Archive for April 24th, 2005
Reinventing the photo album
Sunday, April 24th, 2005
My project for the summer is this: Make the best web photo album application ever.
Ambitious? Nah. I’ve wanted to do it for ages, noticing the deficiencies in PhotoStack, albeit it being one of the best solutions available. Gallery, Gallery2 even, Coppermine — they’re what you call “bloated.” PhotoStack had the right idea — keep it simple, make it really easy to do what you want, and make the interface beautiful. Unfortunately, as Joen noted, it’s missing many important features including comments, good descriptions, and being bug-free.
So I want you to tell me exactly what you want and don’t want in your ideal photo album. Use the Use dashed lists… ULs don’t work. Think hard about it. I’ll do it if there’s enough demand and response.<ul> tag
A couple other things I want feedback on are implementation details:
- I started already in PHP and I’ll probably stick with it, but I’d like to try Ruby on Rails of TaDa list fame. Any objections?
- Database or flat-file for comments? (I’m already doing album directories like PhotoStack)
- Shall I use AJAX? I can (in moderation) to great effect in the slickness of the UI (think flickr).
- Any other server environment or implementation preferences would be appreciated, but try to focus on your dream app and tell me about it.
What are you waiting for? Get commenting.