More new features for the INDY Gallery

In addition to the video capability and the subfolder listings already in place, I have now added to more features to the INDY Gallery: invited-public albums and Google Maps.

Invited-public albums, as I am calling them, refer to any album of the INDY Gallery in which the security level for it has been designated as "public". However, the only way to access said album is through a direct link. Meaning that an individual would have to be given the URL in order to go directly to the specific album. Any attempt to navigate outside that album would result in a authentication prompt (if the destination is secured). The feature exists at least, now it's just a matter of whether or not LK and I feel comfortable making any of the albums with the INDY Gallery public.

This next feature is one of my favorites.... I sometimes use my GPS receiver to sync Latitude and Longitude into photos. In the old gallery, I used a plugin to access that data and display the photos on a Google Map. Well, that plugin stopped working in the old system quite a while back and I've been anxious to regain the ability to view GPS tagged photos on a Google Map.

Yesterday, I tried using a Perl script called Tim's GMapper. Well, it was a great idea, but it was too limited in scope and didn't play well with the SPGM gallery I'm using. So, I decided to expand on his work and design a system myself which could be ported to pretty much any website configuration, but also worked very well with SPGM.

The end results were a reprogrammed Perl script and a set of modifications I'm calling SPGM-Map for use with Simple Picture Gallery Manager. (I'll eventually release the mods for SPGM-Map into the INDY DevDom along with the SPGM-Vid mods.)

If you're surfing around the INDY Gallery and see a link within an album to view a Google Map, click on it and you'll be shown a Google Map of the photos within that album containing GPS tags.

I'm going to take a few days off of programming while I formulate some more ideas and spend time with LK. To those of you who are able, I hope you enjoy the new features and that you are finding the new INDY Gallery setup to your liking!

INDY Gallery now with video

I've completed one of the planned improvements to the INDY Gallery: adding audio and video support! I tweaked some code in the SPGM-Vid plugin to get things just the way I wanted. And the best thing is, I've been hiding videos within the albums of the gallery for quite some time. Go back through the years and you might find some hidden treasures. (For those of you interested in my SPGM-Vid tweaks, I'll be releasing them to the public in the INDY DevDom.)

Enjoy! More will be coming soon! Next I'll be working with LK on opening certain albums to the invited public. More on this when the idea is further developed.