Indy Telecom & Industrial Media

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I had originally planned on having a page just for photos (as a matter of fact, there used to be one that was based on the famous rotate.php and has since been removed).

However, what I was looking for was something small - a background slideshow of sorts, rather than a page dedicated exclusively for photographs. Secondly, I merely wanted small, low-res images, to give a fleeting overview of things and places, as opposed to showcasing any images in more detail (I mean, if you’re looking for large, high resolution pictures of mountains, flowers or women, there are several other websites out there with professional photographers that cater to that need).

Looking around, I found this cool WP plugin called Flashfader written by Marcus Grellert. The reason I liked Flashfader was because of its simplicity — and the fact that it was XHTML compliant.

Now, I’ve had some feedback so far and here are my two cents on why I chose this instead of something else.

It’s in Flash! It could be in DHTML.

Yes, it could be. However, a few things to consider — first, I had wanted a plugin that did what I wanted it to, and this was it. That it happened to be in Flash was secondary. Secondly, I had used something with Flash because I did not want folks to be able to save the images. The other alternative was Java, but UGH! And finally, Flash is almost ubiquitous today. If someone does not have Flash, then all they are missing is a few pretty pictures. Besides, Flash is hardly bleeding edge. Unless you’re Richard Stallman, there really is no reason why having Flash installed would be so hard.

(I mean, I can totally see people whining to Ze Frank about how parts of his site are in Flash.)

You could use something like Flickr (or insert name of photo service).

Of course I could. But what happens if Flickr changes their policy (and we all know how all of us read the fine-print of every online service that we use). Or if Flickr goes out of business. Or giant aliens (or evil California lawyers) kidnap Flickr executives and demand that Metlin’s pictures be taken offline?

The point is, I do not want to be dependent on a service that I do not have absolute control over. However, with the photos being in my very own server, I’ve some control over what happens with them. Therefore, I’d rather have my own service (however crappy) than be dependent on someone else’s.

But I must add that if I do take up a paid service, I might consider moving my stuff there — simply because the moment they take my money, I would have some control and leverage over what they do with my content.

The slideshow is distracting. I want it to go away.

The good HCI designer that I’m, I have taken care of that problem.

I realise how distracting a series of changing images would be to a visitor, especially if they are reading something. Therefore, the Photos section can be clicked to show or hide. By default, the slideshow is shown, however, clicking on the Photos title makes the slideshow go away. Clicking it a second time brings it back.

Yes, I know. I’m awesome.

Here is a cool feature you could use!

Now that is something I’d love to hear about.

Here are a few I’ve heard — displaying a title or a caption for each image, the ability to set the speed of the slideshow through a slider, the ability to click to view larger images for certain images of interest (this defeats the purpose of not showing high-res images, you know?), the ability to view previous/next on the slideshow, a semantic theme-based slideshow (e.g. mountaineering pages show pictures tagged as mountaineering) and so on.

So, either way, consider this a beta — if folks do not like it, it will go away. However, if folks do like it and have suggestions on improvements, I’ll try to make appropriate changes!

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