works as expected (minus some cosmetic things I can't figure out but may just have to live with).
The menu will drop down while hovering over it with the mouse. You can click on the a child menu to get to that gallery. You can also click on Photography to get back to the top (the main Photography page).
But...TTG is doing something to the Superfish menu when it's on my iPhone.
Touching the Photography menu on an iPhone causes the menu to drop down, but instantly goes to that link. Superfish should be waiting for a second touch after it shows the drop down menu. As I said, it works that way when it's a WP page - touch the Photography menu, the menu drops down and you can then touch any of the child items or the parent and get to that page.
When the menu is installed from my TTG hooks something is changing the menu's behavior. I've looked through all the sources in the WP theme, but I don't see what's causing the problem. I think Superfish just knows how to do the right thing (?). At least it knows how to behave when installed by the WP theme.
So now I'm thinking it's something about the TTG world causing this.
I see calls to JQuery deep inside TTG (e.g. ttg.init.js for one). I think something about the JQuery calls is changing the behavior of Superfish, but I can't figure it out.
Matt, any clues you can offer on how to either prevent Superfish from doing the wrong thing, or how to get it to do the right thing?
#233 Re: General » Integrating with an existing site » 2013-03-14 10:33:48
Matthew wrote:
ttg_head_styles was a hook in CE2, but I've removed it in CE3
Uh oh - how do I hook in my styles with CE3 (to replace masthead and nav)?
#234 Re: General » Integrating with an existing site » 2013-03-14 10:21:45
Yeah, I had just come to that conclusion myself and was re-reading that exact tutorial.
Now I'm getting really sleepy :-|
#235 Re: General » Integrating with an existing site » 2013-03-14 09:01:47
use PHPlugins to clear the masthead and navigation, and replace them with your own stuff
Ha! Easier said that done.
I'm about to start this, but the very first question I've got: "How do I insert my WP code into a TTG page?"
Let's say I replace the masthead and navigation entirely. My site is using different PHP and CSS. How do I get my code inserted?
What about the collisions of the name space (e.g. TTG and WP have a class "content")?
PS - looks like this thread should migrate to PHP Plugins
#236 Re: General » Navigation with Auto Index (and mobile) » 2013-03-09 16:41:58
They would require the user to know and hardcode the entire breadcrumb trail for each individual gallery. Hello, Nightmare.
Exactly what I had imagined, which is why I wrote this question of how to deal with the navigation problem presented by Auto Index (and the extra twist when it's on mobile).
Using Publisher, we have a consolidated architecture from which to draw the gallery structure
Exactly 
That said, it's not something we expect that you should be able to do using PHPlugins
Back to the nightmare.
I was thinking...if Publisher could at least provide some of the missing variable (where we are in the architecture and album titles), then those daring enough to dive into PHP could have a chance, right?
We wouldn't have to wait for a complete breadcrumb solution. Just the key variables would be enough for us to have a fighting chance to build breadcrumbs and avoid the nightmare.
#237 Re: General » Navigation with Auto Index (and mobile) » 2013-03-09 16:14:05
This is a pretty good idea...
http://community.theturninggate.net/post/1751/#p1751
But that's lost on a mobile device, unless there's a way to always show such content on the page.
#238 General » Navigation with Auto Index (and mobile) » 2013-03-09 16:08:26
- JimR
- Replies: 4
I know it's difficult to explain how the UI behaves only using text, but I think this is familiar enough to the authors and web site designers. If you have a site with Auto Index, you can see this.
In the most simplest case, imagine we have a menu item called Parent and that takes us to a page showing thumbs for our gallery.
Opening any of those galleries leaves us still on the Parent page (the navigation menu is telling us this, as Parent is still highlighed and the page's title has changed to the name of the gallery). Not a problem...so far.
Now, imagine we create an Auto Index template for a new gallery and place on Parent. We'll call this new gallery index Child, and it will have a few galleries of its own.
When we select Child, the navigation menu still says Parent, not Child. Opening Child has taken us to a new location below Parent yet we're still at the same spot in the web site's navigation.
To get back to the Parent we have to click on its name in the menu (even though the nav is telling us we're already there, as it's still highlighted). Or, another way is to use the browser's back button.
Now if the Child gallery has more child galleries, then the navigation is starting to break down. The menu always says Parent, even when we're in Child and deeper still like Grandchild. As we go deeper the navigation continues to say Parent.
Once we're at Grandchild we have only two choices: 1) click on the already highlighted Parent menu to jump up two levels or 2) click on the back button in the browser twice.
This is when we would use breadcrumbs to keep the user oriented, and give them a clear path back.
I've been thinking how to support breadcrumbs in the PHP Plugins. One of the problems is the need to hard-code the gallery structure into the PHP code. The advantage of using Publisher is the ease of restructuring folders, and changing their names. Yet if we do this, we have to update the PHP code to match.
One more unique problem...it happens while using Auto Index on a mobile device.
When the user opens an index gallery, the index.php redirects us to mobile.php. The problem then becomes how can the user get back to where they were? (e.g. they were looking at Child's gallery and now they want to get back to Parent)
If the user selects the back button on their browser, it reloads the index.php which then redirects to the mobile.php and they're back to where they started - still in the Child gallery
They only have one choice - the menu selection Parent. This takes them back to the top of the tree. So the mobile user only has one navigation choice. They must always return to the top by clicking on Parent.
I guess all of this is leading me to see how we need breadcrumbs. Any suggestions on how to go about doing this? How should breadcrumbs work on a mobile device? How can we make the maintenance problem less problematic if we restructure our galleries?
#239 General » Integrating with an existing site » 2013-03-09 15:01:41
- JimR
- Replies: 13
I've got a general question about how to integrate the pages generated by TTG Publisher, Gallery, and Auto Index into an existing web site. I have it in the back of my mind I read about this somewhere but now I can't find it.
My (WordPress) web site is just a few pages and one for a photo gallery. Each page layout has a few things above the nav, the nav bar for each page, and then all the content below.
Generating that page from Publisher and using the templates will wipe out that page's layout created by WordPress. On the other hand, I can't really recreate the same header I have within the TTG templates.
Seems like there's two approaches: 1) use a PHP Plugin to replace the header and nav code using my existing output from WordPress or 2) find a way to insert the output from Publisher into an existing page.
#1 could get complex. Just the header code coming out of WordPress is 50 lines of HTML, plus some includes for the CSS. Plus it's responsive, and has special cases dealing with mobile devices. I'd also have to be careful to not get CSS conflicts between WordPress and TTG code. My head start spinning trying to think of how to deal with this approach.
I don't know if #2 is even possible. If so, there's something I'll have to change about the page that's defined in WordPress so the output from Publisher can be inserted into it.
Maybe there's another option?
How do we get the output from TTG to integrate into an existing web site, and keep (at least) the header and nav working?
#240 Re: General » Font Awesome » 2013-03-05 15:15:48
Ah - I found the setting.
Content > Advanced > Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of my selections above
I have that set off because I keep finding so many sites with terrible fonts, or worse really tiny fonts that I can't read LOL.
BTW - I happened to look at the Web Console, and a lot of warnings and errors logged for <http://ce3.theturninggate.net/>. Never tried that before, so I can't say if this is "normal."
#241 Re: General » Font Awesome » 2013-03-05 15:05:49
Same here.
You mean it's working for you (like Matt), or not (like me).
#242 Re: General » Font Awesome » 2013-03-05 14:55:27
What version of Firefox are you running? Totally fine when I visit CE3 pages in Firefox.
Firefox 19
For example the ^ (up arrow that appears next to the "Back to the top" in the footer) shows up at a little box with F0D8 in it.
This happens to me on my own test site, and your demo site. <http://ce3.theturninggate.net/galleries.php>
All the social icons, arrows, etc are all little boxes with tiny hex code in them.
I wonder if it's one of my security settings, or maybe one of my security plug ins.
#243 General » Font Awesome » 2013-03-05 13:03:52
- JimR
- Replies: 7
The support for Font Awesome is broken in Firefox. Turns out they're following the spec, but there is a way to make it work.
http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-fonts/#sam … estriction
http://www.red-team-design.com/firefox- … by-default
#244 Re: General » .jpg saving to Mac » 2013-02-07 12:00:55
Soooo many things I could guess are going wrong, and I wouldn't even bother to try.
You didn't even mention what app you are using to create this jpgs (I'm guessing Lightroom).
Are you using one of the TTG plug ins to creates a gallary (sounds like you are not)?
#245 Re: General » TTG without the LR web module » 2013-01-05 08:40:18
LOL - I just stumbled on this, which I recommend reading
“Nobody” uses the Web module
#246 Re: General » TTG without the LR web module » 2013-01-03 12:24:58
The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4: book for digital photographers
page: xiii (part of the intro)
He doesn't have any chapter on the web module, but does have a supplemental chapter for it on his web site (below). On this page in the book he explains it this way:
It's on the web. I put it there because Adobe has...well..they've kind of abandoned it (not officially mind you but come on--they haven't really added any new features in the past two versions, so I can't [with a straight face] recommend that you use it at all). But just in case, I still updated it and posted the chapter on the web, so just think of it as a bonus you won't ever use.
Here's the "missing" chapter, which hasn't changed in this 4th edition.
http://kelbytraining.com/wp-content/upl … hapter.zip
My reading is that HE doesn't recommend it, and it's HIS opinion it's been abandoned ONLY because HE hasn't seen any new features.
I have been using it since the first version, and totally rely on it! I think many others would say the same thing, and if Adobe dropped it there would be an outcry.
PS - I'll bet the main reason this chapter isn't in the book - to save paper! The rest is it's probably just Kelby's odd sense of humor.