In the continuing thread of testing how far we can go towards reproducing rich client applications on the web, I’m currently working on a photo management application that is in need of a light table. The need is for the ability to drag photos around, compare, resize, and edit their basic attributes.
The prototype of this specific interface is interesting enough that I figure it’s worth sharing.
It’s pretty limited, in that it represents a specific state in a larger application and is very early work. It’s also pretty likely to break. Please use or modify it with that in mind.
Note that this is for Firefox and Safari only. Modifying it to work in IE will be a pain, and is not worth the effort while this is a proof of concept.
A note about browsers
The experience using this is significantly better with Safari. Firefox has two behaviors that limit usefulness; one of which is Mac-specific.
1) The previously mentioned crippling, 3 year old bug for OS X. Therefore, there is noticable chop when dragging.
2) Firefox image scaling is pretty terrible. Here is a zoomed comparison of two scaled images (FF then Safari).
With that said. If you’re using a Mac to view this, please use Safari. If you’re interested, you can download the source and images.
February 13th, 2006 at 9:35 pm
This is definitely interesting. Lots of cool features in a unique interface.
February 28th, 2006 at 3:03 am
Works on Opera 9, too.
Good job. Thank You!
March 7th, 2006 at 5:40 pm
Is ths what you are working on?
http://pixoh.com/
March 28th, 2006 at 10:19 am
I’m very interested to see you photo lightbox web-site - a friend said “Hey, go check this out”. I wrote something like that a while back. Here’s a typical page:
http://www.clanmills.com/2006/DennisBirthday/lightbox.shtml
Your image dynamic scaling is really good.
I had a thought to add a “Save” button which would write a cookie of the state of the UI. Then when the user returns to the page, the layout would be restored.
April 6th, 2006 at 6:37 pm
Very nice work Robin.
The first thought I had when using your lightbox was that one of the scriptaculous transitions might be a nice addition (maybe Effect.grow..?)
http://wiki.script.aculo.us/scriptaculous/show/CombinationEffectsDemo
Michael, I’m not involved with pixoh, but it is quite nice.
November 16th, 2006 at 12:43 pm
I have been messing with this, and it does not work with the strict or transitional DTDs.
Specifically the resizing. You know why this might be, and the fix?
Thanks!
Grady