My biggest 3 jAlbum problems

I am using the jAlbum software already 15 years for publishing the photos and routes of my walkings on my website.

It is an excellent program to do that, but in all those years I encountered a number of problems, which I did report in the jAlbum forum in the Features requests thread, but most of these requests were not implemented, because Jeff Tucker did not agree. In fact he did remove some of my requests and blocked my access to the forum. Therefore I will report the 3 most important problems which could have saved me a lot of times in this blog.

Jalbum uses absolute links instead of relative links.

I use at home a desktop computer to process my photos, but in my holidays I use a laptop computer to do that. To prevent that I have to copy files to my desktop and/or laptop after/before each trip I use a 2TB Samsung T7 SSD as external disk, which I connect via a fast USB-C port to my Laptop or Desktop.

If I connect the disk to my Desktop. It gets drive letter K: and the jAlbum Genral settings window shows:

The original RAW format photos are imported in K:\Users\Andre\Afbeeldingen\LightRoom_photos\ and after processing exported to K:\Users\Andre\Afbeeldingen\jALBUM\

With these settings I can make and upload an album op my desktop without problems, see my published album.

However if I connect the SSD to the laptop, it gets drive letter I: and the image directory field shows:

I:\Users\Andre\Afbeeldingen\jALBUM\Oostvaarderplassen\FancyBox

while the output directory still shows:

K:\Users\Andre\Documents\Mijn websites\andrewolff.nl\FotoSerie\Wandelingen\Oostvaarderplassen

Now jAlbum can't find the original images and the album can't be made. I can repair the images links, but if I do that, the album can no longer be made on my desktop.

It is no problem for LightRoom, without changing anything I can export my images to the \Users\Andre\Afbeeldingen\jALBUM\ directory, both on the Desktop and on the Laptop, because LightRoom uses relative links instead of absolute links.

My original Feature request for this problem has been deleted, see here.

I did request to use relative links, so that General setting window would show:

If the output directory is on another disk, you should see a drive letter in the Output directory field.

Problems with the Cache

If you change a simple thing like an icon or a color in an existing album and you preview the result in an external browser like Google Chrome, many times you do not see the new icon or color, but you still see the old icon and/or color.

Sometimes it took me a long time before I discovere the source of this problem:

It is caused by the Browser Cache, which still contains images of the old album. So to see all your changes correctly in the Preview, you have to empty the Cache before each preview.

Currently, if I see that the preview is incorrect, I copy the album path,  select the Incognito mode and drop the album path in the address field. In that case I always see the icon or color changes I made with the new settings.

So I did request to add a field in jAlbum to use a special browser of command switch for the preview.

ThisFeature request has not (yet?) been deleted. The owner and developer of jAlbum, David Ekholm, did find it initially a good idea, but later Jeff Tucker did not like this request, so it has not been implemented.

Prevent that the output folder contains an index.htm and an index.html file

I have seen many times that after the upload of an album, you see another display as showed locally in the preview. Many times it took me hours to discover the source of this problem: In the Advance tab was Page extension '.htm' used, but the output folder did contain an old 'index.html' file. The 'index.html' file apparently gets a priority over an 'index.htm' file, so that is why you see a different album. So I did this simple Feature request: Delete automatically an 'index.html' file if the album contains an 'index.htm' file and delete automatically an 'index.htm' file if the album contains an 'index.html' file. But again this simple request has not been implemented. I have no longer access to the forum, so you will no longer see my new feature requests or Bug reports on the forum.

Faster coding with the help of OpenAI ChatGPT

 

In the previous versions of my LightGallery, my FancyBox and my PhotoSwipe jAlbum skin, the menu did disappear if you scorll-up a thumbnails page.

I wanted to fix the menu a the top of the page if you scroll-up.

It is really amazing how fast you can do that with the help of the new AI ChatGPT  tool.

To see it open my ChatGPT conversation.

See the result in my France album.

I used ChatGPT too in my Plain-LG exercise to convert Groovy JAVA code to javascript code for use in the js-shell used by Laza.

That goes without problems as long as you know that you should replace the *Let* and *Const* statements in the ChatGPT code.

Here are two other examples for converting code:

Convert JAVA to JS.

Convert jQuery code into plain vanille javascript code

I posed next question to ChatGPT:

"Does there exists a browser for my windows 10 64 bits system where the cache is not used?".

This was the answer:

Here are a few browsers that offer options to control caching:

Epic Privacy Browser: This browser is designed with privacy in mind and offers a built-in option to disable caching. It's based on Chromium and is available for Windows 10.

Brave Browser: Another privacy-focused browser based on Chromium. While it doesn't provide an explicit option to disable caching, it has a Private Browsing mode that reduces data retention, and it blocks trackers by default.

Firefox: Although Firefox doesn't provide a straightforward way to disable caching completely, you can customize the caching behavior using about:config settings. Search for "browser.cache" in the configuration settings and adjust the values to control caching behavior.

Tor Browser: If privacy is your primary concern, the Tor Browser is an excellent option. It's based on Firefox but routes your traffic through the Tor network, offering a high level of anonymity. It limits caching and takes other measures to enhance privacy.

Comodo Dragon: This browser is based on Chromium and offers various privacy and security features. While it might not have an explicit caching toggle, it does provide options to clear browsing data automatically upon exit.Browser

I installed the *Epic Privacy Browser* and it seems to work fine to preview an album after a Make, but for daily use this browser is for me not suited: No Search possibility, no remembered passwords etc.