Performance Photo Gallery

[funmsa]

Hello,

  I'm trying to build a huge photo Gallery with Megazine3 but I'm confronted to many small challenge, could anyone help me to find solution for one or some of my problem please ?
 
  First tiny exemple of my futur gallery (that will be very huge than this simple exemple)
  http://www.sartor.ws/Travel/index.html

  1) How to remove or speed up logo Megazine3 FlipPage loading ?
  2) My book.mz3 will be very big (>3MB) so how can I reduce the size... actually I have part like :

   Exemple
    <chapter anchor='data_photos_Europe_England'>

    And Many .. many... many time page section... like

    <page>
      <txt align='center' top='671'><content><![CDATA[<FONT face='Segoe Script' size='10'>Royaume-Uni - Knightsbridge</FONT>]]></content></txt>
      <img aa='true' width='440' height='660' left='15' top='11' src='data/photos/Europe/England/2009-04-23 England/London/IMG_6839.jpg'/>
    </page>
   
   - How could set be default font face and size for all text property for all book ?
   - How could set by default antialiasing be default "aa='true'" for all book ?

  3) My book property are ... someone have a idea to improve settings to be faster ?
  <book
  pageheight='690'
  pagewidth='470'
  bgcolor='0xFFFFF0'
 
  pagethickness='0.3'
  maxloaded='66'
  minscale='0.0'
  maxscale='1.5'
  loadparallel='6'
  lang='en'
  reflection='true'
  pagesounds='true'
  zoomdoubleclick='false'
 
  plugins='navigationbar, gallery, overlays, titles, anchors, swfaddress, links, keyboardnavigation, slideshow, options'
>
 
  4) Have a problem when Book.mz3 is bigger than 3MB. Flipbook don't charge at all (also in localhost !) Why and how find a solution ?

  I search also somes improvements like

  5) Could we remove direct page access from navigationbar plugin ? When I have thousand of page it's look a big page of small point.... very useless and not nice.
  6) I need to add a link into each text picture description to link on google map (with my GPS picture coordinate). How could do that without charging to much book.mz3 ?
  7) Actually book setting is configurated to preload 66 pages, but loading is started only when we are stopping page turning. Exemple if I press "->" keyboard each half second, FlipBook don't access  WEB site to reload next pages... only when a stop to turn page for more than ~2secondes. Is it possible to change this parameter ?

Many thanks for your help.

[wdscharff]

1) How to remove or speed up logo Megazine3 FlipPage loading ?

uh, first try out different values for  maxloaded and  loadparallel, maxload=66 is very bad for visitors!
On my gallery the "best" values for maxload between 12 an default (22 i think) and for loadparallel between 4-12, in dependence of the connection speed.
lower values are good for users with slow internet connections (below 1megabit), higher values only good for users with high speed broadband.
i have a low connection and the loadig time for your demo is UGLY
try it with the default value for maxloaded
second brake: you use uncompressed jpgs including the exif data. with smart compression and without the exif data the files are MUCH smaller
your picture /London/IMG_6839.jpg is about 180kb, with a moderate 85% jpg compression and without exif data its only 85kb
a halving of the amount of data is certainly the most effective way to increase the loading speed :-)
in my gallery i work with thumbnails (1-4/page) very high compressed with 50-60% and linking to bigger hires pictures, loading speed is no issue

2) My book.mz3 will be very big (>3MB) so how can I reduce the size... actually I have part like :

i dont know, i am not a fan of big huge books (attention span), i have no answer for this question

When I have thousand of page it's look a big page of small point

really, how much books you know with 1000 of pages (or more) and, more important, how much poeple you know are willing to browse throug so a big picture book?
i think a book is not the ideal solution to show so much pictures about much themes,  a book is more like "fine art" for selectet pictures (best off :-) or so) and not a substitute for a gallery programm with categories, tagging and search function for thousands of pictures (i use a gallery too, also a blog and a wiki script, several problems needs several solutions)

sorry for my bad english 

[Hans Nücke]

Are you kidding?
You're calling your 1188 pages book a "tiny example"??
There are some mathematical/physical, simple and basic rules.
Imagine you want to fill a swimming pool with a hose (even a big firemen's hose) and expect it is filled in 5 seconds like you are used your teapot is?

Structure your photos, create several books with a clear topic for each of the books, link those books on a page with a ToC at the beginning of each book... and your visitors will be excited and grateful.
And you won't see any of the problems you are complaining about.

Those are no reasonable requests and besides the very usefull and pragmatic hints of wdschraff, there is little that can be done.
Most options are on your side....

One hint how to shorten the mz3 file (although I'm not aware of a limitation in size):
if you compose your images the way that you have files (.jpg, .png, .swf) of the same size or at least same ratio, you could make use of the batchpages plugin.
Then the definition of your book could be limited to a dozen of rows...
And you could handle the font issues outside of MegaZine3.
One way could be using programs like Photoshop where you build fixed size pages with the photos and text as you like.
Another option is a DTP tool like InDesign, or even a powerful editor like Word. And then making use of the PDF format, with the pdf to swf conversion as final step.

[funmsa]

Hello,

   First thank you to have taked time to answer me. I have some information more :

   wdscharff : Yes easy but good idea to do progressive and low compression for JPEG, but I need to keep exif info (in fact I do simulation and it's doesn't take so much more file) because this info will be exploited for giving GPS location, lens camera focal etc... actually only the name of location is used in my book but in futur I will use more. Anyway I can save 50% space disk and ... bandwith.

   wdscharff: Loadparallel is setted to 66 because I need than people looking pictures when are turning page without any time lag. I do lot statistic and the fact is a person look longer a picture each  +/-30 photos. That mean during this time Megazine3 will load the rest of picture and finally impression is than everything is fluid. My question point is How to set time before to force Megazine3 to load the rest of images ?

  wdscharff & Hans Nücke : Why a big book.... hum good question. First I'm a photographer "advertised" (I hope) and just to give you idea of my work I take a lot of picture during my travel around the world. I keep less than 50% of my picture when I come back to home. After that I filter again, classify, gps localize, rate and tag all my picture (huge work very time consuming). Finally I do a selection of my good picture for the web more or less only 10% will be published. That mean my picture collection is more than 42k photos and I publish only 10% for "fine art" that represent 5k picture (5k look a lot but in fact it's very a few amount from initial pictures taked >100k)

  wdscharff & Hans Nücke : Do a big book I don't see problem it's like a photo book reference. Common, don't be shy... think epaper not classical paper book logic is different (like inserting video section). My friends look only the country that they want to see, nobody want to see all the book ! It's like google gallery, you can find thousand and thousand pictures but you only look your selection. If you can notice my book have chapter with continent and country. If you try to click on chapiter content you can jump to the chapiter or come back to the menu. Do you read completly a Java book reference (why I speak about Java book reference... because author never make a java book fewer than 600page ? No, you jump directly on the good chapter. (but I assume than perhaps jumping feature is not really clear on my book)
  I do a simulation with my full final book and in fact I was wrong Megazine3 could load it but it make long ... long... time. I try to understand why . Problem it's not from the image size (because they are not already read it) and it don't come also from my book.mz3 (because load a file of 3M in local it's like... pinuts). Problem is coming with the technology of Megazine3 reading xml. Anyone now if Megazine3 is using DOM, Xerces SAX parser ? Because not all technology are fast for big xml !

  wdscharff : About batchpages it's a real interesting way than I already try it but in fact I don't use it because picture are not with the same orientation, size and my layout is specific. Why I don't use external software to make layout and export it to pdf and convert into swf.... because imagine time it will take to do that for thousand image ? And imagine in case I want to add new image into a book ? What I do it's make my one layout program than automatically scan folder (and subfolder) and build my megazine book for me. A book containing 5k images take ~2min to build and if I need add image or change layout.... it's very easy.

  I think I will don't have choice about paser issue, I have to split book in N part.... it's a pity because it's a technology and not a ergonomy limitation.

Best regards

[Hans Nücke]

The time you are observing at the beginning is due to the fact that at startup MegaZine3 has to do some bookkeeping. Like understanding the general structure of the book and setting up things. Like to handle dynamic adding/deleting pages.
That indeed does not depend on the content of the pages (and therefor is independent of the size of your phaotos), but it fully depends in a linear way on the amount of pages.
What with the newer versions no works is an update of the preloader, so you at least see that something is happening. But still... there is a preparation time needed that starts "hurting" if books become bigger than let's say 1.000 pages.

It is up to you to decide what is more important for your readers: an upfront waiting time or "everything in one place". Kind of compromise you have to find...
As stated before, my preference would be to have the choice about what book to read before I open any book, and then having something that can be easily handled.
Imagine you want to add bookmarks one day: the space for such bookmarks is limited. It will be easier to define a reasonable amount of booksmarks for a 500 page book than a 5.000 pages book.
But as you also said: that's personal preferences And I do not want to judge ;-)