We’re all about simplicity here at Fans of Tech. That is to say that anything which can make our everyday, mundane tasks just a little bit easier (or alot easier) is okay by us.
In that spirit, I present to you: minishowcase, a PHP/AJAX "Lightbox" photo gallery that is incredibly easy to launch and maintain. Once you initially configure the script (which, and I think you’ll agree, is brilliantly simplistic), all you have to do in order to configure a new gallery is upload a folder of pictures to the specified directory.
It really is that easy. Again, once you configure the script, there’s only one step in between you and photo-publishing glory: uploading your photos. This particular feature is dubbed "Smart Galleries."
Here are, straight from the official site, some of the other features included:
- New interface: easier at-a-glance thumbnail navigation and a clean layout.
- Lightbox view: Images can be viewed in a lightbox way, easier and more precise, with a convenient integrated thumbnail menu.
- Languages: set your gallery in French, Italian or Spanish. Set it to select the user’s local language (if available). Translate it to your own language!
- Permanent URLs: now you can share your galleries and images with friends and acquaintances. Just copy the permalink for a gallery or an image, and email it to them!
- Automatic thumbnails: you don’t have to worry anymore about creating your images’ thumbnails. Let minishowcase take care of it.
- Added viewing features: Configurable timed slideshow.
There are plenty of photo gallery scripts & options for your static site out there on the InterWebs but this one earns some respect by not only ensuring a quick and easy start but also by offering a very slick and modern interface.
Just as a side note, the official site blog for the PHP script unfortunately hasn’t been updated since November of last year. Whether or not that spells doom for its development is yet to be seen. Who knows, perhaps your $5 donation could be its saving grace. [Update] I seem to have missed the date of the last actual release: August, 2008. Please, just disregard this whole paragraph. [/update]
Have you used this script? Would you recommend any others? Let us or our readers know by dropping a comment
[Source: WebResourcesDepot]
Hi FansOfTech,
Thank you, I appreciate the support to my minishowcase project. I wanted to let you know that even though the blog has not been updated in a long time, the gallery is alive and kicking with a last update yesterday, and I’ll continue the support.
I’m currently in the process of moving the blog to be substituted by the announcement list which has more than 400 users subscribed.
I’m also hooking a GetSatisfaction.com support area to better satisfy user’s requests.
It is a small project targeted to an audience that wants a “ready in 5 minutes and dead easy to use” gallery, with no MySQL installs or heavy dependencies. Unfortunately the same reasons that make it a very simple gallery forces it to lack other features like comments, but there are many a fantastic gallery for the comment-inclined.
I hope minishowcase keep making happy all the people that have download it and keep using it.
Cheers,
Victor