TTG Highslide Gallery Pro 2.0, codenamed “Hellcat” for internal purposes, is nearly ready for wider testing. There’s more coding to be done and a few lingering bugs I need to squash, but I have begun field testing locally generated galleries on the web. I will be adding, removing and replacing test galleries here as necessary; you are welcome to view them. The test galleries show off several features new and old, and should give you a good idea of what Hellcat holds in store.

Also, I could use some volunteers to test release candidate builds of Hellcat. If you’re interested in being on the test list, please comment below. I need to know what versions of TTG Highslide Gallery Pro you’re already using, your system type (Mac or Windows), and which version(s) of Lightroom you are currently running. Please submit a valid email address at which I can reach you, and also post a URL to your website. Your job as a tester would basically be to break Hellcat; my job is to make sure that you can’t. You would be expected to push the controls to see what works and what doesn’t, in hopes that it will all work. You will be expected to test generated galleries of various configurations both within Lightroom and on the web in a “live” environment. I will ask you to post these test galleries to your own web-space, though you do not need to make them public. I will select testers based upon my own needs for testing, and ask that volunteers not be offended if not selected. It may just be that your system specs are already covered by other testers, and I don’t need any more input on that setup.

TTG Pages creates a Home page, About page, Contact page and Gallery Index. But what if that’s not enough? What if you need additional pages for pricing info, press statements or psychobabble?! In this tutorial, I show you how to leverage TTG Pages to create extra pages for your TTG-made website.

Fotomoto today announced the availability of new image licensing and download features on their blog. The announcement has been a long time coming, and I am confident Fotomoto users are going to love these new features.

Since the company got started last year, The Turning Gate has been working together with Fotomoto to bring their services to Lightroom users via the Web module. We have been in discussions for some time now regarding implementation of the download features and API in TTG Highslide Gallery Pro, and I am happy to tell you that these features will be forthcoming in version 2.0 of the engine, coming soon along with a great many other improvements and new features.

I receive questions on a fairly regular basis from users misunderstanding or misinterpreting my terms of use for TTG web engines. To reduce the chances of misinterpretation, I am rewriting the terms of use to (hopefully) be more clear and more complete. I’m looking for feedback here. Please have a look at my draft of new terms, and let me know whether you think it leaves any questions unanswered, or any answers unclear.

Here are the new terms:

Upon purchasing a TTG web engine, you will receive a download link via email. This link should be kept and used to download future product updates. The link can be used nine times within one year of purchase, after which it will expire. After one year or nine downloads, a new purchase will be necessary to access additional product updates. Please file your download link in a safe place, as it cannot be retrieved if lost.

Your usage of downloaded TTG web engines is unrestricted by time or number of exports. Subscription limitations only apply to the download of product updates. You are free to use TTG web engines on any number of computers in a single household, or place of business that have Lightroom installed. Exported galleries and other assets may be published on any domain for which you are the owner. For publishing galleries and assets on additional sites not owned by you, a new purchase is required by or on the behalf of the domain owner.

You are not licensed to redistribute TTG web engines in any way, shape or form.

Please note that some third-party accessories, such as Highslide JS, may have different terms of use specified in their own licensing agreements. Users will be expected to comply with those terms of use in addition to the terms stated above.

If you have trouble receiving your download link after purchase, please ensure 1) that your payment has cleared with PayPal, and 2) that messages from E-Junkie.com are not being caught in your spam filter.

And for the sake of comparison, here are the old terms being replaced:

Upon purchasing TTG Highslide Gallery Pro, you will receive a download URL valid for nine uses or 352 days (1 year) — whichever comes first. After nine uses or one year, your URL will expire and a new purchase will be necessary to continue with updates. Gallery updates will always be available from that same URL. Thus, the URL can be used for the initial download, plus eight updates within a year of your purchase. Be sure to save your URL in a safe place, as it cannot be retrieved if lost. If you have trouble receiving your URL after purchase, please ensure 1) that your payment has cleared with PayPal, and 2) that messages from E-Junkie.com are not being caught in your spam filter.

I will look forward to your feedback. Thanks for reading.

The new Liquid Stage in TTG Stage.

Took some respite today from intense projects-in-progress, and channeled my energies to inject new awesomeness into TTG Stage. Adopting some magic from TTG Viewport Sizer and with some advice from my Jedi friend, TTG Stage has received a new, super cool liquid layout mode.

Enabling this check-box changes EVERYTHING.

Some small sacrifice is required when using the liquid stage. Your gallery description and page footer become sacraments upon the alter of the Liquid gods, and your frame styling becomes irrelevant. Well worth the trade-off, though.

If you can abide my scruffiness, I’ve posted two Stage + Simpleviewer galleries demonstrating the two layout modes now available. The images are recent self-portraits of the not-very-serious variety; I’ve been playing with multiple off-camera speed-lites when boredom strikes me during the wee hours of the night. Be sure to resize your browser window while viewing the liquid stage, just so you can see how utterly cool it is.

In addition, the 2.2 update includes the new Google analytics and custom script/CSS features recently introduced to TTG Pages and TTG Highslide Gallery Pro, as well as other improvements and fixes. The changelog tells all.

v2.2 ( 2010-02-08 )

Cool new full-viewport liquid layout mode!

Important bug fix regarding duplicate <body> tags.

Fixed a bug when embedding Simpleviewer-2 galleries.

Changed handling of Google Analytics. Now requires only your Web Property ID (UA-xxxxxx-x), rather than the entire block of Javascript.

Because scripts can no longer be cheated into the Google Analytics entry field as before, I’ve added a new Advanced Options control group to the Output Settings control pane. There are three input fields: Add CSS rules in , Add script to and Add script before . CSS rules are visible in preview, while the scripts are only added when the gallery is published (exported, or previewed in browser) to prevent any possible Lightroom tantrums.

Added a new #wrapper DIV to the source code that allows for new custom styling possibilities.

Gallery Description can now be edited by clicking on headings and paragraphs in the preview.

Contact menu item can now be disabled.

Some tweaks under the hood.

Michael Gray has written a good review of TTG Pages for LifeInDigitalFilm. Of the engine, Gray writes, “Overall, I found TTG Pages to be a well-rounded piece of software. It is fast, simple and creates a fine website.” Read the full review.

Gray has previously written a review of TTG Highslide Gallery Pro.

As digital photographers, we live in constant fear of the crash. It’s not a matter of IF, but WHEN. The crash is inevitable. At some point, one of your precious hard drives will head down the dark path of no return, taking gigabytes upon gigabytes of precious data with it. Obsessively backing up our work is a part of our craft. None of us wants to be the guy that loses someone’s wedding photos, or the client’s $100,000 advertising shoot. So, let’s assume for a moment that we are well-invested in redundancy, that our images are as safe as they could possibly be: on two separate hard disks residing in separate geographical locations in case of fire, and all images also backed up to DVD, deposited into a safety deposit box in Switzerland with an armed guard detail.

Your. Images. Are. Safe.

And yet, I constantly receive this sort of thing in my inbox:

Matt,

My hard drive crashed and I’ve lost all of my email messages. Can you please send me my download URLs for the TTG galleries I’ve purchased?

Thanks,
Sad Photographer

Luckily, I have records of such things. But I’m guessing that Mr. or Mrs. Sad Photographer lost a lot more than TTG download links, and those other things are probably not so easily recovered.

What frustrates me most about receiving these messages is not the inconvenience of having to look up old transaction records, but the knowledge that this loss could easily have been prevented. Here’s the cold, hard fact dear readers:

Your computer is the WORST place to keep your email.

And if that’s not a fact, then it’s certainly my opinion.

As independent photographers, you are also small business owners. Consider what passes through your email on a daily basis: correspondence with clients, job invoices, purchase receipts, bids, bid requests, image proofs, processing instructions, print orders and very important messages from The Turning Gate. Other possibilities may include bank statements, accounting and other transaction records, sweet messages from your partner, cute things from your kids and all manner of things better not lost in system failure.

A few years ago, I bought my parents a new Mac. Previously, they’d been using an old PC and checking their email via Thunderbird. I setup Thunderbird on the new Mac in order to move the old mail over, which amounted to more than 2GB of saved messages. Two gigabytes(!!) of hard disk space being needlessly consumed. Two gigabytes of data that first had to be exported, and then had to be imported onto the new machine. Two gigabytes of data that might have been lost had that old PC decided to die, and I tell you it was near death’s door at the time. Two gigabytes of data that will only increase in size over time with new emails received and saved, and which will only become a greater liability as it grows, and even more of a pain to preserve or move to the eventual next computer.

I feel I’m becoming long-winded, and so I’ll state my point:

Cloud-based email services can save your bacon and also save you headache, heartache and frustration.

Of all the cloud-based email services on the web, Google’s Gmail is by far my favorite. Google’s Gmail service offers vast amounts of storage, a unique approach to organization, one of the best e-mail-searching features around, and access to all your e-mail from any Web browser—all for the low, low price of free.

The many advantages should be clear. Email messages are not consuming vast portions of my local hard disk, are not in danger of being lost when my hard disk inevitably dies, do not have to be moved when I buy a new computer, can be checked from any computer, any where, or even from my phone. And I promise you that Google takes better care of its servers than you do of your computer, and so your messages are reliably hosted with redundancy and regular maintenance. You can even use your Gmail account to check, collect and store messages from your other email accounts.

Take it to heart, folks. Get a Gmail account, and stop losing your messages in catastrophic system failures. There’s no reason I or anyone should ever have to receive an email from Sad Photographer.

TTG Highslide Gallery and TTG Highslide Gallery Pro 1.9.4 are now available. This update addresses a critical bug in 1.9.3 that caused the engine to become unresponsive for some LR2/Win users. In the Pro version, sales tax support has also been added to the transactionless shopping cart, configurable from within the config.php file.

To update existing galleries using the cart, you do not need to export your galleries again. Update the new config.php file, then overwrite your existing cart folders online.

v1.9.4 ( 2010-01-31 )

Fixes critical bug causing unresponsiveness of engine in LR2/Win.

Added support for sales tax to transactionless cart.

As a part of their greater plan to redirect their own increasing traffic to the benefit of their users, Fotomoto has unveiled Collections, culling together the best work from its members into groups of featured images. Valentine’s Day is the theme for the first collection, featuring 67 handpicked images. Taken as a whole, the collection looks like what you might find searching a stock photo site; pretty impressive stuff. Fotomoto promises more collections to come.

More promising still, Fotomoto has announced that digital image download services will go live within the next few weeks, allowing photographers to sell and distribute their work digitally. A lot of users have asked for this feature, and it’s fantastic to see it finally in the pipeline. This is very exciting stuff!

See the Fotomoto blog for the source of these announcements, and get your Fotomoto on in Lightroom using TTG Highslide Gallery Pro.

Apple yesterday unveiled the latest version of its iPod Touch device. Strangely, all press materials relating to the announced device suffer a severe typo, the ‘o’ in iPod having mistakenly been replaced with an ‘a’. How this made it past Apple’s stringent QA team I fail to understand … Pursuant to queries as to whether TTG plans to target the device with new web engines, I release the following statement:

The Turning Gate (TTG) presently has no plans to develop web engines specifically targeting Apple’s latest and largest iPod Touch, the iPad.

The iPad will utilize a version of the Safari web-browser and is of large enough form factor that standard HTML-based galleries should render and behave normally on the device. At this time, I therefore see no need to develop specialized galleries targeting the device, as the existing TTG web engines should present no problems running on the iPad’s 1024×768 pixel display.

My primary motivation in creating the TTG iPhone Portfolio web engine was to create a gallery in which images were easy to view and navigate on the iPhone’s tiny screen. The iPad does not have a tiny screen.

Of course, it is impossible for me to say whether my assumptions regarding the iPad will hold true when it goes into the wild in two months’ time. If I am proven wrong, and the standard galleries do not behave as they should on the device, I may reevaluate my stance on the matter. But I anticipate no reasons that I should have to do so, as all HTML galleries already display and behave as intended in all versions of Safari.

While on the subject of the iPad, let me also explain why Apple’s device disappoints me.

One of the primary proposed uses for the iPad is accessing the web, and yet the iPad lacks Flash support of any kind, rendering a large portion of the web null and void to users of the device. Fail.

While nearly every current generation smartphone supports concurrently running applications — a.k.a. multitasking — the iPad, the iPhone and the iPod Touch do not. Granted, the iPad is not a smartphone. But if those itty-bitty devices can manage to run multiple applications at once, the fact that the iPad cannot is just plain stupid. Fail.

Syncing iPods via iTunes makes sense; it’s a music application that ties into a music player. Syncing iPhones with iTunes is a pain in the ass, as the application offers pretty lousy app management, and takes nearly an eternity to backup my iPhone every time I plug it in before it will allow me to manage my device’s content. The thought of having to endure a similar syncing process with yet another, larger device is just groan worthy. I sincerely hope that Apple does something to make iTunes suck less at content management. Otherwise: Fail.

Maybe I’m just a notebook kind of guy, but the fact that the iPad cannot be used for any type of content other than what is transferrable via iTunes — like files, non-iTunes media content, etc. — is a major turn-off. This type of closed device borders on useless. How wonderful can the Internet possibly be when you can’t actually download anything outside of the App Store? Fail.

There’s no camera? I didn’t expect to run around snapping pictures with this thing, but would have expected a camera for video conferencing and the like. I’m still baffled as to why there’s no iChat app for the iPhone, and I’m now doubly baffled as to why there seems to be nothing on the horizon from Apple in regard to this for the iPad. Fail.

And why has Apple chosen to remain with AT&T for the iPad’s 3G data plans, a company already struggling (and often failing) to keep up with the bandwidth usage of existing iPhone users? Fail.

The iPad might be a neat toy, but it’s not nearly as interesting, useful or innovative as it should be. And while it will likely drive Apple’s App Store and bottom-line a little harder, I don’t see it as a game-changing device. Of course, it does give those photographers relying on Flash-based sites from Livebooks good reason to buy HTML galleries from The Turning Gate.