The new photo servlet is now online! I finally got around to writing code for it a couple weeks ago and have since been working on it fairly regularly. It’s finally at a point where I can actually use it on the website! I’ve updated the photo links on the right to point to the new servlet, so check it out!
The servlet is heavy on CSS use, so it’ll probably look crappy in older browsers. I’ve tested it on IE6, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera. Let me know if you have any problems with it. The new servlet has many improvements over the old one…
- The design can be completely styled using CSS
- Uses categories instead of folders for sorting — much more flexible and interesting
- Includes many helpful administrator options for quickly adding and categorizing photos
- Has an overview page that shows thumbnails of selected categories
- Automatically generates and caches thumbnails and medium-sized images on the fly
- Splits thumbnails over several pages instead of showing too many images all on one page
- Tracks number of hits to photos and categories
- Uses IDs in the URLs instead of names — a cleaner and better method
- Automatically maintains backups of its database — users can rollback if they make a mistake
- Individual photos and categories can be hidden from viewers
- Supports multiple users
- 100% valid XHTML and CSS
Keep in mind that the servlet is not complete, I’ve simply gotten to a point where it’s good enough to use on the website. Some of the features yet to be added include…
- Ability to search for photos
- Slideshow feature
- Ability to change photo captions and category descriptions
- Ability to change how photos and categories are sorted when displayed
- More admin options for changing servlet properties
- A root index page for administrating “instances” of the servlet
- Administrator login for access to admin options
- Perhaps more flexible HTML markup