'Album' applet sucks! - Orchid Board

jmrathbun · #1 08-19-2014, 05:39 PM

I recently posted a couple of pictures to the plant diseases forum and then tried to view them as a reader would. I was very unhappy with the difficulty I had getting the photos to appear on my screen. I suggest you reconsider your current 'album' applet and go to a straight link, letting the user be responsible for his/her own add-ons. Alternatively, you could generate some simple HTML on the fly that would open each picture in your user's browser without the current fuss and bother.

Paul · #2 08-19-2014, 05:58 PM

J, many folks simply upload their photos to an online photoalbum like Photobucket, Snapfish, etc. and then paste the URL code into their post.

RosieC · #3 08-20-2014, 05:35 AM

I'm not actually sure what 'Album' applet you mean.

We have 3 methods for people to add photos to posts...

1) Add the photo as an attachment to the post. It then appears as a small thumbnail at the bottom of the thread which can be clicked on to view full size. The poster has the option to move the thumbnail to a different part of the post if they wish, most people don't use that though.

2) Add the photo to the forum gallery then link to it in the post, or add it as an image in the post. If the user chooses a link the reader will have to click on the link to see the image, if they add it as an image then it will show to the reader in the thread within their browser.

3) Add the photo to an external site such as Photobucket or Flickr (I use Flickr) then add a link or an image to it in the post. Sites like Flickr also provide BBCode for various sizes of the image which can just be cut and pasted into the post, that will behave like adding an image to the post. Again if the poster chooses a link the reader will have to click on it, if it's added as an image it will appear in the post.

The link in my signature gives more info to posters about how to add images using these three methods.

There is no add-on that we force for an 'Album' so I'm not quite sure what you are seeing/having problems with.

Users on a phone/small tablet are advised to use Tapatalk to read the forum, that is not affiliated with Orchid Board, just something we have enabled access through and which many users find works well. It's also optional and you can still navigate the forum (including the images) in a browser if you wish. Tapatalk seems to interpret and allow the reader to easily view images added in all three of the above methods from all I've seen (I use it quite a lot on an android tablet).

As I say, I'm not sure what 'Album applet' you are using and having trouble with. As far as I know if you are using a browser then the images just show (using HTML as you suggest) as they would on any web page.

jmrathbun · #4 08-20-2014, 06:50 AM

This AM it seems to be working much better for me than it did yesterday, so perhaps there was a momentary slowdown and the problem I saw no longer applies.