Experiences (Reloaded)

Why I like JAlbum!

It was a very long time ago when I gave the digital album generators out there my first try. Later I got into JAlbum, a java based album generator.
Well, they didn't have a real usage for me then and actually nothing so huge to organize and keep as an album. But later when more and more developments achieved on digital photography world, more people got into it and the digital real-world picture archives started to grow! I was not an exception :-) By then, I've got a small archive of my pictures, growing more and more each day and needless to say that going to get out of control. Specially after getting my first digital camera, it was going to increase even more speedy!
It was the time to go back and re-evaluate all I'd downloaded long time ago and perhaps give the new versions a try if there were any. There were some almost-good softwares but the major drawbacks to mention were, not having enough flexibility for customizations, good scripting language, support and not being free (really didn't mean to pay for it!).

Once again I downloaded the latest version of JAlbum and gave it a try. WOW! How fair it fit my needs :-) Not a so big download (if you have an updated JVM already installed on your computer) and brilliant piece of software which does well what it is designed for.
And some of the key factors I really like about JAlbum :

• Many good skins already bundled with it as well as many out there (all free) contributed by the users. Skins are pure in HTML, CSS and the scripts and so easy to customize them or even create a new one from scratch.
• Easy but powerful scripting language in addition to supporting BeanShell (WOOHOO! Java!). Because of java support, it had almost a zero learning curve for me and so easy to start my job on it and write my own scripts with a little effort.
• Very nice and responsive support both directly from the author and the nice community out there ( online forums ).
• And finally it's free although not opensource (I wish it were!)

Well, just a while ago I decided to implement my own skin to fit the best to my needs. With a little effort I had it there which was a great customization result and hybrid of some other good skins (best-of-breed). I've called it BluPlusPlus and you can freely download at http://members.fortunecity.com/techguy/JAlbumSkin.html and give it a try.

Armond

Posted by armond at September 14, 2003 05:23 PM